Childhood is supposed to be blissful. Kids are supposed to be innocent. Children are supposed to be learning how to face the world, not fighting it head on. I look left and right and see kids with as much pain and fear in their eyes as soldiers coming home from war with half of their limbs blown off. These children have been fighting since day one; some of them thrown to the curb before their eyes even open. They're supposed to have a family they can go home to, but instead they're getting shoved into homes with strangers or family members trying to pick up the slack because mommy and daddy are falling apart and their broken pieces are laying all over the house waiting to cut you open and drain your insides. There are kids who know more about drug abuse than the average adult because they've grown up watching their family stick needles in their arms. There are little girls and boys who flinch at any sudden movement or sound because the only thing they can picture is fists flying at them and pinning them to the ground. There are children who look at trauma and pain as if it's just another day because they've been dealing with drama since the day they left their momma or maybe their momma left them. There are kids you can't touch without them weeping because they've had hands on them creeping to places they scream you can not go but some people just don't understand the word no. There are adolescents that don't flinch at gunfire because they heard the same sound in the bedroom next to theirs before their sibling’s funeral. There are babies with bruises and kids with cuts just because mommy and daddy don't seem to love them enough. Childhood is supposed to be blissful, but instead there's kids taking fistfuls of pills to wash away the pain that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Kids are supposed to be innocent, but instead their lives don't make sense and they grow up to be numb like fog covers their brains all because their upbringing was outright insane.

s.s