Some days I just want to walk away.

Days when the hurt gets too much, days when I can’t handle being blamed for one more thing.

I’ve already done this once, watched as my family broke down, watched as my brother and then my sister physically and emotionally hurt my mother to the point where she, quite literally, ran away.

My father blamed the breakdown of his marriage on me.

You see, he never wanted children and he told me, one drunken night, that it was my birth that signaled the end, for him.

I was the reason that my brother was a drug addict, apparently. He could never live up to the standards I had set and so fell in with the wrong people

and according to my sister,

I am the reason for her life being what it is.

I was too good and that made her drink and take drugs and put herself first over her children. I stole her children from her. I made it impossible for her to rehabilitate, to turn up for visitation, to keep with reintegration plans.

I am to blame

and now, it’s my fault again.

I am at fault for the pre teen boy’s life as it is. I am the uncaring, horrible relative that keeps him in a way he does not desire. Clearly I am preventing him from repeating the cycle.

He doesn’t see that I take these things on board, he doesn’t see that my thoughts are often consumed with what will become of him and his brother. He doesn’t see how much I love him.

He is angry;

with me, he says.

Some days it all gets too much.

Days when your children override, overtake and just don’t listen.

When they say and do things that cut you so deep, you think you may just lie down and bleed out on the floor of your living room.

Days when you feel as though you are looking through a window, into your life and you can see that the people you love, who you think depend on you, would actually do quite well without you.

Sometimes it just seems too hard.

Days when you want someone to stand up for you, protect you from the pain of the past and the present.

Days when you know it will never happen, no matter how many years you have asked for that very thing.

Days when you wonder why it is too much to ask for, why it is too hard to give the one thing that could make the feeling of safety real.

It’s days like that I feel as though I could melt into a crowd of people in a busy city street, get lost and never look back.

Some days, I just want to walk away.