Mental Health can't section him or send somebody around for an assesment unless he's been violent. Inferred violence doesn't count. They agreed that he's on the edge of flipping. The day he flips could be my last. Nobody sees the severity, nobody realises that waiting is the hardest part and nobody listens. Nobody pauses to think that I don't eat three meals a day. Nobody realises that i'm living under constant anxiety. Everyone tells me to be strong and carry on. How fucking long do I have to carry on for before somebody does something?
Every time one of us picks up a finger to try and better this situation we face more dead ends. You can't feed three people on £100 a month, plus menial tax credits. Job Seekers Allowance has run out. My mother can't claim income support cause my dad earns too much. They don't understand that we don't see a penny of it. We can't prove that, so therefore we get nothing. She wen't for an interview a few months ago and got a job, but she can't start it until the person currently holding the position hands in her notice. If she knew what getting this job was resting on for us, she might hurry the fuck up and hand it in. And even then, she'll have to work a month to get any money. And that still doesn't get Mr im-crazy-and-you-cant-do-nothing-about-it-until-i-kill-you out of our house.
How about leaving? What a nice idea, unfortunately we'd already thought of that one too, but you can't leave unless you have somewhere to go, which we haven't. She's got no living relatives and this is her family home. Sure, there are refuges and bed and breakfast's for help cases, but you can't shack up in one of those either unless you're under threat. And inferred violence doesn't count.
I have GCSE exams this week, next week. I don't even know when they are. That's how much I care now. Revise? How am I supposed to revise if I can't think? How am I supposed to think if I've had no sleep and nothing to eat? How do I sleep to the sound of keys jangling and the ripping of selotape 20 times a night and knowing there is a man hauled up in a room across the hall with a hammer under his pillow? And where the hell am I supposed to get food with no god damn money?
Now tell me to concentrate on my exams.
In an attmept to be a normal father he'll bring me in a gift, a CD, a DVD, I don't even know what it is, I'll put it on the shelf and won't look at it again. I won't question why he's bought me a piece of menial plastic when i'm starving. I won't remind him that yesterday he told me he had no money. I won't hit him over the head with it or rip into him or tell him I hate him, although i'm not sure why. He might as well be blind because like everyone else, he doesn't see it, you can tell him a thousand times but he won't hear it, and no matter how hard you try to get through to him he doesn't and will never understand what his mere presence is doing to the inside of my head.