I am only eight years old and my stomach is growling ferociously with hunger. Yet, the stomach I am worried about is not my own. I was hysterical, searching frantically for something to cook in our chaos-ruined home. Will I ever find anything? Will I get to eat tonight? More importantly, will my siblings get to eat tonight?

Sitting on the cold hard floor in the silence and blackness I weep. Thoughts of inadequacy, guilt, and loathing filled my mind till its bursting point. Where is my mother? Why isn’t she here? At the time I didn’t know why, but she was passed out downstairs after a hard day of alcohol consumption and drug abuse. She was unworthy of raising young children; a train wreck; the cars filled with dynamite. We didn’t need her, nor did we want her. She was nothing more than a broken rung on the ladder of our lives.

Waterfalls of tears streaming down my cheeks plummeting down into the river I left behind me. Almost as if by magic my tears ceased nearly instantaneously. Upon sight of the sun rays seeping in from the window slipping passed a tear in the curtain my heart stopped. Its golden-yellow encasing gleamed in the light, almost blindingly. There it read Kellogg’s Corn Flakes one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. My eyes are now beading up with tears. These tears I welcome with open arms. I sprint over to the refrigerator sling it open and, there is no milk. But I don’t care, I am so happy to know that we have food that I serve it with water.
I have two younger siblings and at eight years of age my responsibility is to ensure they are taken care of. My mother isn’t usually belligerent until shortly after I get home from school. This is a good thing. Good because, if she isn’t blubbering drunk before I get off school, my sister is at least getting taken care of, a little bit. My younger sister Joline is nearly one and a half now. Because of her age she is more difficult to manage than others; but not impossible, I should know, I’ve done it. My brother has a disorder called ADHD. Alex is a real piece of work. He requires constant attention, motivation, and discipline. He has a hard time in school because nobody realizes that he has special needs. I help him with his homework, sometimes even do it for him.

Imagine being eight years old and having to discipline, motivate, feed, and bathe your younger siblings. Imagine what it would be like for your brother to hate you. Imagine for him to hate you for protecting him, for attempting to instate some resemblance of normality in his life. I cried myself to sleep every night during this point in my life. I cry because I don’t know what I am doing. I cry because I’m scared, scared of my mother, scared of my siblings, I cry because I’m scared of myself. I have no idea if I am helping or hurting the situations my siblings are in and that fact terrifies me most of all.