Today's prompt: When was your childhood over? Do you agree with the concept of adolescence, or did you go from being a child to being an adult?

This is one of the most simple questions to answer for me. Frankly, I didn't have a childhood. As the eldest of four, having an alcoholic father and enabling mother, I was the one who had to literally "take care of the family" from my earliest childhood memories. In oh-so-many ways this shaped who I am today, influenced my lifestyle, limited many choices I would have had, and to this very day, emotional scars remain from that time.