Like I said, the good days are worth it all. Worth the late nights and early mornings. Worth my education taking a backseat. Worth my lack of a normal childhood with friends and normal worries like if a boy at school has a crush on me, or what the current fashion trends are.
I pass the café, where I have to be for work in a few hours, before turning the corner onto my street. The street itself isn’t much to look at. It’s dodgy as fuck, but then half the estates in this part of town are. One wrong turn and you could end up on a street you seriously shouldn’t be on, and for no other reason than because you don’t belong to the ‘right’ denomination – Protestants or Catholics. That was just Belfast or, well, Northern Ireland as a whole. Completely messed up if you asked me. I certainly didn’t have any time or energy to give two shits about what religion people were; so long as they left me alone, I left them alone.
The street we live on is full of terrace council houses containing a strange mix of residents. You have the cute elderly people whose houses you can spot immediately by the well-maintained front square of lawn and window boxes filled with flowers; you have the middle-aged couples and foreigners who work all hours and keep themselves to themselves; then you have the hoodlums who just want to stir up trouble, are always partying and playing their music too loud. Those are the houses to avoid, but that can be difficult to do at this time of night, especially if the weather is good and they are standing outside smoking. Thankfully I’m in luck tonight as all is quiet as I amble down the street towards my terrace at the far end of the road.
Our own house isn’t terrible. It’s a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom terrace. Looking at it from the outside, it looks worn down, as if life has been battering at it and it has long since given up fighting back. Weeds are growing up between the cracks in the paving slabs and paint is peeling off the door and window, but I do my best to keep the inside clean and tidy. I just don’t have the time, money, or energy to waste on pretty window boxes of flowers or making it feel more homely with pictures and decorations or whatever.
Standing outside the front of the house, looking up at the darkened windows, the weight of everything hangs over me like a dark cloud of oppression, weighing heavy on my soul. I can't wait until I turn eighteen and I’m done with school. I could have dropped out at sixteen, but I want to better my chances of getting a higher-paid job once I do finally finish school. I don’t want to live this life forever. I want more for myself, for my future.
Once I’m eighteen I can get a job at one of the strip clubs in town where I will be able to earn a lot more than I do now, meaning we wouldn’t constantly have to decide between having heating or having electricity; we wouldn’t have to live off ramen noodles every night or go a day or two without food when the money won’t stretch far enough.
Working in a strip club would only be a temporary solution. Something to pay the bills while I finish off school, possibly do an online college course or while I apply to jobs. I haven’t exactly had the time to work out the specifics.
Thankfully over the summer, when school was out, I was able to save up a decent amount of money. It should tide us over for a while, but there is never enough. We will burn through it in no time.
My little side-gig pickpocketing drunk students and unaware tourists also helps, especially with the explosion in tourism since ‘Game of Thrones’ hit the big screens and became an international success. It’s risky, I can’t afford to get caught, so I only resort to it when I’m desperate, which seems to be more and more often these days.
Not wanting to waste any more time out in the cold, I quickly unlatch our front gate and hurry up the path to the door. Inserting the key and pushing against the door to unstick it, I practically fall through the doorway, into the hall.
I don’t immediately notice the sickly-sweet odour in the air or feel the heavy weight of silence in the house, which is more desolate than normal. It takes a full minute of standing frozen in the hallway before the clues register in my brain. As soon as I realise what’s going on, the horribleness that has happened in this house tonight, time seems to slow down. I sluggishly stumble my way down the hall towards the kitchen, following the ever-increasing stench in the air.
I know what I’m going to see when I push the kitchen door open. I know I’m going to find my mother dead.
Despite not needing to see my mother’s body, that is exactly what I’m met with as I push the door open and step into the kitchen. My mum is sitting at the kitchen table, slumped in the chair with her head resting on the table’s surface, eyes wide and glassy in death with foam around her mouth. Numerous bottles of pills are scattered on the table in front of her and an empty bottle of vodka has been dropped on the floor beside her, presumably from when she lost consciousness.
I don’t know how long I stand there, just staring at the scene in front of me, not really taking anything in but also knowing this moment will be burned into my mind forever. I don’t think I will ever get the stench of death out of my skin. It feels like it has embedded itself in the very fibre of my being.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come home to find my mum has overdosed. I think part of me has always known it would end like this. She certainly has been trying her best for years now.
Nothing ever seemed to improve her mood for very long. I can remember short periods of time, mostly when I was a lot younger, when I would wake up to her humming in the kitchen while she made breakfast, the sunshine through the kitchen window making her blonde hair glow, and emphasising the tired, worn look on her face and the age lines around her eyes; but seeing her smiling was the best thing. It was in these moments that everything felt like it was going to be ok; that, at least for a short time, I would have my mum back - the mum who would clean the house, do the food shopping and spend time watching movies on the couch and laughing over stupid things with me.
Of course, it was during those times, when she appeared happy and optimistic, that she would make impulsive decisions. One month she spent all of our rent money on online gambling sites. In another instance she transferred every penny that was in our bank account to help support Seamus the sea lion in one of those animal adoption things. Worse than spending all our money, I would often come home to find strangers in our house who my mother had picked up online, or off the street, to sleep with or offer a warm bed – my bed - to. Some of them would linger around, eating what little food we had and giving me lecherous looks when I was home.
It was a vicious cycle, starting with a few days of lucency where I had my mum back, before escalating into a manic episode of reckless behavior and insane spending, climaxing to a failed suicide attempt and triggering her spiral down into depression, until she finally crawled her way back out of it to normality again.
I would never know how long these episodes would last. Sometimes it was only for a few days, then her mood would change once again, other times she could remain depressed or manic for months. Sadly, the periods of stability never seemed to last more than a few days.
The worst thing was that there was nothing I could do except stand by and watch her self-destruct.
Honestly though, it was exhausting, not knowing what to expect every day. Whether she would act like a mum, completely ignore my existence or treat me like shit if I did anything to stand in her way or argue with her; tidying up her messes and dealing with the creepy men and other strays she would bring home.