Mum and Dad

Please No CSS

When I was small I loved you.  You were my world, all that I knew and cared for.

 

I trusted you both to protect me, to love me no matter what I said or did.  I was of endless interest and fascination to both of you and you to me.  You knew so much, why was the sky blue, why was was the grass green, what is death, where do babies come from.  You knew it all.  How can two people know so much?

 

We had days out, our little family.  We went to the beach and made sand castles.  We climbed the rocks and explored the castle.  We went to the wildlife centre and looked at the hungry wolves.  We went shopping at the weekends, we visited the library and the museum, you introduced me to so much of the world and I was awed by all I saw.

 

Then I grew older, you knew less and less.  I knew more and more.  I learned you couldn’t protect me from everything.  You didn’t know everything either, no one does.  I sensed you losing interest in my inane chattering; I stopped answering when you asked about my day.

 

We began communicating with grunts and then little by little not at all.

 

We don’t go anywhere now, or at least hardly anywhere.  I don’t want to be seen with you, you will just embarrass me.  Why can’t you leave me alone? I want a life of my own!

 

You don’t understand me, you don’t know what it is like to be a teenager.  You don’t know what I think, how I feel.  But then again, how could you when I refuse to tell you.

 

I pretend to be happy with our silences, our method of don’t ask, don’t tell.

 

But deep down, secretly I hold out hope, that one day, maybe we can return to the way we were.