I've come to realize that I can identify the exact point when things started to fall apart in my life. It all began when my father left my mother when I was only a child of 8.
I was having a normal fun-filled day, enjoying the smaller things in life. Childhood was great and by no means did I want it to end. I would have never guessed that my life would make a complete U-turn and run directly towards a bottomless cliff where I would scream forever in misery.
My dad came home from work and he went through his usual routine, eating his dinner and watching TV, occasionally rearranging some things in the house that bothered him. He came to play with me for a few minutes, laughing at my antics. He was one of the best friends I'd ever had.
My mother came home later with groceries, and that was when the U-turn came along. Out of nowhere he screamed. My mother ran over worried for her husband, but he grabbed her arms and kneed her in the gut, knocking her unconscious. He lost his mind.
I shrieked from my seat in fright, cowering from my lunatic father under the table. He heard me of course, and then he took me by my hair, dragged me out, and kicked me over and over until I was out cold.
The smell of something metallic woke me up two hours later. I saw my mom directly in front of me, her face was scratched up and bloody, her hands were tied behind her back on a chair. She couldn't speak because of the duct tape around her mouth.
It was like a horror movie come to life.
I was still on the floor, bloody and hurt, but I could move unlike her. I knew I had to do something for I was the only hope we had of surviving my crazy dad. So I looked around to see if he was there, which strangely he wasn't, and then called the police with the house phone. It was simply luck that he had passed out in the living room from some sort of drug he took after he beat us.
I noticed something several years later: my mother was losing her mind.
Living alone with her because I had no money, all the money I made she took from me to buy booze and cigarettes, and there were other things I didn't want to know of that she bought, was complicated. She talked to herself all the time, never whispering, it was always shouting. I caught her screaming at her reflection once. She rarely slept, in place of that she partied. Also, I had an idea that she was also doing drugs of some sort like my deceased father had done behind our backs.
I tried my hardest to take care of my mom but I couldn't do it anymore, and after some time I decided to leave. I didn't have any money so I secretly took hers from her bank account and booked the first flight out of Nevada, which was to Washington. I had always wanted to go there; I was fond of the rainy, monotonous state. I took nothing but clothes and food, since I was turning 18 in a few months I would find a job there to pay for my motel room and other necessities.
Hope was all I needed. Hope that they wouldn't find out I was a runaway.
