I ran away today. I ran and ran, and I don't recall it at all, but I know I did.

I know, because I ended up in a place I haven't been to in a very long time. There's a cemetery just a little ways away from my house. It's not like normal cemeteries, though. This one is encased in woods, buried there are Indians and unknown soldiers. That's where I ended up.

I recall thinking that I was lucky to have been wearing warm clothes, let alone shoes when I left. Another memory of the previous minutes being the sound of a slamming door. I was so prepared to give my life away to the city street before me.

When the back of my head hit the tree, when my breathing had turned into panting and my asthma started acting up, I knew I had ran.
Cold air ran into my lungs, faster than I could keep track of all of the breaths. 1-2-3- and I'd lose track.

Standing, I knew I had to make a decision. I knew that once I left the woods, I'd either go left... or right.

To go right would mean that I would return- save my running for a different day.

To go left would mean that I wouldn't ever return to my mother's house, and look in the eyes of her demonic boyfriend. That drunk, that devil that had replaced someone I may have once called my 'second dad'.

I don't know that man any more. Maybe he was left in California, the place he left us to go this summer. Maybe he died, and we buried him long ago in the graveyards of our minds.

Its been a while since I saw the real him.

It doesn't matter now, though. The thing that I most hated happened, I'd lost someone close to me.

Walking down the driveway, and onto a littered sidewalk, I paused. I did this once, and only for a moment.

Looking to the left, I picked up a rock. Almost to the fork in my mental road of life, I made a decision; go right.

I'd save the rock as a reminder; I chose this. I could've gone left. I could have run and kept running.

I need to know that I made that choice for good reasons.

I walked back to my house with a slow and steady strength. It was time to leave behind the things that would drive me crazy. How silly of me.

When I walked into my house...



~The End