Little Boy Lost

He sits in his room, hands over his ears and eyes closed. His parents are shouting, talking, shouting, talking, shouting. It's a never-ending cycle that they try to hide from him but he knows about it.

His mother spends her time fretting about the house, his school progress and the bills that come through the door almost every day. His father spends his time wondering whether they were smart to bring a child into their marriage when they couldn't even keep themselves together. He didn't know how his son was feeling because they never ask him because he'll never answer them. No matter how they phrase it, he'll pretend that he doesn't know what they're talking about and act like everything is fine to their faces. It's how he's always been towards them, and eleven years down the line he hasn't changed a bit.

As the days progress the atmosphere in the house grows worse, but neither parent wants to sit down with the other and discuss their thoughts and feelings along with how this must be affecting their son. No, they just want to get their side across and try and get this over and done with – which, clearly, hasn't been working too well for the last few months they've been at it. They're blinded by their own feelings, something that happens far too often for it to be of any worry to anyone, and they both feel that they're at the point where the next thing they'll say will be the breaking point and end all the unnecessary arguing that occurs within the house. They so wish for that to happen but the days still pass with them still on the ends of their tethers and the house still an unhealthy atmosphere for their eleven year old son.

It enters the fifth month of their arguing and he's so far into himself that he can barely focus at school or find anything entertaining when he goes out with his friends. As he understands everything that is going on, he isn't immune to the feelings that accompany having two parents that can't stand each other. They work at him, wearing him down immensely as he struggles to work out how he can get them back together like they used to be. What's wrong with going back to before when he enjoyed coming home from school because he knew that both his parents would be there for him?

The summer holidays come and now he's no longer able to escape to school for the six hours a day that he normally does. Instead, his mother tries to find him all sorts of activities to do around the place that they live so that he's out the house and away from any conversations that she feels are "too adult" for him to be in hearing distance of. He begins to resent her for making him go and do things that he doesn't want to do, and when it comes to returning home from these activities, he just wishes that his father would be the one to pick him up.

Four weeks into the holidays his father sits him down and breaks the news that they're separating. The boy just nods, he knows it's been a long time coming. But when his father tells him that he'll be moving out and visiting whenever he can, the boy starts to cry and begs his father not to leave. It doesn't work because after dinner, his father leaves the house with his parting words little comfort to the boy. As soon as the door closes, he tells his mother for the first time that he hates her before storming up to his room.

As the days progress, he gets more and more aggressive towards his mother, and when his father doesn't come round for his twelfth birthday because they hadn't worked everything out according to his mother, he spends the evening in his room and ignoring any type of conversation his mother tries to strike with him. The days following he finds out that they're no longer just separating – they're getting a divorce and his mother was keeping full custody of him until the court battle they'd have, but even then she was confident that she'd remain the parent with full custody. All this he heard while sitting on the stairs and listening to his mother talk on the phone with all sorts of people: her mother, her sister, her friend and even her solicitor. It's then that he become angry.

The new school year starts in September and he spends his time doing everything he can to annoy his mother and make her out to be the one who couldn't cope. He knows all about custody battles and how one parent can use what happens to the child under the other parent's care against them when in court. His behaviour just gets puts down to his way of coping, something that is very understandable considering what his parents are going through, and instead of it going against his mother, he just gets referred to the school counsellor to help him cope with the situation.

It's only when the court sessions actually begin that he begins to realise that nothing he does will stop his mother from keeping him from his father, no matter how much he wants to live with him. It was this realisation that makes him pack his school bag with clothes and money that he takes from his mother's purse, and instead of coming home from school like he normally does, he takes a bus in the opposite direction that leads out of town. He may be twelve but he knows enough from programmes that he's seen on the tv that if he turns up at his father's house, his mother could use that against him in the court sessions and he doesn't want that to happen; all he wants is to live with his father. Why is everyone so adamant that he stays with his mother?

He gets out of town and instead of heading back like he thought he might do, he goes to the train station and looks for the next train that would take him far away. While he looks, he thinks to himself about how it was his mother who was the one who made him run away, no one else other than her. Her and the stupid separation that she started with all the stupid arguing she and his father did. He could have understood the separation and the divorce, but the fact that she is trying to keep him away from his father as much as she could didn't sit well with him, and although the courts would have probably given him contact time, he knew that it could only amount to contact during the weekends and holidays, or even worse only contact during the holidays. This way, if he manages to run away and survive until he's sixteen somewhere, he doesn't have to go back to his mother's house ever because then he's free to make his own decisions about where he lives. This is his plan that he believes will work as he sits on the platform at the train station.

A lost little boy attracts too much unwanted attention.