Same as Yesterday

00 • Prolouge

As someone in their youth, the worlds possibilities seem endless, the imagination is wild and free, and the worries of everyday life are nowhere to be seen. There is so much to explore, so much to discover and figure your way through.

Then you suddenly reach an age where you believe there is nothing else out there to explore, like you know every little thing there is to know and you are always right. You've gone through everything, you've encountered ever type of person, you've overcome every challenge you could possibly be faced with, you've experienced your lowest of lows and your highest of highs, but you haven't.

To be quite frank, at this age you haven't even had the opportunity to scrape the surface of your life and it's challenges. Soon after, you quickly realise, those you previously had to rely on, are not always going to be there, and you need to figure your way through life on your own.

My mother always preached the innocence of childhood. 'You have nothing to worry about!' I remember her repeating several times. In some circumstances, her saying was proven true, though on various occasions she was wrong. As a child, we would all complain over not liking what she has made for dinner, or not getting the exact toy we wanted, both seem so petty now as I look back. As a child of no more than 3 years old, these problems seemed like the end of the world, like we would never get over them. But when she died, I realised just how minuscule these issues were in the grand scheme of things.

Skip to the current moment where here I am living with my father, his new wife, and my younger brother and sister. My life is something I would exchange in a heartbeat if it gave my siblings an opportunity to be safe and with our mother again. Trying to navigate my way through childhood and adolescence without a motherly figure for such a long period of time was detrimental for my development. The bond between a mother and her child is one of the lost essential bonds between any relationship you enter throughout your entire life. My siblings and I had that connection severed when we were too young to develop the foundation of this bond.

The fights, the drugs and the hurt we have all experienced was something I had previously thought was a myth. It would never happen to us, especially considering the family we were in the first 5 years of my life. This leaves me to ponder how much I as a child took for granted, I was so spoilt and should have realised how much we were blessed. We were the picture perfect family, but it all went downhill when mum died.

I can't help but think my siblings should blame me for the position they were forced into. No matter how much I try to protect them, I am not around all the time. Those are the times that scare me the most, I don't know what I will come home to after school. Will my father be there? Will he be alive? Will my siblings be there? Will they be alive? And even with how much I despise his new wife, I don't know what I would do if I came home to it again. Therese thoughts consume my mind constantly and it seems they can't be ignored. I find myself daydreaming throughout most of the school day, only being able to put in a small amount of effort because I don't have the time to focus.

I don't blame my siblings, not one but. They were and still are too young to understand the situation. Even if they did, their brains would be unable to problem solve. I was not any much older than them when the shit show started, though I am now old enough to comprehend that I shouldn't have had to expose me that at such a young age. I never had a childhood after the age of 6, so I will try with everything I have to give my siblings the best life I can. I only have to compete the rest of this school year and I can leave, go to the police and start a new life for us.

Steven was the luckiest out of all of us children. Being four-and-a-half years older than me, my mum and father let him walk home from school. Most days I would have joined him, though one day I had faked sick to miss a maths test and on his way home he was hit by a car. Even at the age of six, I couldn't wish it was me, I was too young for that thought to comprehend.

Now at the age of 16, I can't help but this thought infiltrate my brain every single time I think of him. 'If only it was me'. He was always much more mature than me, he would've done a better job at looking after everything. He would've gone to the police, he would've stopped my father, he would've gotten his siblings out of there and made a better life for them quicker than I ever could.

My only purpose in life is to protect my siblings, to ensure their safety and development isn't hindered my him, their innocence is kept until they are old enough to explore life themselves, not because they were forced to grow up.