When we were a family...

I have now got to a point where I don't know what to do, if I try and help you it tends to backfire, so I may not have rang you every time I slept somewhere else, but from where I'm standing that isn't such a huge deal, I know I have grown up since I moved here, and yet being told I still need to, has put me back an inch or two hundred. I can only be expected to change so much, before I become something, someone, who's not what I am. There is a rift in our family, and my siblings and I are what have caused this.
The day after tomorrow will mark three years since my mum died. And the three years have changed me irrevocably.
I think people fail to realise how much of an effect its had on me, because I'm Lucy,
the brave one,
the laughing,
joking,
funny one.
 I work so damn hard to keep a shield up because I've been thrown around.

Most people don't know anything about my step-dad, because I choose not to speak about him. Once in my life, I was a very happy content girl, I had a family that were just right. Then my mum met Steve, (my step-dad) and I realised that we'd had something missing. He used to ask me to help him fix the Land Rovers, not my brother as you'd expect, but me. I used to go to work with him on my days off of school. This one time, we went to this place where there was a river, and on the other side of the river was a pub. We joked about people having to swim across to get a pint. Another time we stopped off in a lay-by for lunch, and we ate the biggest burger either of us had ever seen. We had lunches in Tesco's, lay-bys, packed lunches, and once a roast round his Auntie Christine's. Those were good days, days that I will never forget, days when I felt happy, wanted and needed. We'd fix the Land Rovers come rain, sun or even snow. I had little hands and wrists, so could all to often reach places no one else could. If ever we went on holiday, green-laning or out somewhere I'd always go in the Landy with Steve, Sam would go with mum. Christmas's were great, we used to walk across the viaduct, and sing Christmas songs as a family, while mum stayed at home and cooked the dinner. I used to make him Cheese and Marjoram scones to take to work because he loved em so much.Then Steve got a brain tumour. and had to have it cut out, it was just behind his ear, and he had a massive scar afterwards. I thought he was going to die. Someone that I had grown ever so close to, that I began to see as my dad. I thanked my lucky stars he hadn't. It was after this that things began to get worse, he disappeared twice for a few days without a trace. I hated the toll it took on mum, and for a while, she spoke of not letting him come back if he tried. but he did come back in the end. When mum died, I took over most of the domestic stuff, cooking etc, and to start off with things were fine and I thought we'll be fine, ever since my Grandad told my brother and I about mum having cancer, I had prepared myself mentally for this time. But things weren't fine. Steve met this other lady who he had gone to school with, her husband had died within a month of mum, it soon became clear that they meant more to each other than just friends. Steve soon got it into his head that I was constantly out to annoy him, and did nothing but try and wind him up after mum had died. Some people got Social Services involved, my brother moved to Kent, but I couldn't go with him, I was convinced I could sort it out. I didn't want to leave the remainder of my old family behind. but then once, coming back from a trip to France with my aunt who I now live with, we came home to an empty house (no big deal) and a letter addressed to me left on the table. This letter was the one thing that has devastated me more than anything else I think. In it my step-dad had written that we had no form of relationship, never had, that my mother had never let him interfere in arguments my sister and I had, (he chose not too because we weren't his real children) and that I had that weekend to move everything out of that house I wanted too, but not to take furniture as that was all his. Which it wasn't. I have never hated anybody more than how much I hated him then. Him and this lady friend got engaged within 8 months of talking to each other again, married soon afterwards. This I found out through Facebook, funny thing is they got engaged while I still lived in England. He got rid of the Land Rovers which mum wanted me and Sam to have, she didn't leave a will so there was nothing we could do.
We joke now that there is a queue to beat Steve up. I haven't seen him since then, he has tried adding me on Facebook which quite frankly I find pathetic.
The old days were good, when we were a family...

Home is so Sad by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music on the piano stool. That vase.