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Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.
~ Erol Ozan
HENLEY
AGE 15
Lips pinched together,I concentrate on the heavy thrum of my heart.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Thick enough I can feel it hit my chest bone, loud enough to drown out the sounds echoing from upstairs.
The walls shake with their disdain. Their screaming and their anger now etched into the very foundations of our home. A place that should be built on love, crafted with unrivaledhate.
My body shakes, preparing itself to crumble away. To break apart into the million and one pieces my mother and father are determined to pull me in.
Iwillmy body to do it. I beg it to disappear into nothing. Forever free from this world of scorn I’m forced to survive within.
It’s been this way forever. I don’t know how they ever tolerated one another long enough to conceive. Children are meant to be created through love, yet Derrick and Jacinta Wright bore me in hate.
I feel it every day.
My heart doesn’t beat with love and affection. It stutters through longing and despair.
I’m caught between the desire to know whatreallove feels like and the overwhelming need to encase my heart in an impenetrable box. Numbness seems far more preferable to heartache, which, from my lack of experience and internet searches on the topic, seems to be the sole ending to every love story; be it great or pitiful. I’ve never known love in any form. It’s as foreign to me as the world I’m so eager to lose myself in. Love as an emotion is as fictional to me as the stories I’ve read about it in. People die. People leave. And the ones who loved them are left crying over the remnants of a heart shattered beyond repair. In the end, maybe being devoid of love is the greatest gift a person can be given.
My parents fight over who loves me more and who knows what's best for me. I’m a commodity. A slice of property they each want to claim ownership over. There is no love or affection in their desire for my loyalty.
My mother’s voice rises, forming a screech that forces my hands over my ears. I’m shaking, my whole body quaking with tremors I can’t settle.
I just wish they’d stop.
No. Not that.
I wish they’dseparate.
Divorce is commonplace. But that’s a reality neither one is ready to give in to. That would mean they’d have to admit defeat.
Their screams grow louder, the fire in their argument hitting new lows. Unable to take any more, I jack my window upward, grateful they allowed me to claim the only first-floor bedroom in the house.
Feet dropping to the soft grass, I run. I welcome the wind as it whips through my long hair and crisscrosses it over my face like a mask. The wind whooshes through my ears the faster I run, drowning out everything but its song.
I run until my lungs hurt.
I run until my chest heaves.
I run until my legs feel like jelly and my feet feel like stone. Until my lungs struggle to take in air, and I can no longer hear even the faintest echoes of my parents' voices as they shout over one another to be heard.
Only then do I stop to breathe.
I move past the playground, past the other children playing and laughing while their parents watch on with tenderness and devotion.
No one pays me any mind as my legs carry me past them in haste.
