Double Vision: A Child Shouldn’t Have To Raise Their Siblings

I rub my eyes hoping the blurriness will go away. I start to see a mom who takes care of her kids. Outside looking in, people saw that, but it wasn't my mom, it was me. My parents, Christy and Josh never earned their title of “mom and dad” due to their lack of presence in our lives. Christy was always off with a new love interest better known to us as one of her drug dealers. Josh on the other hand was one hell of man. Although the bitter taste of alcohol had him wrapped around its finger since a young age, he knew how to get what he wanted from anyone he laid his eyes on. Now this could have been beneficial to us until he started to scavenge around our house for the hard-earned money we made just so he could go buy drugs. We had been playing this game long before and knew the drill, the money would go in an old chocolate milk powder container in the cabinet where he wouldn't suspect it. Since I was nine years old I have been taking care of my siblings and every other responsibility that came with being a parent.

The first time I realized nothing was going to change in my family was when I opened the overflowing mailbox and saw the red overdue stamped envelopes flow out. My eyes started to get blurry. I rubbed them. I started to see two hard working parents who paid their bills with kids who only had to worry about getting good grades in school. I wish I had that. My siblings and I were the ones working jobs over the summers trying to scrape together any money to make ends meet while Christy was off with some guy and Josh was asleep on the porch hungover from whatever he could get his hands on the night before. Anything to at least keep the lights on so I can see where to cut the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into cute little triangles I had seen other moms do for their kid’s school lunches.

My eyes started to get blurry again, I tried to blink. The words on the paper slowly faded. I was dropping out of high school, filling out GED forms. Someone had to get a full-time job to take care of things and it wasn't going to be Christy or Josh. I learned how to enroll my siblings into school; I just thought of it as practice for when I had my own kids. But would I even want kids since I had already raised five on my own? By then we already had a routine. I would wake everyone up, once I was strong enough to get out of bed, day after every. Single. Exhausting. Day. It was a fight to the finish, who would get to the bathroom first, having leftover food actually safe enough to eat in the fridge for breakfast, and getting out the door on time for school, while I dropped my baby brother off at daycare and by daycare, I mean a teenage girl down the street who only charged a couple bucks an hour because any leftover money couldn't buy you anything but a pop from the vending machine, and then headed to one of my main sources of income. I wish I could have experienced my junior and senior year.

As my siblings got older, they learned right from wrong. I could only go as far as giving an opinion as to what they should do. None of them depended on me anymore. My eyes started to get blurry, but only this time, puddles of tears sat on the bottom of my lash lines. Maybe I used raising my siblings as an excuse as to why I never got to do anything great with my life. This must be what actual parents feel like when their babies are ready to leave the nest. I watched them go from running around in trash bags duct taped to their waist when we didn't have diapers, to being strong enough to help drag Josh to the front porch and off our cracked kitchen tiled floors. I depended on them to depend on me. I didn't know what to do with myself anymore.

I had to start making decisions for me and what I wanted for once. What did I want to do with my life? It was hard thinking about all the possibilities and not being with what I had known for so long. I finally got the courage to pack my bags and finish my education. I didn't know where I was going at the time or how I was going to get there but I wrote a note and stuck it on the fridge saying my goodbyes. I wasn't strong enough to tell them in person because I would never end up going. I had to leave before they got home. I call every once in a while, to check up but it’s rare that they answer anymore. My eyes still get blurry looking back at my “childhood”.