It began with a call that I received two days ago. It came as unexpected, the caller ID on my cellphone spelling out a name that I had left behind in the weary days of the past.
Her voice was cold, heavy with nights of insomnia and stress. I remembered the years of our childhood, when it was her laugh which kept me alive. And as I pressed the phone against my ear, it struck me again at how the years had changed the both of us.
“He’s gone, Jack.”
“What happened?” I didn’t know why I had asked, because I knew that it didn’t matter, I didn’t care. That man had destroyed my life, and I fought hand in hand to regain it.
“Just come back home for a day. His funeral’s on Thursday.” With that, Jill had hung up on me, leaving me in the numbness of my own mind.

We all began as dreamers. We began as children, chasing after the setting sun in the gleaming paints of the sky. And then as the years passed, we faced the brutal slap of reality, and with each step it chained us down until our chase came to a stop.
My father was my noose. Within each day, his reign came closer and closer to choking me. I always obeyed, always was the perfect, obedient son. Even now, I wonder how I had ever gotten the courage to leave. He replaced my childish thoughts with his own goals. Essentially, I became the person he never had the chance to be, a vacant shell that was controlled with strings from behind. My twin sister, Jill, and I had cowered away in fear, and it took all my courage to leave that hell that he created.
The train ride was four hours, from the city back to Lancaster, through the night. I got no sleep, that night, knowing that if I let myself fall asleep, that the nightmares would come raging back.

We had lived in a small town. A quaint, almost friendly place. And when I walked along those very same paths as I did when I was a child, it was like nothing had changed. The streets were cheery, little children playing on the sidewalks, their faces full of laughter and innocence. Yet even so, it was this place, this sheltered, innocent form of life that had killed me. I had stopped seeing the beauty in this life long ago.
Jill greeted me at the door, a faint, weak smile across her face as she saw me. I embraced her, wanting to take away the circles under her eyes and the gaunt, thin bones of her body. I embraced her more for the past, than for the event of the present. She released me, turning away before I could anything else. As twins, we had once been best friends. Best friends – until I abandoned her to the clutches of our father.
“I’ll unpack and everything; go and get some rest, Jill.” She nodded, almost glad to be given an excuse to leave.
Once she was gone, I began walking through the rooms, my dirty sneakers making hollow sounds against the wooden floors. Our house was plain, full of white, perfectly painted walls. There were minimal decorations, and an old, dusty smell that had accumulated over the years. Nothing in here shouted “HOME” to me – everything was distant and lost. Even as a child, Jill made up my home. Now it was the city, and my dreams. I had created my “home” for myself, and I found no regrets in that, even if had meant leaving her. I should have known, though, that the memories would come pouring back, drowning me in their screams, as I reached the kitchen.

We were seventeen. Stuck in the awkward age of adolescence, when we desperately tried to grow up while being chained down to the wishes of our father. We went to the same high school, an uptight, “prestigious” place, where the teachers were as strict and solemn faced as my father.
Late one afternoon, when the days of autumn winded down, and the trees lost the last of their leaves, I had come home to shouting. That day, Jill was stuck at school, practicing with the tennis team for the upcoming tournament. In this family, between my mother, Jill, and I, we had an unspoken agreement not to interfere. No matter how bad the shouting, the screaming. I opened the front door quietly, wincing as I could hear his words through the walls. They were in the kitchen, and I gathered that my mother had made another mistake again, maybe dropped a plate or overcooked the meat. But I was wrong.
I had planned to go upstairs to my room, listening to music through my earphones so I wouldn’t have to hear his shouts – or worse, her crying. But I stopped in my steps, almost guilty and full of shame when my father called out for me.
“Jack! Come here, son.”
Breathing in sharply, I set down my book bag, hearing the clunk and weight of my calculus textbook, sinking to the ground. I walked calmly – as calm as I could – into the kitchen, clenching and unclenching my fists. When I entered the kitchen, there were broken dishes, shattered across the floor. My mother was visibly shaking, her face white, and fingers bloodied. The desperate, hollow look in her eyes should have told me to run, but I stayed and stood my ground.
“This woman tells me you’re not going to college. Is that true?”
I saw the glint in his eyes, the challenge of authority that he wanted to crush down. And then I realized that the broken plates weren’t from my mom. No, they were from that damned bastard, throwing them to the ground, and my mom injuring herself by cleaning them. Why did he do this? Did he get off, on seeing how far he could push us? It occurred to me that after years in the military of ordering people, he had gotten so accustomed to it that he needed to continue it here.
“I’m not going. I’ve already talked it out with Mom.” I breathed in sharply, waiting for his response.
To be honest, I should have seen this coming. I should have seen what he did next.
My father’s face turned red, then purple with rage. He had already planned out our lives for us – and that was definitive and final. He kept silent, staring straight into my eyes, analyzing the defiance he saw in them.
And then he punched me, hard, square in the jaw. I fell back with surprise, stumbling and catching myself against the wall. He strode forward, in a calculative manner, and raised his hands to my neck, choking me. All thoughts from before had disappeared, and I weakly kicked at him, already losing myself. I struggled against him, clawing at his eyes, his face, at anything – but it didn’t matter.
He was so focused on me that he didn’t notice my mom. She may have been small, but she put all of her weight into pushing him down. My father stood there for a moment, more dumbfounded than hurt, more shocked at the fact that she would even dare to defy him. And without thinking, he knocked her to the ground with a blow to the head.
Her head hit the edge of the counter, and she crumpled to the ground, blood spilling out of a wound on her forehead. It was this instant where I saw my life go in two directions. A life of constantly being beating down, and a life of freedom.
And I chose freedom.

Angrily pushing my father aside, I gently bent down to pick up my mom, her peaceful face almost bringing tears to my eyes. I grabbed my book bag, and walked out the door, lightly placing my mom in the back seat of my father’s car.
The hospital was large, intimidating, but I rushed past the entrance, clutching my mother in my arms. The woman, the doctor – she took my mom, hushing away my desperate cries and tears, telling me that everything would be okay.

It was morning before they let me see her. My understanding of her injury was that she had a surgery, and she had made it with little trouble. Through the night, I had slipped in and out of sleep, but at this point I was as awake as I had ever been.
She was lying in the hospital bed, a faint smile on her face. I couldn’t stand it, this pain. And it struck me for the first time at how strong my mother was, at the willpower she had. I would never be as strong as her, not even after years of withstanding him.
“Mom. I’m leaving to go to the city. I know it’s early, but…”
“I understand, Jack.”
“But – what about you? You and–”
“Jack, please go. Take the money in my wallet.” She gestured towards the windowsill, and I nodded, holding back the urge to tear up. I took her money, and kissed her forehead one last time, before leaving the room.

We all began as dreamers. Dreamers, reaching our hands into the infinite sky. Right now, I was no dreamer, but I was walking on my own road. On my own path, towards freedom.
The tears I cried that day were not for my pain. They were not for myself, but for my mom and for Jill. I cried for goodbye, because I knew deep down that it would be a long time before I would see either of them again.
While I had nothing except a few bills in my pocket, my sky was infinite, and my journey was just beginning. My father had stripped away my dreams, one by one, but my heart had never left.

The funeral was grim. Few people came, and the decorations looked cheap and flimsy, flapping in the wind. My mother was frail, and she hobbled up to his casket, saying her last goodbyes. Jill had yet to talk to me again since I came home, and I ignored her when I walked up to join our mother.
His face was wrinkled, small and shriveled up like a prune. There was nothing left for me to say to him, no ounce of love or remorse that I still kept for this man. I had walked out of his life, and I had become a better person for it. Clearing my throat, I turned back, and began to walk away, wanting to get out of the stifling air.
“Jack! Jack, wait up,” Jill called from behind me, her face full of a distant familiarity. “Please… stay for a few more days. Let’s catch up – how have you been all these years?”
I gave her one last apologetic smile before I left. “I’ve been happy, Jill. Happy, and dreaming. I didn’t regret leaving the first time, and it’s no different now.”