The Prologue

Diary:

22^nd of September 2016.

I bought a diary.

Well, technically I didn’t buy a diary I won one in a raffle. I’m not sure why I have decided to write in it now but I feel like I should.

I guess I should tell you who I am. My name is Lee Kennedy, I live in a little town in Cork, Ireland called Innishannon. I am 13 years old. I have no brothers or sisters. My parents’ names are Michael and Maeve. They are still together. I am in first year of my secondary school: it’s an all boys school. My primary school was mixed and I miss having the girls around. The boys can sometimes be really mean.

I am a shy guy. I don’t like talking to too many people. There are a lot of people in my class, almost 30. I find it difficult to be around 30 people all day every day.

I like video games and reading books. They allow me to escape the mundane ritual of my life. In them I find myself a hero in a war or on a spaceship or leading an army of superheroes. Anything but the loser I am in reality.

In real life I am a spotty blond kid. I don’t play sport and I’m not interested in girls and I don’t have any friends. Some of the older boys in my new school call me a ‘waste of space’. I agree with them. I don’t have a meaning in my life except to play video games.

I guess I should tell you about why I decided to write this diary in the first place. It’s my parents. My mam is nearly always upset these days. She literally never seems to be happy, and my dad is nearly always angry.

Dad lost his job recently. He had a well-paid job. He was a scientist for some big multi-national country. He went to college for, like, eight years to get the standard of education he needed for the job. It meant that we had a lot of money, which is now gone. Dad has a new job, he has had it for a year or so. The money is a lot less than it was and that has become obvious with the amount he drinks. Mam said that she didn’t notice it when we had a lot of money because there was always so much left over that we all had everything else we wanted. Now though, dad spends the same amount of money on alcohol and mam has to make other spending cuts to make ends meet. Mam is constantly sad because of how much she has to sacrifice but how little dad is doing of the same. She doesn’t know that I know but sometimes I have seen her crying in her room when I get in from school. She forgets the time and isn’t aware that I am on my way home.

It makes me really sad to see how sad she is. I wish I could do something to help her but why would my dad listen to a waste of space like me.

Like I said already, dad is always angry lately. He comes home and demands his dinner from mam but always in a way that hurts her feelings. Often, and by often I mean ‘more often than not’, he comes home really late. Sometimes he doesn’t get back until after I’m in bed; for a man who has to be to work before I’m even up for school that is really late. Mum and dad have always stayed up later than I have but still it is a bit silly when you always have a big day ahead of you the next morning to be out as long as he is.

When he comes home earlier than other nights, the ones on which I am still awake, he is still really late. Mam and I have already eaten our dinner and washed our dishes. Sometimes we have even had supper by the time he comes home. Dad comes in and he gives out to mum about how his dinner is not ready yet; even though it is on a plate in the oven. He then complains about the five minutes it takes to heat it up. He complains for the entire five minutes and calls mam all sorts of names; useless, pointless, stupid, fat, ugly, a bad cook, the list goes on.

Heaven forbid he should come home before six pm some day. Mam would only be making the dinner then and it can take up to an hour and a half between when she starts and when it’s on the table in front of us.

Weekends aren’t much different here than weekdays. Dad heads out, as if to work, but he’s actually off to the pub. He spends his day playing pool, darts and drinking beers. Mam normally has a go at him when he comes home. He always says the same thing:

“I work so hard for this family, the least I deserve is Saturday to myself; if you don’t like it you know where the door is.”

I wonder if mam ever thinks of leaving? She has no job though and because of this she would have no way of supporting herself financially. If she left she would be depending on her brother. He isn’t very nice, my uncle, normally he slags mam off for being a sell out. She was a feminist in her younger days. She always said that a woman’s place was not in the home but in the work place. Tim, her brother, always used to say she’d end up a mother and would end up staying at home babysitting the kid. Mam resented that about him, the fact that he was proven to be correct, and mam had me and became a ‘stay-at-home’ within two years of birth, made the sore spot all the more painful for her. Mam had some feminist friends in her younger days. They would be no support to her now either. She had turned her back on the cause; choosing a rich husband and a ‘little brat’ over women’s rights and freedoms the world over.

Anyway, it isn’t like dad is abusing mam. He is drinking a bit too much but when I asked him he told me he isn’t becoming an alcoholic and so not to worry. He is very stressed after all the long hours he does and the hard work he undertakes in order that I can eat some food. I’m not stupid, I know that we would be better if dad spent a little less money on alcohol but it is really hard for him. He has lost his really good job that he worked through college for years and years to get and now has less money, of course he is stressed and needs something ‘to take the edge off’. I am also not stupid to think that he doesn’t love mam and I. He does, he went and got a new job almost as soon as he lost the first one and he looks after us well. He loves us both a lot and would never abuse either of us.

It makes me sad that mam is so upset and I wish dad would be a little nicer to her sometimes, but she needs to just grin and bear it. Dad needs his own time and it’s all his money anyway so he can use it how he likes. We are just lucky he gives us any little bit of it to buy food and things.

Uncle Tim would never take mam in if she decided to leave, not unless dad was actually abusing her, which he isn’t.

I just wish dad could be a little happier in his new job and not so angry all the time. I also wish that mam could just get over herself and realise that, although we are in a new life stage for dad, that he still loves and cares for her very much.

All the stress in the house is stressing me out. I wish it would all come to an end and I could relax again. I have school to think about. I don’t need to be coming home from it and worrying about my mam sitting in the corner crying to herself because she has to buy food from a cheaper supermarket.

I hope neither of my parents find this diary. They wouldn’t understand how I feel and would just be angry with me. After all I am just a waste of space in their lives. They have no need for me and sometimes I worry that they are looking for any excuse to ask me to leave. This would be that excuse. I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own either. No way uncle Tim would take me in. He is a bachelor, likes his freedom too much. This ‘little brat’ would cramp his style too much.

I feel like I have written so much. I have filled more pages than I planned to when I started writing a little while ago.

No one cares enough about me to listen to anything I have to say. That means that you, diary, are the first person to hear all of this ranting and confusion and upset. I wish real people were as cool as you and would listen to me like you would. I’ll check back every now and again when something new happens (like if my parents read this and actually kick me out of the house). Don’t expect me to write every day though. I would never do that, I’m not a girl. Guys don’t keep diaries like girls do. If the boys in school knew that I even wrote this I would get such a slagging. They would probably beat me up and flush my head down the toilet and I would deserve for being such a loser and telling all my problems to a diary.

Seriously though, I am so grateful to you for listening, absorbing, all this information. I wish I had someone real could listen to all this but you will do for now. You can be the keeper of my secrets; like a knight in one of the books I was reading the other day.

Okay, I’m going to stop writing now because I think I have said enough and if I’m not careful even you will realise the waste of space that I am.

Lee Kennedy.