Childhood Over at 15
The last Christmas that my mother was alive almost didn't happen. This was when I was living with the Simpleton's and my family was to pick me up and we all drive to Bennington, Arkansas where my mother's parents originally lived. Fortunate for my sister, mother, and father, a man that we went to church with in our youth donated his fairly decent mini-van to the church and to my sister. He knew we were in a bad situation having no money, a failing vehicle, an infant child, and a woman dying of cancer.
Anyways so the plan was to use that mini-van to make the trip, which it was fairly cable of doing so. My mother came to the Simpleton's to pick me up in the morning to which I got my bags into the back, but there was no room for my blanket and I didn't want my blanket to be used by my sister and nephew so that started an argument. It was just the notion that this is a fucked up situation and my mother's response was "alright, we aren't going to Arkansas." I told my mother that I would remain quiet because "you don't want to live your life with regret." Again I took a parental approach and convinced my mother to begin the trip. The thing that I couldn't handle wasn't the dull drive, it was the smell of my father and sister urinating in the car so my mother wouldn't have to pull over. They both did this multiple times and my father's blanket by the end of the trip smelled like urine. Each time one of them would go I would have to take the approach of the black death and a pocket full of poesy's, I bought an original flavor gum back and I would have to open it and hold it to my nose, it was still sickening.
After driving for 5 hours or so my mother wanted to stop at Burger place which we did in our trips to Arkansas in my youth, and so we did. The thing is I knew there was little to no money so I just ordered a kid's meal and my family got their food. Not having money and being food insecure is a terrible situation and is one of the core reasons why I will not have a child until I can provide for them a good life and have all basic needs addressed. I think that the cost of making the trip, gas and food was one of the reasons why when there was a small argument that she defaulted to "we aren't going," but I convinced her she needed to see her parents.
Eventually we made it to Bennington and one notable instance of how things had changed for me was when I was sitting in the living room chair with the legs reclined open my grandmother walked by and playfully grabbed my big toe and moved it a bit making a noise, something she did in our youth. My response was complete recoil of my foot and a look at my grandmother of questioning "why are you touching me?" Things had changed.
On Christmas day I say that my youth was over at 15 in regards to my reaction of a gift my brother got for me. This was whenever Bryce was making "good money" and so instead of sending money home he got extra gifts on a one-time occasion not sending money for rent on the regular. Anyways, Bryce bought me an expensive magic set but I ended up giving it back to him because I was too old to indulge in childhood games. I had to worry about not getting beat up or stabbed at school, coming home to no power, then had to spend all of my free-time studying. It was over, my childhood was done.