“Who are you?”

That’s a question I am commonly asked. It’s not that I’m invisible, I’m just new. I’m new to everywhere. Lately, I haven’t been staying in one place. I don’t have a home, and I don’t need one. I just need to see the world in different colors, from different places. I said didn’t have a home, but I don’t mean that in a way that means I’m homeless and I live on the streets. I chose to live this way, I don’t want to be held down by one town, in one little part of the world.
I was seventeen when I went out on my own. I left home in the middle of the night, with nothing but a bag of clothes and money I had been saving up since I was fifteen years old. I planned it all in the course of two years. I was gonna make my dreams come true. I left a note for my parents, telling them not to worry. Telling them that I’d call soon when I got settled down. The truth is, I never planned on settling down, and I never planned on calling them. They were part of my old life, the life I just wanted to escape. It’s not that I don’t love my mother and father, but they’re not right. My mom was a notorious cheater with a strong love for pills and anything she can use to forget the real world. My father was a drunk, a stoner, and had the tendency to get abusive if he didn’t get what he wanted, when he wanted it. Me being the only child, I got put between them and their violent arguments.
I was five the first time I saw my father hit my mom. I never understood the names he called her, I just knew that she was my mom, and my father was hurting her. I saw his fist hit my mom’s face, and I screamed. I was so scared. I heard the crack of her nose as blood started pouring out onto the carpet. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran and hid under my bed. I don’t know how long I was under there before my mom walked in to find me. My mom put me on her lap and told me that everything was okay. That Dad was just mad and she’s sorry I had to see that. Then she tucked me into bed, kissed my forehead, and left. I hoped that was the last time I would ever see that, but it wasn’t.
As time went on, I noticed that the physical fights weren’t nearly as common as the emotional abuse. Insulting each other became part of their everyday speech. When I was thirteen, they stopped being around as much. Mom was out with a new “boyfriend”, Dad was at the bar. The days they were home at the same time usually ended in a fight and then I’d hear the doors slam and they’d be gone for days. I learned to care for myself by that time. I could cook the basics, enough to keep me fed. My aunt brought groceries to the house every two weeks, so I was never going hungry. I always managed to get myself up in the mornings to get to school, so no one questioned my homelife. I didn’t have many friends, I never wanted to bring anyone over to my house, in case my parents decided to finally come home.
Now I’m on some random road, I honestly have no idea where I’m going at this point. I’m just driving. I know I’ll hit a town eventually,and when I do I can settle down for a few months. But in the end, I’m always going be on this road. I was alone all my life, but now I’m finally embracing it. I used to look at it like a bad thing, like being alone was terrible. Now I realize that being alone wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was sitting and waiting for something that’ll never happen. The hard part was waiting for my parents to come home and hug me. I spent all that time waiting for them to come back to me and now it’s their turn. It’s time for them to hope I come home, and just like they did to me, I won’t.