Family, a family is what keeps us going when life gets hard. It’s what every Father looks forward to seeing when they come home from work, what every Son looks forward to when coming home from school. You need balance in life, you need some warmth from the cold, problems of the world. Just like taking your first baby steps, a family is there to see you grow up and when your bones begin to weaken and your face turns to leather its family that stays by your side till your last breath. A family however is not family unless there is a strong presence of love as well. To love one another and have a sense of belonging somewhere. When you take that away from someone it can leave them feeling helpless, sad and isolated the worst situation is when you have family that does just that… leaving you feeling helpless, sad and isolated. I never saw this coming at all… Mum’s words still echoing through my head from last night. But like every good story you need to start at the beginning….
I guess you could say it all started with my childhood, it wasn’t the greatest – in fact it sucked. My Mum wasn’t really a mum at all, if that makes sense. She never really showed any care towards me, even from a young age I could tell that when she looked at me she saw something that made her twist and turn inside. She always had that look, like the type a young child gives their closet before having the lights turned off before bed as if some sort of malevolent creature was watching them back waiting till they fell asleep. It was clear something was on her mind but not once did she ever tell me what it was, in fact she never told me much about her past at all. I couldn’t help but feel unwanted as though she only cared for me because she felt like it was an obligation. It isn’t easy when the woman who is meant to shower you in love instead oozes sadness as if she were nothing but a shadow of her former self.
Mum and I lived in a small 2 bedroom unit in Blacktown about a 10 minute walk from the station. I hate it here. The wallpaper is peeling, the carpet stinks of urine and the tenants next door would loudly blast obnoxious rap music during the night. My surrounding environment brought no happiness what so ever, in fact it just highlighted the lack of connection I had with Mum. I rarely ever saw my Mum change her sad expression sometimes questioning if she was wearing a mask and behind it she was actually smiling and just playing some weird joke. I suspected her constant sadness had to do with my Dad, maybe he just knocked her up and left or maybe he passed away. Did she see a mirror image of the man she once loved in me? Is that why she felt so distant towards me? Because of my Dad breaking her heart? She never really talked about it, until last night…
It was 6pm, Mum and I were watching the news after dinner the top story for tonight was about Ryan Fernwood a 46 year old convicted rapist. His lawyer was trying to overturn the sentence given to him which was life imprisonment, on the counts of sexually assaulting 6 women. “He deserves to live the remaining years of his life behind bars, what he did was take away the ability to feel safe and that affected these women for the rest of their lives! Why shouldn’t he have a life sentence placed upon