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Tommy isn't too sure, but he thinks the earliest he remembers them fighting must have been when he was 11. It was the night before they were meant to go away in the summertime. He was supposed to be in bed sleeping, but he'd woken up and heard their voices from down the hall. He'd cracked his door open and slipped out, shuffling his way to the top of the staircase where the light from the lower floor tainted the dark of the night. He doesn't remember what they were fighting about, his parents, but then again, he also doesn't remember what it was like to be 10. Or 9. Or 8, or 7.
It got worse over the years. Secondary school was a nightmare, to say the least. Not because the people there weren't nice, but because the whole thing felt like a very elaborate prank. No way was all the stuff the teachers were trying to teach him going to be the way it was for the rest of his life. The first time Tommy considered suicide he was 12. He thought, in all of his young wisdom, that if the rest of his life really was going to be like that, then it wasn't worth living. He considered bringing up his pain with his mum or his dad, but they were too busy arguing. He tried to get in a sideways work one evening in autumn, but he'd been set aside after just calling for their attention. With a muttered "Oh, okay. I'll just—", he excused himself to his bedroom where he went to sleep hungry. He'd thought that maybe someone would wake him up for dinnertime, but when he opened his eyes again, it was to the sound of the roosters hollering at the rising sun. That morning, he ate stale cereal and walked to school.
Tommy was 13 and nobody at the dinner table was speaking. It was the first time in nearly a full year that everyone had been sitting around it at the same time. It was tense to a fragile degree. He spent more focus on making sure the friendship bracelets (that he'd made for himself) covered the marks on his forearm than he did on eating. Or on his parents. Not that he needed to pay attention to them; he knew what they were probably doing: sending each other scathing glances when they thought the other wasn't looking. Maybe if he'd looked up anyways, he'd have noticed that he didn't need to be focusing so much on hiding the evidence of his... habits. His parents weren't bothered about checking their son for thin red lines, they were too busy brutalizing their pasta to sour thoughts of one another. They stopped doing family dinners for good after that.
On Tommy's 14th birthday, he bought a cupcake from his school's canteen and carried it all the way back home. He pillaged the cupboards for a candle and lighter and took his winnings up to his room. He waited for the sun to set, piling all of his care into making sure the candle was perfectly straight and at the centre of the curl of cheap frosting atop the chocolate cake. He ignored the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. He ignored the slam of the door. The sun slipped lower down on the horizon as another car pulled up to the house. The door didn't slam, but the voices that started out low below him and quickly grew in volume made up for that anyways. He fished his earbuds out of his schoolbag along with his B series Walkman, fumbling until the jack found its way into the socket. He skipped until he found a softer song he liked and seized the lighter. With a moment of hesitation, he lit his small blue-and-white striped candle and watched in awe at the little light he'd made for himself. He could still hear his parents arguing beneath him, so he turned up his music. His little light... He reckoned he should be used to forging his own light and warmth by now. It had been a while. He'd miraculously gotten clean of cutting over the few months before, he should be used to looking out for himself.
At fifteen, Tommy forgot. It was like 7 through to 10 all over again, though looking back he was pretty sure that from 7 to 10 he wasn't heavily medicating with rum and vodka.
Sometime when Tommy was 16, he was sitting alone on his bed, not remembering to blink as he stared at his wall. It was October. He was older now. He knew things. On this day in October, he realized something new. It shouldn't have been new. He already knew it, he'd just never thought about it from the point of view of himself. He realised that the shit he'd gone through when he was 12, 13, 14, 15 was something that many people never had to go through in their lives. He realized he'd gone through it. He realized he'd gone through it at such a young age. I mean, for god's sake, he was still a kid right then, even more so 4 years before. He'd gone through and dealt with so much shit, at such a young age, and by himself, totally alone. For the first time, Tommy realized that he deserved better.
Tommy was 16 years old and crying his lungs out atop his comforter, fingers all but digging into his eye sockets as he wept. He was just a kid, and he deserved better.
It was such a revelation. He knew he was a kid, that he'd only ever been a kid, but he never really realized how fucked up it was. He shouldn't have had to go through that. He was a child.
He felt so bad for that kid who he couldn't even remember being for all those years. He felt so bad for the kid who couldn't remember the last time someone hugged him. He should have been there for that kid, that poor fucking kid who didn't need to go through that. That kid who was so painfully alone. No one should have to go through what that kid did, especially not at that age and especially not alone. He was that kid. And he was mad about it, he was pissed. Where was his remedial ending, where all the pain finally went away? Where was that kid's recognition, his love, his apology? He deserved an apology. He deserved an apology.
Tommy cried like he'd trained to do it for his whole life, choking and panting and struggling to breathe. It felt like all he could feel was sorrow, and it was all for that fucking kid. It was for that kid who was him, just a few short, hard years ago. He had deserved better. He knew that now. But damn, it hurt. He had been a kid, and he didn't deserve it.