I thought that those terrible years of finding my Mother, or worse, seeing my mother beaten to a pulp were over. How wrong was I?

I feel so sick, and angry. I’m angry that once again she’s allowed this to happen, with a man, who has previously shown that he would if he could, a man who everyone has warned her against. I know she’s not an innocent victim in this, I know it. I know her. I know how she is, even without being fuelled by a night of continuous drinking, and spliffs. I know how she’s even more intolerable, even more obscure and fucked up in this state. I’m angry that she allows herself to still find herself in this position.

Worse, there was someone here who could have stopped it.

See, I was asleep. When I’m asleep I’m paralysed, and deaf. I don’t hear a thing, there was utterly no way of me knowing that my Mother was being punched around the face nearly two-dozen times if nobody got me. My Brother, who is nearly seventeen years old was awake however, and he heard what was going on. He’s strong, he could have stepped in, or if he didn’t (which is apparently the case) he could have at least come into my room and told me to get out of bed – but did he?

No.

So I’m also angry at him. I’m angry that he didn’t do a single bloody thing. He knows the consequences of these things, he’s seen it all before – although when he was younger, Mother and I tried to shelter him from the true realities of what occurred; but he’s no fool. He knows my Mother just as well I do, and he knows enough that he should have stepped in to help, to have done something.

Worse still, right now I’m not even meant to be at home. I was invited out by my school, with a few other of the geekiest students for a Breakfast on the school. It’s a really nice idea, and I was quite looking forward to it. Yet I find myself cowering up in my bedroom, waiting for some other family to arrive, brewing even more anger.

Why does this have to keep happening? Why on earth am I surrounded by people, or more specifically a person, who just attracts all of the bastards to her? Why am I always the one expected to pick up the pieces?

I can’t handle it anymore. In fact, I’ve never been able to handle it, but at least when it happened when I was younger, I was a harder person. I could at least pretend to carry on (even when I couldn’t), in fact I would often wake up in the morning, see my mother in a terrible state, try to console her, then walk to school and talk to my friends as if nothing has happened. I just can’t be that person any more. I can’t carry the weight of her shit any more. I can’t.

Worse though, is that I look at her and I feel absolutely no sympathy. She’s still drunk, she stinks of alcohol and weed, talking utter shit (which I know may be in part to semi-concussion – head punching tends to have that effect), but I feel nothing for her except contempt and anger.

I don’t know what to do anymore. At least for the next five or so weeks I have left at school, I have somewhere to escape during the day. Somewhere to go where I can pretend to be  happy, to lead a life reflective of a typical eighteen year old. But what happens when I have a fifteen week Summer ahead of me? What do I do then? I can’t be around her, I can’t be here, I won’t be able to remain sane.

Fuck.