Chapter Five – Everything Changes
If I had thought that my life was bad before Dad moved out, then afterwards it was an absolute nightmare; I thought that things couldn't get much worse. I wish that I could say that I understood what was happening and why, but I honestly can't because I was the one who has been left to pick up the pieces. Everything was starting to get on top of me; I couldn't handle having Mum breaking down in front of me all of the time because it was starting to mess around with my own emotions. I had exams to sit a few months later, for which I knew that I couldn't be an emotional wreck. I felt so unsure of how things were going to turn out; would they get better or would they get worse? The problem was that this couldn't be answered until Dad had moved out, and we still didn't know when that would be.
I felt at that moment like the only thing I needed to do was cry, but how could I, and when? I was being strong for Mum, but there was nobody to be strong for me. I couldn't cry at school (though I almost did on several occasions) because how would that have looked? And I couldn't cry at home because Will would probably have laughed at me and Mum would probably have just cried more herself. It might sound really stupid, but I almost felt that if I started crying, and was unable to stop, how would I have coped then? So I was attempting to cope in the only way that I knew how, but was burying myself in schoolwork really the best way to deal with the situation? Probably not because sooner or later it was all going to come crashing down on me, and I didn't know how I could have dealt with that.
My biggest problem at that point was how to confide how I was feeling in someone. I had a friend at school who seemed to have a good idea of how emotionally unstable I was feeling at that time, and he knew that by supporting my Mum I was making myself feel even lower. But how could I have broken down in front of him? Why should he have had to deal with my problems too? But who could I confide in at home? Mum was in a bad enough way as it was, and how could I talk to Dad?