It's taken me a long time to get to this point, where I just haven't got anything left in me to give, taken a long time. I've been through Hell and back and held on for as long as I could, but I've had enough, I give up, it's as simple as that. It's not just one thing that's made me get to this point but a million things. My whole life has just been one struggle after another and I keep waiting for the day to come when things start getting better but it never comes. I can't wait anymore, I'm sorry, but I can't.
As far back as I can remember things at home were always bad—to say the least. My home was never a happy or safe place and rarely did it even feel like a home. When I was young, my mother had this once in a while habit of dabbling in drugs. As the years passed it went from once in a while, to weekly and then to a daily event. When she started getting serious with it, that was when my father left. He left me, and my brother, Blake, alone with our Junkie mother to take care of us. I was four when he left. The absence of our father didn't leave me with a hole in my heart the way it did my brother. I was too young when he left to have any treasured memories with him. All I have now is a crumpled photograph of me sitting on my Dad's knee and I'm covered from head to toe in chocolate cake. On the back of the photo Mum's scribbled Joel's 1st Birthday. That's the only thing I have to remember my father by, and if I didn't have that photo in my wallet, it'd be like he never existed. I don't know a lot about my father, I just know my mother was a drug fuelled nightmare and that drove him away. Do I blame him for leaving us like that? Yeah, sometimes. When Blake'd come home exhausted after pulling through double shifts at work, or when I'd hear him get up in the middle of the night to have one last beer, that's when I'd blame Dad for leaving us.
When Mum started getting into drugs it was just a little bit of weed here and there but after a couple of years she was right into hard drugs. Our house soon became a refuge for Mum's drug fucked friends and on any given day there'd be three or four strangers in our house taking or selling drugs. Some of her friends would stay as long as a few months, they'd sleep in our beds, eat our food and they weren't afraid to smack us around for their amusement. Some of them weren't so bad, I guess. If we didn't get in their way they wouldn't even bat an eye at us, like we weren't even there. But some of them... Some of them thought they could get away with doing terrible things to us. Blake tried to keep me safe from it all, he always looked out for me, but he didn't have anyone doing that for him. On more than one occasion Blake had to lock me inside the closet in our bedroom just to keep me safe. It got to a point where I spent so much time in there that I started keeping muesli bars, a torch, and a book in there.
There wasn't a lot my brother wouldn't do to protect me. When I was twelve, he packed a bag with a few of our things and we left that place. It was the end of year School holidays, we'd been home for weeks on end with no escape from that Hell hole. The months leading up to that day were getting hard to live through, especially for Blake. Mum would beat Blake every chance she'd get, she'd make him go days without food and when she wasn't in the mood to torture him she'd lock us in our bedroom so she didn't have to look at us. For a long time I didn't know what finally made Blake snap and decide we would leave. When we left I didn't really understand what we were doing and it took a while before I realised we weren't going back home ever again.
That first night out of home we spent in the city, behind a café called Crumbs. Blake built a make shift shelter for us out of boxes he'd found in the dumpster, but it was cold and the air was so damp that by morning the boxes were soggy. My teeth were chattering and my bones were shivering so Blake bundled me up in his jumper and kept his arms around me the entire night so I would stay warm and feel safe. As strange as this will sound I think it was the first night in years where I'd managed to sleep through the night.
The next day Blake told me we wouldn't be going home again. He said I wasn't allowed to tell anyone we were on our own or I'd get taken away from him. The thought of that terrified me to the point where I was too frightened to even open my mouth for the next few hours. That morning he took us to the Salvation Army and told me to stay close and remember not to tell anyone what we were doing. At the time I remember thinking the people working at the Salvo's must've been evil to want to take me away from Blake so I did as I was told and didn't say a word to anyone. In a place where we were meant to feel safe I don't think I'd ever been so terrified before in my entire life. That was Blake's fault though, for not explaining anything to me. Took a few years before I realised he'd told me to keep quiet so I wouldn't be dragged into foster care without him. I was so scared of being taken away that I held onto Blake and followed him so closely that I kept tripping on the backs of his shoes. We joined a long line of hungry people in the cafeteria and after what felt like hours of waiting to my rumbling stomach we were each given a tray of food with some toast, a yoghurt, and a piece of fruit. This was the first time in four days Blake had been given anything to eat. When we sat down at our table I remember looking at my brother and for the first time realising just how bad things were for us.
YOU ARE READING
Relatively Dependent
General FictionA story of two brothers who have nothing in life but each other. The story is told through the main character, Joel, as he recalls events from his childhood and how he and his brother, Blake, escaped the nightmare of their Mother's drug fuelled abus...
