Chapter 1 I do Feel Pain

Chapter 1
I Do Feel Pain

As I look from person to person I wonder what the world they live in is like. I wonder if they have ever felt the pain I have, or if they like me have had to place a shining smile on my face everyday that tells the people that love me everything is okay. I wonder what each person was born out of, whether it’s the innocence of love or the selfishness of control, either one could decide your whole life before it is even begun. Is an accident really an accident? Is being planned really planned? Questions asked everyday but never heard and never answered. The truth is always hidden, hidden from the people who are loved most and hidden from the people who are hated most. A spiral of lies could convince even the teller and that teller soon deteriorates into a black whole of loneliness and sin, all innocence sucked from what was once a pure child.

No two problems can ever and, should never be compared, they are all different and all cause the same amount of hurt to each person. The worst day of your life could be nothing compared to the worst day of my life but they are still the worst days so therefore still cause the greatest pain. Growing up I always thought I was singled out, that the problems I faced were only real on TV shows and films. I sometimes think that maybe my mum always thought she was part of the superficial world, to afraid to wake up, to stop pretending and begin to really live.

Mum would always jump at an opportunity to share her problems, if there were none she would make them up. Attention was a necessity for her; she craved it like an addict craved alcohol. Maybe that was it; maybe she couldn’t feed her need for attention so turned to drink instead. The poison she intoxicated her body with everyday turned out to create more problems than she hoped for, these problem were real, real to her and real to everyone she loved. She didn’t realise that no matter how much she hurt I would always hurt a million times more than that, I had to watch for every single second of my 16 years. Watch her humiliate herself, to lie, to fight, to cry, and to scream. It must have hurt her lot to be, but it hurt me much more to watch and no that nothing I said or did counted.

From the age of 4 till I was 9 I never spoke a word to mum about this addiction. I was open minded but not brave enough to confront her. I had already witnessed vicious verbal attacks on anyone who even dared give her advice. I spent most of that time watching, always quick on my feet to adapt to her constant mood changes. Lewis was always the favourite, the youngest so her ‘baby’. Anytime mum was feeling kind towards me I would scoop up the opportunity to feel like she loved me more, this normally meant sticking up for what she believed in, even though I knew then how ridiculous it was. This constant bubble mum wrapped round my brother did not do him any favours, she talked for him, she practically did his homework for him because he was ‘stupid like her’ and ‘didn’t need school like her’. He is not her and he will never be, he feels pain, he has witnessed what she has become and will do everything in his power to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes and follow her rocky path.

Mum and dad met in a pub where she was working, right away there are big bright lights flashing and my ears ring with warning. How could he tell what was to become. She was just I nice, chatty, some what flirtatious girl who showed interest in him as soon as he showed interest in her. As I pick my way through their early years there are a lot of signs that scream warning at me, but when you’re wrapped up in young love it feels like no one else in the world matters.

That’s all it ever was and ever could be, young love. It’s a different love, its love before you know what love really is. So a year down the line she was pregnant and my dad found himself, trapped forever in a love that was never real and that would never last. Five months before I was born a quick and sudden wedding took place. Then four months into married life I revealed my face to the world.

I guess it all went down hill from around the age of two, now their love was pretend love, full of stubbornness, not willing to admit that they were too young and had plunged themselves in a life time of misery. On the 20th of august 1995 Lewis arrived. Family life seemed to put a strain on both of them. With a brief separation they got back together, for the sake of the kids.

What upset’s me most in this life is people making problems out of nothing. If my mum hadn’t ever needed problems to feed the attention she needed, then my life wouldn’t have been this way. I would happily change it so I lived in a world where there was no war and no suffering, shielded in a little bubble which I could proudly call Hollie land. Unfortunately my path had already been decided the moment I took my first breath, already smothered with suffering of which I had no choice about.