When I left home for the first time, I was 17 years old.
In the middle of the night, I opened my bedroom window, tossed out a backpack and my car keys, pushed my car to the end of the street so it wouldn’t wake up my step-father when I started it, and drove away.
Either he was going to kill me, or I was going to kill him. I didn’t intend to give him the satisfaction of either. My black eye and broken ribs would heal, and my step-father could fuck himself. He was certainly never going to fuck me again. I just wouldn’t think about my mother. Not yet.
In a few weeks I would be 18. Then I would be safe. That’s what I thought. That if I was an adult in the eyes of the law, my bastard of a step-father could never hurt me again.
It turned out I was wrong about that. I was wrong about everything. Almost everything. He never raped me again. As I climbed out the window that night, I was sure that the worst thing that would ever happen to me was in the past.
There are worse things than being raped and beaten by your parent. Much worse. No one should ever have to know that, should they?
As I drove away from that place that was never my home, I didn’t cry. I would save that for later.