Huddling deep in a closet, between moth eaten dresses, I hide from my captors with an ear pressed up against the wall like a criminal breaking into a bank vault, but instead of listening for the clicks to indicate a correct code, I’m listening for the of sound of footsteps. I would like to stretch my legs, but any movement could cause a noise that might alert the guards to my position.
The closet is unnerving; I keep terrorizing myself with images of monsters sneaking up behind me, just to shrink back into the shadows as I turn around. I would like to breathe deeply, to inhale the exotic scent of perfume and dust covering forgotten disguises, but that too could make a sound to alert the guards. My shoulders and muscles are so tight and tense that any foreign motion what so ever, holds the power to plunge me into cardiac arrest. I’m painfully aware of my own existence.
I would like to leave, but I have to teach them that when they wish to punish me, they will have to come and find me first. Through all this I cannot deny the need inside me, the need for my mother to place her arms around me and tell me that the monsters are only in my mind, a creation of my vivid imagination. But, now I suppose she might be much more willing to place her hands around my neck, so I focus all my strength on escaping this prison camp.
I am invincible. I lay in the night street listening for the sound of a car, waiting to hear the rumble of tires on the dirt road, turning up stones and dust. The driver is blaring music, Neil Young perhaps, singing along and reliving memories. My heart is beating in my chest, beating so hard as if threatening to explode; a time bomb with no one around to disarm it. I cannot stay here too long. I imagine what would happen if that car came flying down the road. I do not have time to react and hopefully it will be over quick. I wouldn’t mind dying as Neil Young songs blare from a few feet away.
It’s a cold summer night, one that smells like open earth and new life. My nostrils are still burning and my eyes are teary from the campfire, but now I’m looking at the stars. I do not care that I have sand in my hair or that my sweater is dirty. I imagine my family sitting around a campfire, talking over each other and laughing, they are so warm wrapped in their sleeping bags that they have to move back from the fire. I’m freezing in the dampness and I’m wrong, because they are quietly looking at the stars too, each one off in there own perfect world. I’m free, I’m alive, I’m defiant, I’m naive and I’m unaware of the danger or my own stupidity. I turn my head in the dust and smile at the boy beside me. I am in love and time is ticking away.
I awake with a broken body. The last time that I was conscious I was laughing. Pushing myself up on my forearms, I give up trying to find sleep and in one moment, one I would regret, I open my eyes. The sun should have stung my eyes, eyes that should have been bloodshot. It was no nightmare. After several minutes of realizing this, I cannot get rid of the hollow feeling in my body. There was no mistaking the needle marks in my arm and hand. They had told me that I would be fine. Did they lie to me? No. Not really. I’m alive. I can hear the blood throbbing in my head, it blocks out all thought. I raise my bruised chest, bite down in a futile attempt to stop the pain and wait for my memory to return.
I must have fallen asleep again, only to wake up in the same condition with a sore neck. I start to see into my clouded memory of the night before but cannot comprehend the immensity of the gap where there is nothing. Nothing. Blank. Empty. I remember up to the point of the drinking, but past that… I do not want to remember that part. I knew that I had lost all control and at the time I was not thinking about the consequences.
I swallow some saliva and I am not entirely surprised when the taste of stale vodka and vomit greet my already churning stomach. I groan obscenities through dry, chapped lips, which I direct at my stupidity. I want my mother but do not want to face her. I knew there would be pain on the face of my loved ones. That fact hurts more than the bruises that cover my body.
It’s New Years Eve and I’m sitting with my father. We both escape the laughter and the happiness of the party to hide out in the dark living room. There is silence between us because we are two of the same. We are sick of making idle conversation, sick of faking smiles for people we meet, because introductions will be forgotten and faces will fade with time. It’s times like these where I get to see my real father. The one that I have never been told about, the one that I can only see on select occasions when he lets his guard down and he is so raw that I am speechless and I can only look on with wonder, afraid that any sound could destroy his tender core and he will forever be his steel shell. He turns on the television, surfs around and finds Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” concert.
The party noise disappears and I turn to my father. He’s gone and in place of where he was a moment ago is the portrait of a boy. He’s invincible, he’s free, he’s alive, he’s defiant and he’s naive. I sit through the whole thing, but I feel like a criminal who has stolen a glance at someone’s soul. Then it’s all over. My father is back and I’m heartbroken. He’s beaten down, he’s been captured, he’s obedient and he’s rational. Deep down I know that I am doomed to turn out the same way because we are two of the same.
Today I find myself sitting alone. I could go over to some people and strike up a conversation or make some new friends, but someone I’m oddly familiar with is holding me back. They are holding me back from the person that I want to become. What have I done to make this person that I am? What have they done to influence me? I’m sinking into my comfortable skeleton, reaching out for help, but too stubborn or lazy to speak up. Until I can go over to them, I will sink. But, when I do go over, I just might get knocked down. I need that force to break me. I need to be broken so I’ll stop sinking.
Back in the closet, I’m thinking: This is a sure way to drive them crazy. As I finish this train of thought with a know-it-all smirk, a dress falls on my head. The shock sends me screaming and flailing into the hall to crash right into the knees of one of the guards.
I cannot remember what their wrath was, but I do remember thinking, I promise that I will never grow up to be an angry, boring adult; an adult who works all day and becomes a shell of their former self. This was my last thought before the rest of my life began.
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