***Rose Duvall***
I wish that I could say that I grew up like your average child. That I was loved and nurtured into existence. If those words ever left my mouth, it might very well be the biggest lie ever told.
Maybe it had been different when I was a baby, maybe even when I was an infant, but as far back as my memory starts so does the abuse.
From the moment that I turned six years old, when things should have been simpler, I had been exposed to violence.
Originally, I wasn't the star of the sick show. At first I was an audience member, sitting on the sidelines as a gruesome scene played out between my mother and father.
I remember thinking even then how badly I wanted to help as my mother was being thrown across the room. I sat there helplessly, watching my mother being beaten into submission. But what was I supposed to do? I was only a child.
Maybe I should have walked away, maybe I should have walked to my room, acting oblivious to what was going on in the kitchen. Maybe then things would have been different.
Instead, as the naive little girl I was, I tried to intervene, to make it stop. So, like a fool I put myself between my parents as my mother lay on the ground.
"Stop Daddy. You're hurting her." I can still hear my small little voice saying to my father.
I knew then that I had made the gravest mistake. His dark eyes turned menacing, his face enraged. I shrank back, but it was too late. He had yanked me by my arm roughly, turning me to face my bleeding mother.
"You see that. That's what happens when you don't respect me. And because it seems like you've turned out just like your mother, that is exactly what'll be happening to you, you little bitch." He seethed, throwing me to the floor, a few feet away from my mother.
His boots echoed against the tiled floor, the sound that still haunts me in my nightmares. It took him three steps to reach my mother, bending down, before talking low, but loud enough so that I could hold onto every word.
"You can thank your daughter over there for what's coming to you." I will never forget the hatred in her eyes when she looked at me. It will forever be etched into my memory.
I still remember the screaming and crying from that night that came from both my mother and I. He had kicked her repeatedly, and only stopped when she stopped moving. I remember thinking that she was dead, I cried out for her, but was met with no response as she lay unconscious in a heep of her own vomit.
"Your turn, Rosie." My father said, turning to me.
"No." I repeated over and over again as he dragged me by the hair. I screamed and kicked, but to no avail. I could smell the alcohol on his breath as hoisted me up to my feet, causing a stinging pain on the back of my head.
My pleading was met with a hard slap to the face, sending me falling back onto the floor. I held my hand, looking up at him, crying, but it didn't matter. Like he had done with my mother he started kicking me, my ribs, my stomach, my legs, anything that his foot landed on.
I remember screaming and pleading and begging him to stop until my voice had gone hoarse, but it was no use. He didn't care.
Vividly, I remember laying there for hours, my blood splatter painted on the floor around me, my mother still unconscious a few feet away. I was too sore to move a mussel, too scared to make a noise.
That was the day I lost my childhood. That was the day I longed to forget.
The beatings only got worse after that. The older I got the more brutal and frequent they became, from both my mother and father.
It was a never ending cycle. My father would come home drunk as he usually did, an argument would spring out between my parents leading to an altercation. After my father passed out, if he wasn't busy finding a reason to bring me into the pain fest, then my mother would pay me a visit.
Ever since that day she had pinned the blame on me for why she was being treated the way that she was. "He was never like this until you were born." She would say. She always ended with the same line after every so-called punishment. "I wish I never had you."
That's why when my parents had gifted me with my sixteenth birthday present I wasn't the least bit surprised.
I recall falling asleep after my parents had taken turns using me as their human punching bag. The last thing that I remember after that was being thrown out of the back of a car onto the cold hard ground.
Looking around me, seeing the endless amount of trees in the darkness and the small dirt road ahead of me I was flooded with fear and confusion.
I watched as the reddish orange tail lights sped off out of view in the opposite direction. I didn't bother to chase after them. What would be the point?
Even if somehow, I had caught up with them. It wouldn't have mattered. They didn't want me. They never did.
Somehow, while trying to find help, any sign of civilization I had wandered off of the path of the narrow dirt road, going deeper through the forest in hopes to find a short cut.
Due to the darkness and the unfamiliar territory, I ended up becoming lost, and could no longer find my way back.
Even when the sun rose in the sky I was unable to find my way back to the road, seamlessly walking deeper into the thicket.
With each passing day I was wandering down the rabbit hole of nature's landscapes, only to put myself farther into isolation.
I'm not sure how far I wandered, taking shelter in any empty cave or on a high branch, repeating the pattern of walking through the woods aimlessly. I'm not sure how many berries and rainwater I had consumed before I finally gave up on trying to find my way out.
' Days, weeks, months, could have gone by, and it wouldn't have mattered. No one was looking for me.
The harsh reality sunk in when it came early fall, and the air started to turn cold. This was my life now. I was just going to have to accept it.
So, I took things day by day, teaching myself the ways of the land. Surviving off my minimal knowledge of the outdoors and my un-denying will power.
This came apparent when I had stumbled upon a shining object that had been long ago discarded in the bushes. Picking it up, I saw the rusted blade of a knife, my only weapon against the dangers of the woods. I took this as my calling card, my sign to keep pushing forward.
It was by luck that I stumbled upon the decaying carcass of a black bear. I remember panic flooding through me as I saw it laying down amongst the brush. At first I thought that it was alive and well, after all it didn't have any visible wounds.
After a while of waiting, afraid to move and provoke the bear I found the courage to throw a rock in its direction. When it still didn't move minutes after I gathered the courage to walk towards it, grabbing a long stick off of the ground. My hands were shaking as I extended the stick, even more so when I was brave enough to poke it. I nearly had a hard attack, but as I rounded the front of the creature, its eyes open, mouth agape, flies surrounding its large head I realized that it was clearly dead.
I recall letting out a relieved breath, going to walk away, but stopping in my tracks. I looked down at the rusty knife in my hand, and back to the unmoving bear. I didn't know what this animal had died from, so I knew that it wasn't safe to eat.
But my eyes shifted back and forth between the blade in my hand, the frost on the ground and the thick shining pelt of the bear.
Just then a cold wind blew by like a beacon, causing goosebumps to jump on my skin. When my parents had abandoned me the only thing that I had been wearing was a white nightgown, not nearly enough coverage for the cool autumn air.
I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I knew what needed to be done. So with great effort and difficulty I began cutting the animal's fur from its body, careful to not cause too much blood to spray on the ground.
When I had gotten to the river nearby, I laid the warm material in the stream, washing away all signs of blood, minimalizing any unneeded parts.
When the fur finally dried, I draped it over myself, sighing at the warmth that it provided, my only sense of security in this dark and lonesome place.
That night I had found a small area of undisturbed land, by some miracle creating a small fire. I looked past the flame, into the darkness that was lit up only by the full moon above.
For a while I had sat there in debate, only my thoughts to keep me company. "What was the point of all of this? Why should I keep trying? Why don't I give up?" I had no one back in the real world. I had nothing. "Why don't I just end it all now, and spare me any more suffering?" I found myself looking to the moon, my only sense of company, asking these very questions.
Of course, I was met without an answer, but for some reason the fire that burned inside of me refused to give up. I refused for this to be my story. There had to be something more than life than the hand that I had been given, and I was going to find it one day.
There were so many things that I had wanted to experience, so many places I wanted to go and see.
Even though I had nothing, I had something to live for.
Hope.