Minutes after me

I wasn’t paying attention, I guess he’d been waiting for me to arrive.

It didn’t even twig until days later that he had arrived just minutes after me. I wonder how I can be so oblivious sometimes. I guess he had planned it out. He knew he shouldn’t have been there but he was desperate to be somewhere he could just be himself. A quiet place to think. He didn’t think about the consequences, did any of us when we were his age?

It seems like he had had a fight with his mother, stormed off, didn’t tell her where he was going. She didn’t seem to care, she locked the doors behind him so he couldn’t get back in he later said. All things I didn’t know. Had I known would I have changed how I responded? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

He just wants to be a kid, to do the things he enjoys. His parents keep him away from everyone, they control who he interacts with, he knows it’s not right but he doesn’t have the agency to fix it. He can’t support himself. The brainwashing kicks in, stops him before he goes too far, keeps him in fear and under their control.

Anything I do can only make it worse.