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I was 10 when it first started. At the beginning, it was just little
things. The odd argument now and then, over trivial things such as the
newspapers and holidays. Soon it started to develop into an everyday
thing. Eventually they became part of everyday life.
It was June when I realised they became normality. He went away for
a few weeks and suddenly the house became silent. Dinner no longer
became a chore and I no longer sat and dreamed that everything was
‘fine’ and what was happening before me was happening to someone else.
A girl far away from that dinner table, Somebody else’s life not mine.
Everybody thought I had a perfect family life, Nobody imagined my
aberration. I kept it stored away, A guilty secret that I tried not to
think about.
The weeks passed in a blur and eventually he returned and once again
it was the same as usual. The same argument three times in an evening
but each time seemed to get that little bit worse.
I was still delusional and never told anyone about my secret even
when the letter came. It was September, four years after it started
when it arrived on the doorstep. She’d gone away leaving us to deal
with the remains. He didn’t argue, He realised there was an end in the
horizon, everyone did. Everyone except me. Even when we walked around
the new house that very afternoon, saw our furniture and our old
suitcases in the hall it was still a figment of my imagination,
something I envisaged one day but not today. It was never going to
happen just I wished it would.
She returned and tried to did the best she could to get it back to
normality but it was never going to be the same. I became the dreaded
latchkey kid I never wanted to be. The day that became reality was the
day I told someone about my secret. I was still ashamed, ashamed that
my family didn’t love each other anymore. I still blamed myself for not
trying to intervene regardless of what anybody else said. Every time I
walked around the house it was still the same although, there was a
ghostly silence. Dinnertime was like someone had pressed the mute
button on a remote control and stopped the arguments but this time I
wasn’t blocking out the sound, my mind was imagining the sound had
returned.
It only started to become reality that it was over when I was told I
had the choice of who to live with. I always blamed someone because
everything had to be someone’s fault. I chose her because he was the
one who moved out and she had looked out for me till now.
It was Christmas that was the start, I started to realise it wasn’t
so bad after all. I got twice as many things as I’d asked for, Twice as
many things as everyone else. It was then that I realised this was my
new world. It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t hers or even his either. It
was a long time before I could openly tell anyone I was from a broken
home but now that’s my normality and I’m happier than the girl who I
dreamed of far away at the dinner table.
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