Break Away

chapter 18

Tick tock. I felt like shooting the old-fashioned clock on my mom's wall. Tick tock, tick tock. It was making me go insane, not literally of course, but still. I had already gone insane once, no need for that to happen again. Time went by slower and slower as I sat in the living room of my mom's house. Ryan had just left to go explain everything to his dad. I would periodically talk to my mom throughout the day; but she was constantly running around leaving me to be by myself. Which of course I didn't mind at all, I had been mostly alone before all of this had happened; it wasn't unusual for me to be alone. I got up out of the chair I was in and decided to look around the house; I walked outside to see if my mom was out there and found her watering a garden she had in the back yard.

I walked over towards her and she then stopped watering her garden, "What do you need honey?"

"Oh I was just wondering if you kept any old pictures, you know of the whole family."

"Of course I do! They are in my bedroom in the closet, take them all if you would like," She smiled a warm smile and I turned around and heard her call after me, "but be careful! It's really dirty!"

I smiled and nodded; walking back to the house. I walked inside and turned towards the hallway; I found her bedroom and placed my hand on the doorknob. I hesitated before I opened it. I wasn't sure what would be in her room or what her room was like. I twisted the doorknob open and walked in. I was suddenly surrounded by the pleasant sight of ocean blue walls and white framing. All of the furniture was white all except for a little dresser she had sitting next to her bed, it was black, and it looked a little bit out of place. But hey, who was I to judge. I opened the closet and looked around for a few seconds. Boxes were piled up on top of each other and clothes were scattered about in random places. I giggled at the sight of it; from being with my mom for a while I thought she was an organized person. Apparently she wasn't.

I found a box of photos on top of a pile of clothes and grabbed it. I sat on her bed and grabbed a handful of photos; looking at each of the faces, trying to figure out who they were. I saw a couple of pictures of my dad and my mom, and I smiled at my dad. I wish he was here with me, I wish he knew I had never committed suicide that one day. It must have hurt them so much, I thought to myself. I flipped through the photos one by one, hoping the faded memories that I had lost would come back. But they didn't, they were still foggy in my head. I held the last photo in my hand, studying it. Alex was smiling and it looked like I was laughing. I had red roses in my hands. Then I remembered, it was after our first fight, when he came over and brought flowers and he told me a really cheesy joke and it made me laugh. My mom took a picture because she thought it was cute that he had brought flowers. She had no idea that he hit me.

I thought everything over again, if I would have told my parents Alex would have been gone just like that. At the time I didn't think that he would ever hurt me, and when he finally did I just told myself that he was just upset and it was okay since he apologized. But in reality it wasn't okay, I didn't see that until it was too late. All the signs of it I can see now, but I couldn't see then. The jealousy, possessiveness, the way he made me feel like everything he did was my fault, how he threatened to commit suicide if I ever left him, the way he apologized after every time he hit me.

I remembered one time he had hit me, the time when I realized that it was wrong about everything I had ever thought before. It was like I got slapped with reality. Everything suddenly made sense to me when it was too late. I hesitatingly put the photo into the box and then quickly changed my mind; I slipped it into my pocket just as I heard someone walk into the room.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" I heard my mom say and I pushed the picture deeper down into my pocket.

"Yes, I just wanted to see all the old photos, nothing specific." I said smiling at her.

She looked quickly at my hand that was on my pocket and I slowly moved it. Then she grabbed the box back and looked through it; for a while it was just her looking at photos and then she would laugh at the old memories. She explained a few of them to me, but I was too intrigued by the photo currently in my pocket. It brought back a lot of old memories, bad memories. But one thing I had learned in the past year is that you can't escape your past, so you just need to be able to live with it.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" My mom shook my shoulder a little bit.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I said, kind of dazed, for a reason I didn't know.

"Are you sure? Do you need a doctor?"

"No, no I'm fi-" 

If this gets enough attention I will start the sequel :) I have a couple chapters for the beginning of the sequel, but I would love to keep writing for it. This is the last part of this book, I am currently in the process of editing the sequel and will update soon :) Thank you guys so much for the support.