Ashes on The Playground

When you think of a five year old child, you think of kids running and playing outside, a child colouring in their colouring book or engaging in a game of peek-a-boo with their mother or father. You think of free spirit and worry free days. You think of a small child, enjoying learning and being with their classmates, playing at recess and living for the moment.

Their world is so small. They know everything, yet they know nothing. Morning, afternoon, evening, night. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and all the snacks in between. Colouring, drawing, playing, eating and sleeping. Mommy, daddy, brother, sister and grandparents. They know not of the evils of the world. What it's like to deal with the dramas and realities of what's really known as life, for their life is nothing more than a playground designed to train you and prepare you for what is to come.

What if a child doesn't get that very same playground? What happens then?

They grow up long before they should. They know the very things you try to shield them from all their childhood. The things that they are meant to learn in adolescence and later. Worry, drama, hurt, depression and responsibility. All these things a child should not be forced to face.

For what reason should a child have to face everything alone?

Many reasons. Nobody knows what drives parents to stop caring. To stop playing with their children. To stop giving them the love and affection they need. But rather, treat the child as a burden. An obligation. A responsibility with no rewards. Not the miracle of life that a child should be. A life that would care for them, make them proud and someday become a parent to another and so the cycle would continue.

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Wherever did I go wrong? Was I a mistake? Do you really want me anymore?

I found myself asking these questions all throughout childhood. From the earliest age that I can remember, of being four or five years old. I wasn't the typical child. I didn't have the typical life. What's this playground you speak of? I don't know any playground. All I know is the day to day things that I've been dealing with, since those days.

The occasional session of sitting at the makeshift desk otherwise known as my mother's heirloom footlocker, I would be found colouring, writing, or otherwise making myself busy. The radio was always on next to me. I took great comfort in the tunes that came from it. All sorts of bands, none of which I knew were a daily occurrence in my life.

Sometimes, you could find my expertly tearing pages from a colouring book, folding them thick enough and sliding my chair across the room, so I would be tall enough to reach the latch. From there, I would slide the piece of paper through and unlock the door. I couldn't help it, I had to go to the bathroom. No hide nor hair of anyone to let me go do it. So I found my own ways. I always got in trouble for it too.

Sometimes, you could find me downstairs, playing with my toys from my toy box, watching the tellie or otherwise amusing myself in any way I could. My brother and sister were a lot older with me. They never played with me. My parents were too busy to play with me. The only thing they ever had the time for, was to give me my plate or bowl of food and something to drink, or haul me back upstairs.

Wake up. Eat breakfast. Take my much unnecessary medication. Go to school. Come home. Eat dinner. Go to bed. Repeat. Days and days and days. The same thing, over and over. I was never much liked in school, so the only solace I could find, weird as it may be, was in my room, by myself. With that very same radio.

Around this time, is when he came into my life. It was just music. Just another face on the tellie, nothing more, right? Wrong. It so turned out that he'd make all the difference in my life. Even fifteen years later.

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And so life goes on, knowing nothing of this playground, which is nothing more to me than a pile of ashes. If one ever existed, it sure doesn't now. As for music, it had it's ups and downs in my life. Sometimes it wasn't important at all. Others, it was my only saving grace.

I'd suddenly learned more than I ever wanted to know about the people who were supposed to love me. Even though I was grown. Even though I was an adult. I lacked the proper nurturing throughout childhood. The attention, the affection, the support. I still wanted that love, that support. And yet, I was still denied it.

I'd only learn that they were the very people who would hinder my path in life. To becoming what I should be. What I want to be. What I am destined to be.

When everything was going down for the worst and I was sure to hit bottom...everybody left me. I had no family that cared about me, no friends. Everybody...gone. Just gone. He came to me again. Through a different band I was interested in. And I suddenly realized why he meant so much to me so long ago.

But he wasn't alone. He brought help. In the form of friends. Who I would learn to love as family. Even though they were only people I communicated with through words. They showed me more emotional support than I could've ever imagined existed. More love and a proverbial shoulder to cry on when I so needed it. Never was I turned away by these people and never was I denied equal treatment.

Who knew that there were actually kind people in the world! They aren't some storybook fantasy. No fairytale. No unicorn! They're real! They're really real!

One of my friends once told me, that with greatness, comes great resistance and responsibility. Nobody who was ever great, didn't fight their way tooth and nail to get there. Against all the odds. Against all the evils in the world. And I...I have known this fact since I was but a little thing. too young to embrace it, to fathom it's deep meaning. Too young to know that it isn't and will never be my fault that things turned out the way they did. Everything happens for a reason. Everything.

Tonight...I begin the journey to conquer what holds me back. To embrace my destiny. I will rise up from the ashes and I will help others do the same.