CHALLENGER'S RAP

• Yeah.
Funny how a kid learns the price of a bottle
before he learns the price of being a child.
• 
I was born with a storm in the walls of the house,
little boy, hearing bottles get poured on the couch,
every coin had a choice, was it food, was it drink?
Guess the answer when the cupboards had nothing but sinks.
• Me and my brother grew accustomed to hunger,
while the woman meant to love us loved another thing stronger,
and I couldn't comprehend it, I was under eleven,
wondering why home felt less like home and more like a sentence.
• Then Dad got custody. Eleven years old,
two kids, one car, couple bin bags of clothes.
There's freedom in leaving, but leaving ain't healing,
'cause the door might get shut but you carry the building.
• So I carried those rooms, every argument with me,
every drunken apology that started convincing me
that tomorrow meant change. Then tomorrow arrived
wearing yesterday's face with the same bloody lies.
• 
So don't tell me blood makes a family whole,
I've seen blood leave bruises you don't see on bones.
I've seen love get traded for a drink at the bar,
now I'm twenty-six still unpacking the dark.
• But I'm here.
Yeah, I'm here, that's the difference.
You gave me a childhood of chaos, I lived through it.
You kept choosing the bottle whenever we needed you.
Now silence between us is something I'm keeping too.
• 
Sixteen, boots laced, name stitched to my chest,
when you've already fought at home, what's a test?
Other lads missed mums, got parcels and letters,
I learnt early that distance could actually feel better.
• Funny, isn't it?
I found structure in orders and peace in routine,
'cause a shouted command was still clearer to me
than a promise at midnight from somebody wrecked
saying, "This is the last time", then doing it next.
• Sixteen to twenty-one, five years moving ahead,
but there's mileage that nobody measures in steps.
You can leave your old street, change clothes, change beds,
but you can't issue orders to the thoughts in your head.
• And I hated you.
Then hated that hatred as well.
Like you rented a room in my brain and I paid for the hell.
Every memory knocking, I stopped letting it enter.
Forgiveness ain't compulsory. Neither is surrender.
• 
Maybe one day you'll stop.
Maybe you won't.
Maybe you'll finally call.
Maybe I don't
pick up.
• Because boundaries aren't vengeance.
Silence isn't spite.
Sometimes shutting one door
is how you rescue your life.
• 
Twenty-six now, and I'm looking behind me,
at the kid I once was and the man standing by me.
Dad took two boys from a life going sideways,
and I took mine back in a hundred small ways.
• See, survival ain't pretty, no cinematic ending,
there's no swelling strings when you're privately mending.
It's catching yourself when your temper resembles
the house that you hated, then choosing to be gentle.
• That's strength.
Not pretending the damage was nothing.
It's knowing what broke you and still becoming
somebody those two scared kids would've trusted,
when love was a word but the evidence wasn't.
• And Mum, if you're listening, this isn't revenge.
I don't need you destroyed for me to make sense.
But I won't rewrite history to soften your part.
You chose alcohol while we were falling apart.
• I've got no conversation left begging you: choose me.
That boy grew up. Your bottle finally lost me.
Not because you put it down.
Not because you got clean.
Because I finally learnt:
• you don't have to change
for me to leave.
• 
Eleven years old when Dad opened that door.
Sixteen when I learnt I could become something more.
Twenty-one when the uniform stopped being mine.
Twenty-six now.
• And I'm still here.
• That's the rhyme
•