two days in november

I still remember my life as a fourteen-year-old. I remember those long, autumn days. Though to the rest of the world, the crisp, frigid days were fast paced, cold rapidly approaching; to me they dragged on forever. I remember my family-living with them. I remember the yelling, fighting, shrieks. My thoughts. I can remember, I’d curl up in my closet and close the door, hoping no one would find me. The yelling from downstairs carried to my room-walls didn’t stop it. I was the reason they were screaming. Alone in the dark, I’d feel my throat begin to tighten and my eyes burn. Don’t cry, don’t cry, I told myself-they’ll hear you, come into the room, find you. I squeezed my lips together until the wave of tears seemed to pass. 1

I can remember hearing my twelve year old brother in the next room, sobbing. I remember the numb feeling that came from being too afraid to help him. It was so loud, I stopped everything and covered my ears. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. I have to get out of here, now. Not taking the time to get a jacket, I opened my bedroom window and crawled through. I was such a coward, leaving my room, too afraid to help my mom who was left alone with him, too scared to comfort my brother, leaving him to cry in fear and solitude, as I escaped.2

Through my window and onto the roof I crawled. A blast of icy air hit me as if warning me to stay inside. I wouldn’t go back in, not today. I quietly tiptoed to the edge of our first story roof. There was a fence separating our house from the one beside us, it came up close to the roof’s edge. I skillfully eased myself from the edge onto the fence’s top, I’d done it many times before. Once I was balanced on the fence, I let myself drop, twisting my ankle and bruising my arm, but nothing was badly hurt. I didn’t waste time cradling my throbbing ankle, and I began hobbling swiftly, but casually away. I held my arms tightly against my chest, partly to keep warm, partly to keep from crying. The frigid November wind blew against my hands and face, even penetrating the oversized flannel shirt I wore. I walked on, not looking back until I came to the wall of trees at the edge of the neighborhood. I found the well-worn path, purposefully covered with branches. Looked around and ducked underneath-into the woods. 3

Though the trees were silent, the sounds from home still echoed in my mind, bringing to surface the hot tears that I had stored up for so long. I thought of my family. Trapped in the apartment prison with him. [He] had been the lucky one, he moved away years ago. Robert and I had not been so fortunate. Robert had ways out, he had friends, though he rarely went to their houses. His way of coping was to lock himself in his room, or the garage where he’d bang on his drums for hours.4

I was an outcast when it came to school. I had a small circle of friends, but was far from popular. I was different than the other kids, they called me loser, punk, hippie, freak, weird; all of which I embraced as my identity. At school I had a world of my own. I was different from the popular kids, my thoughts were many and deep, I was always thinking, always dreaming. I’d stay up late into the night, just to be able to control my dreams. I’d dreamt about life, happiness, people who loved me. The fantasy life that every other girl seemed to possess. It was the life I envied others for. The reason I avoided all the 'typical' kids at school-there was one part of their life that I coveted. Not their popularity-I was much to insecure to ever desire the spotlight. It wasn’t their friends-I had friends of my own. I didn’t envy their perfectly strait, blonde hair-I almost liked my dark curls. No, it wasn’t even their families-I’d known no different, as far as that went, and wouldn't know how to react to anything else. The one thing of theirs that I coveted was their confidence. Why were they able to walk into a room, trip over a desk and still hold their head up? How could they answer wrongly to a question and not feel ashamed to be alive?5

I was shy and had a quiet voice that sounded awkward when I tried to raise it. I was independent, a natural rebel who did things for the sole purpose of being different. When I walked I looked down at my feet, I never answered the teacher’s questions and I spent all my free time writing in a journal. But at the same time, I was strong-willed, bold and outspoken. I had strong convictions that I’d passionately defend, forgetting my quiet nature. No one really knew what to think about me. My lack of confidence was contributed to being shy-no one knew. Of coarse, I would never have told anyone. Not even my close friends knew about my life beyond school and church. All those lunches when I didn’t eat, my friends didn’t know about the $41 of unused lunch money I had saved. They didn’t understand why I was so determined to avoid alcohol, or why I feared going home when I’d messed up. When I had bruises on my face and arms, they laughed with me at the funny lie I’d told about how I got them. No one knew about my sneaking out. No one had ever seen my secret place. That was where I went, when I became too afraid, or too close to tears, I’d crawl out my window and run to my place in the woods. Sometimes I’d cry there, sometimes I’d think, but usually I prayed.6

The days had been rapidly growing shorter. Windy and bitter cold, stripping the trees of their remaining life, beauty. On those days it was harder to escape. I wrote more often-wrote about me being like those trees. Blown by the harsh, cold wind till nothing but raw, ugly emotions were left. I had felt the joy of life draining from me. My war ravaged inside had begun to show in my features. My skin grew pale, eyes-blank, red rimmed, and sunken. My face was thin and white and my hands shook almost constantly. It was from the crying. I was so weak after I cried. I kept reminding myself of the reasons I had to be joyful. But for some reason that always brought more bitter tears.7

It had gotten dark, I needed to get back.-to sneak in before anyone noticed my absence. It was unlikely-they’d never missed me before, but I couldn’t risk it-they couldn’t know that I had an escape. I quickly slinked through the trees, down the street and up the sidewalk to my side yard. Guided by the lights that shown through the neighborhood homes. And there had stood my own house. Not a home, a house. The white, two story cape cod. Lights on in the upstairs made the place look cozy and inviting the any passerby. But to those who had been trapped on the inside, it was an icy stone prison, with walls of razors and one horrible jail guard with an iron-spiked fist. I shivered a little, the cold air seemed to finally settle on me, and I creeped to the side of the fence. I stepped on a garbage can first, then the supporting beam and hoisted myself back onto the roof, where I slid my fingers through the tiny window opening, pulled it up and rolled through, onto my bed. My door was still locked-no one had known. There was a silence over the house. Meaning the former conflict had been temporarily resolved, at least for now, and no one dared to speak, lest they be the one to start the next. 8

In my own thoughts I’d often compared life in my house to walking through a field of landmines. Being afraid to step, because you didn’t know where the deadly explosives were, but knowing that if you didn’t move, you were an easy target for anyone who wanted to shoot. My solution had been to avoid the field all together. To hide-it didn’t matter where, as long as no one found me.9

The next day had been rough. Mom was quiet as she drove us to school. Though I’d tried to forget, the scenes, noises from the day before had haunted me all night, invading my dreams, making it impossible to sleep. It gave me a horrible fear, my whole body shook. That morning I was numb. Upon seeing my friends, my face brightened but my eyes remained hollow. I smiled, joked, laughed, was the life of our small party, but I wasn’t even sure what I was saying. Babbling random words like a court jester, meaningless thoughts to pre-occupy my friends and myself. “you’ll never guess what happened this morning…” I began, and started telling a funny story I’d made up about my life. They all laughed, I did too-almost as if it was real. My other friends joined in, telling their own stories-stories that were probably true. We laughed at those. We got so goofy together-laughing, smiling at our careless talk. 10

But my eyes weren’t laughing. They were empty. A circle of every shade of blue, splashed in a pattern that made others stare. It was one thing that people complimented me for. But if they had seen my eyes today, the splashes of indigo and cerulean would’ve stood unmoving. Like a frozen river, with ripples in place from the movement of days before. Though they stood blankly, a veil covering my heart, underneath were full of thoughts, deep and painful. The dull numbing pain of a severed limb, visible underneath my rehearsed smile. It was a pain much like a sleeping volcano that rose up without warning, but with all the ferocious intensity of something too terrible to bare. But the pain wouldn’t come today. Just unfeeling thoughts-emotionless, callused memories of words. Words that had once brought tears, but today were accepted as truth.