That Red Van

All You've Ever Known

Ace POV:
Life wasn't always like this. You had a happy home, a happy life. You were part of the upper middle class, known as one of the preps at school, popular amongst everyone. Your parents split up when you were a baby, separation was all you've known, but you keep telling yourself that you're happy. Your dad is a logical controlling man who is slowly dying from addiction as well as Pancreatic Cancer. He claims he wants what's best for you and believes that your mother is a no good deadbeat. He has a new family, a new kid, and there all alright you guess. Though you love your father, you've always been closer to your mother.

Ace POV Flashback:
It all started when your mom got divorced from her first husband. He was the closest thing to a fake dad that you've ever known, and all that was ripped away. At the time you were angry at your mom, you were 7 for Christ's sake and believed that she was really happy with him, truth is that she was, until she walked in on him fucking his co-worker. At the time you didn't know this, but nowadays you're on the brink of 17 and you know way more shit than you've ever expected and wanted to know. The divorce was smooth for the most part, your mother got joint custody of your brother Paul, and finally moved away to start fresh. But starting fresh to your mother meant getting wasted, fucking random guys with her kids in the other room, leaving her eldest daughter (Ace) to fend for herself and her 6 year old brother at the time.

You hate to admit it, but you still love your mom through all the shit she put you through. She may have been a horrible mother at times, but her love for her children is real, and you appreciate that.

Growing up with her was rough. You've learned to prepare for the worst and hope for the worst because that's all you've ever known. You would spend hours, laying in bed, mind racing, trying to think and evaluate all the possible outcomes of whatever disaster your mother is preparing for now. Alcohol poisoning, check. DUI, check. Get an STD, check. Being beat by her boyfriend again, check. Mom being pregnant, check. Mom coming home to yell and blame you for her mistakes, check. Mom coming home to be all lovey dovey with her boyfriend and literally fuck him right in front of you, check.

Just when you thought you've thought of all the usual possibilities, none of them happen that night. Instead the Police come pounding on your door, raid the house, interrogating you beyond belief. At this point of time you're merely 10 years old while your 7 year old brother, Paul, is in the bath. Your mom is out with her boyfriend, doing god knows what, and left you to care for your brother and cook supper for him. The police ask you about your mother, see if she is using, drunk, has abandoned us, and all you do is deny. Though you've been treated wrong by her, you're too brainwashed to admit all the faults your mother has made. You believe it is your duty to protect your mother, because all you've seen her do is struggle from relationship, more exhausted, broken, and torn again and again. It's the least you can do in your eyes, and make it known that you will do anything to protect your mother and brother from whatever harm is thrown your way. But you bite off more than you can chew, and that starts to take a toll on you.

At this point you are 11, your mother is now married to her 2nd husband, who is a lying, narcissistic, verbally abusive scumbag, who treats you with kindness but not to your mother. Multiple times a week you would walk in on a fight. Try to diffuse the situation, sometimes it would work, others you'd be scolded, and others you'd be beaten for your integrity. It's at times like this that you think back to the good ole days, in your old small town, climbing your apple tree in the back yard, playing soccer in the field behind your house, pushing your little brother in a laundry basket in the house traumatizing him for life, and walking over to your cousins to play Mario Party on the N64. Yeah there were some bad times in the past. Yeah, maybe your babysitter beat you, and yeah maybe there were drunken fights in the kitchen, but it was still better than the life emerging in front of your green blue eyes.