5th March 2012
Dear Cassi,
The other day
someone told me that they had left home young. I returned this note with the
information that I had not lived with my parents since the age of ten. The
conversation went well, but as I was left alone to think a spark of anger grew
into a fire that has lived in my chest since.
When my mother
passed there was a commotion and a swooning over that lasted for a month of
two, but then the family turned away and left the three of her children to live
on. The eldest of us was fourteen and I the youngest was ten. They were well
aware of my older sibling’s mental problems at the time so I cannot even begin
to believe that they felt he would be an acceptable guardian.
I would tell
the other two to make out the shopping list and then once a week I was taken to
the store to buy the house keepings. A ten year old in charge of their own
nutrition is never a good idea, but I think I did all right.
Still, that
fact that no one step forward to say “look after you children,” sticks in my
gut like bad beef. Worse than the beatings I took or the headaches is the fact
that the world looked away. Childhood is a time of light and life but I lived
in the dark cold of indifference. It is that cold that lives in my heart even
today and the reason that I do not get lonely. I have come so used to being
alone that it is who I am.
There have been
so many times in my life that I have stood wounded and bleeding without the aid
of others that I now have litter faith in its coming. I know not what the dawn
will bring, but whatever comes I will great alone. This is the cold nature of
my life and what I have come to understand.
Live in light
and warmth, little sister
Richard Leland
Neal
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