act as a writer and take this and write it as a script for a movie. each part would be played by each individual. rewrite the script to make it interesting, grab the viewers attention, and professional. "There’s a weight to growing up too fast, one that settles into your bones, wrapping around you, making itself at home before you’re even old enough to understand what’s happening. For me, that weight arrived early, handed over as naturally as someone passing a set of keys to a house I hadn’t asked for. I was barely a teenager, just beginning to figure out the world, and already responsibility loomed, pressing down on my shoulders, asking things of me that I was far too young to give.

My mother, whom I loved fiercely, had her own battles. They were battles I didn’t fully understand at the time, but I could see the toll they were taking on her. Drinking became a way for her to disappear from her pain, a way to silence whatever haunted her. And as she slipped further away, her presence in our lives grew more ghostly, more erratic. That’s when I stepped into the void she left behind, the cracks widening each day.

I became the adult in our household, though my only training for the job was sheer necessity. Welfare checks and food stamps arrived each month, not as help, but as more weight to carry. When I took on the grocery shopping, I’d feel a strange mix of pride and dread. Pushing that cart down the aisles, trying to figure out how to make a little stretch to cover a lot, I felt the responsibility keenly. Each item I chose felt like a decision that would either bring us through another week or leave us hungrier than before. I was trying to take care of my little brother and sister, making sure we had what we needed, even though I barely knew what I needed myself.

But the food wasn’t the only thing. Bills had to be paid, too. I’d look at the welfare money, trying to make sense of it all, knowing that the lights and water would eventually shut off if I didn’t figure something out. Asking for help was out of the question—I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing the cracks in our family, of anyone looking at my mother and judging her for the things she couldn’t control. So, I kept going. I did what I could, often feeling like I was swimming against a tide that threatened to pull us all under.

But other nights, the lights went out and we were alone. And I would sit there with my baby brother and sister and try to make it feel like an adventure so they wouldn’t be scared. But you could feel the darkness closing in on yourself, a reminder of how far we were from anything good or right. Each glow of the candle appeared to say I was insufficient, that it would not matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep everything functioning without help.

With hindsight, I recognize that those years gave me things that I would not have known then. My responsibility was a lesson not learnt from a classroom or teacher, but rather out of an unyielding necessity to survive. I was a child thrust into the position of an adult so that I could help us all stay above water; step into a role no one prepared me for. Those years broke my heart over and over again — but what it cost me is not the same as any other price; free will is costly, but it made a heart so full that its resilience has weathered more storms than I can count.

However as the lights would cut off and we would find ourselves in darkness, those moments never left my mind. We would sleep there and I would sit there in the darkness trying to joke around about it so they wouldn’t be scared. Yet that darkness was thick; it reminded us of the things crumbling around our shoulders. Each candle could have been just like a whisper reminding me I was not enough, that no matter how much effort I put in to keep everything running by me, I could not do it alone."