When I was younger, about five, I was taken away from my mother. A woman in smart black cloths with a white shirt turned up at our house one day. She looked nice and kind, her long brown hair falling down just passed her shoulders. When she looked around our house and spoke to my mother her voice was harsh and her face went from pained to angry but when she looked at me it was a different story. She would smile at me so warm, I don't remember seeing one of those from my mother ever. My mothers men would smile at me but I never liked their smiles, there was something weird about them. They always scared me. When this woman spoke to me he voice was soft compared to the harsh voice my mother used. I like this woman more than my mother and I wished I could go with her. I stood in my corner wishing that she would just hold out her hand and take me away from this life. I didn't seen anything wrong with the life I had back then, I had been brought up in it, I just knew I didn't like it. She answered my wish and took me away that day, far away.
I remember just stood or sat in my corner, following my mothers orders, almost every day watching my mother and her men. Sometimes they all would inject them self's with a substance, or take pills or smoke something that smelt disgusting at first but I soon got used to the smell, I even began to like it. On the days she wasn't doing things like that only one man would come around. They both would sit on the sofa kissing, then the kissing turned into something that looked like they were trying to eat each other. Quickly that moved onto taking off some of there cloths, sometimes most. My mother would turn her head and look at me as if she had just remembered I was there then she would give me an irritated look and push the man away, take his hand then lead him to our shared room. When the man left he gave her money.
We were living in a one bed roomed apartment at the time with only one bed. My mother would obviously take the bed and I would sleep on the floor on top of a mat, the lady called it a dog bed when she came and saw it. The rest of our house was massy. All of my mothers things laying around, her needles, tablets and cloths. Dishes, plates, knifes, forks, spoons and cups lined the room. Grease and brown tar covered the once white walls. Nothing in that house belongs to me except my corner where I spent my life at that time, neatly tucked away in safety between the no longer working fridge and cocker.
I can remember always been dressed in the same thing. A long gray T-Shirt that used to be white. I can never remember wearing anything else, I never had cloths, I didn't need them, I never left this flat. If I wanted food I would have to do it myself, my mother would never make me food so I had to do it. When I was first learning how I burnt myself a lot when using the oven but eventually I did it without burning myself, I was so happy and I went to go tell my mother but she was sleeping so she was angry when I awoke her. She just grabbed my head and pushed me to the ground telling me to go back to my corner. I had learnt along time ago crying was wrong so I never did it no matter how much I wanted to and no matter how much pain I was going through when I had burnt myself or fallen.
When that lady came and took me out of the house into the light, into the real life fresh air I smiled. I can't remember ever smiling but I smiled today, I smiled now. Once on the court yard just outside our block of flats I took a deep breath and spun around laughing, I had never heard myself do that before. I caught a look at the lady, the lady who had taken me outside for the first time, she was smiling at me a big smile and tears spilled from her eyes, I didn't know why she was crying when she looked so happy. I wanted to say thank you but didn't know how so I just ran back to her jumped up and gave her a big hug. Her reaction was the biggest shock of my life that day. She hugged me back, she squeezed me tight and I squeezed her back.
When she got me and took me away in her car, the car which scared me at first, it was big and fast. The first thing she did was take me to the doctors and get me a blood test, I had seen needles all my life and they scared me, I saw what they did to mother, make her go green and pass out. But the lady stayed with me and held my hand. Something else that was new to me, hand holding, it felt really nice. According to the blood test I had nothing wrong with me but I did have some, quite high levels, of weed in my system possibly from been in the house while the cloud filled every single room. The results made the angry look appear back on the lady's face but then when she met my eyes it disappeared and the smile was back. I was safe and free at last.