BETTER LATE THAN NEVER 🫢
My whole life has somewhat always felt like a giant hardship, right from the start as well - what with my fathers heavy fist and my mothers alcoholism, I struggled with finances and supporting other people since before I was even able to legally earn my own wage. I got mistreated by several different people at different times in my life. I got dealt the card of having a severely sick child and I put myself in dangerous situations just to keep us afloat.
With good, came a shit load of bad. That was just the way my life ran. It was my normal.
River asked me once, what was my dream?
Truth is, I couldn't dream past my reality because I could never envision a way out. My mind was so thick with trauma that even in the rare happy moments, I had anxiety and doubts.
It took a long time and a lot of therapy to modify my way of thinking, twelve years to be exact and even still, those thoughts creep in from time to time.
I just didn't feel like I could get to this place, a point in my life where I felt this genuine happiness without any weights trying to pull me back down.
The fact that I could stand here and breathe in a single unburdened breath was the dream to me and you know what that air smelt like?
Cotton candy.
"Mrs Millie," Rivers voice snapped my attention away from the ghost train sculptures and I turned to face him. He held a stick out to me with a childlike smile on his face, "I got you a cotton candy stick."
It was a huge pink ball of fuzz and I pulled some off to eat it. "Wow! My hero, it's so big."
"That's what she said." He slung his arm over my shoulder and walked me into the array of fluorescent lights, colours spinning and blinking in the distance as the rides spun like a field of fun.
"Ugh!" He complained, making me look up at his face but his eyes weren't looking at me, they were glaring off into the distance, observing the couple trying to win a teddy bear at the ring toss stand.
"I don't like him."
I let the sugar treat melt on my tongue.
"He's a sweet boy, leave him alone."
"He kisses her."
"She kisses him."
"Well I don't like it." He turned to face me, all grumpy. "And I don't like how he drives her around in that death trap of a car. And I don't like how she gave him free tickets into my park. And I don't like how he calls me Mr Johnston as if he's trying to earn some hogwarts house points or something."
"You won't let him call you River." I laughed at his sweet overprotectiveness.
"Because River is not my name."
"You won't let him call you Theo either."
"Point is Millie, she's too young to have a boyfriend."
"She's sixteen."
"Exactly. Too young. I'll reconsider in about ten years but I'm not promising."
I shook my head at him as we caught up to Tyler and Wyatt. Tyler had lifted my other child to sit up on a trashcan and she was chowing down on a corn dog like a vicious carnivore.
"Are you enjoying that?" I asked, swiping away the dots of ketchup from around her face.
"Uh huh! Yep!" She kicked her legs against the metal bin creating a ruckus.
