To The Sad Youth [DISCONTINUED]

1.2

🎵 No Matter What - Calum Scott 🎵

Trigger Warning:
Mentions of destructive thoughts and difficult family and school life

Families are quite the mysterious creatures.

They take up many shapes and sizes depending on whom they are in company with. They become the well-composed unit when brought in under the spotlight of judgemental neighbours or relatives. They become the happy family that bring the best desserts when it comes to social gatherings or celebrations planned out by the cousins from the next town over. They become the sad family who keep their composure while writing heart-wrenching eulogies at the passing of a loved one they barely even knew.

Everyone’s families, no matter how much they try to deny it and claim that it is their true form, are designed to be this way; and Jackie's is no different.

Her family is the one that works hard, the one that achieves, though they may not be great great things, they still achieve in areas others easily don't.

They are a unit of three, occasionally four when her step-father decides to join in, though that is a fact that only a handful of people know about.

Her mother works as a full-time nurse at the hospital and she is known to be the dependable one and easy to get along with.

Jackie is the first-born daughter with nothing but good grades on her report card and is the one who earned a scholarship to her current high school, now trying to pursue a career in medicine in hopes to finally take off that stress from her mother's shoulders.

Hunter, the second-born and half-brother, though no one needs to know about that, is smart too just like her dear sister and creative with his Legos and other bits and bobs stacked up in his room.

They are not wealthy, though they get by just fine, and to everyone they are just a family who work and achieve things together.

All for one and one for all.

But... behind closed doors... things are not quite the same.

That’s what makes a family, it is not the shapes or forms they try to fit themselves into; but it is the secrets they try so hard to hide from everyone else and it is the shame of being found out to be something they really weren't.

Beneath all the smiles she gives to others at work and support to her co-workers and patients, Jackie's mom is a borderline alcoholic. She drinks away the stress that latches onto her, and as soon as the alcohol touches her tongue, she no longer is the rational mother her children once knew. Dearest mother becomes a sobbing mess every time she thinks of her first husband who left her all those years ago for his real wife, and her second no-good husband who still manages to wrap her around his own finger.