my heart in ruins

chapter one ~remembering~

I remember the day my whole life changed, with the dropping of one bomb. I was only 16, very young and very clueless to the goings on in the world around me. If it didn't involve the latest boy band singing sensation or the newest shade of lip gloss from Sephora then I probably knew nothing about it. I should have probably listened to the news my parents sat glued to every night, to the hushed whispers they began speaking in when me or my little brother entered the room. We'd catch clips of their hurried conversations here and there. How men were being recruited and women rounded up into some sort of safe camps. They knew something big was coming, but despite that fact there was nothing they could really do.

It finally happened in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, as we all slept peacefully in our warm beds for the last time. Screams began echoing down our once quiet little street, as doors began to get kicked in, tanks rolled down the street taking out frozen mailboxes and old Christmas decorations. My mother came running into my room in a full out panic, screaming at me to get clothes on. I jumped out of my bed, grabbing whatever was in reach from the day before and pulling it on, running out of my room after her. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs just in time to see my father being dragged away with my 6 year old brother by a group of uniformed soldiers. Everything seemed to slow down at that moment, seeing my mother running after them in her old pink bathrobe. The one my dad had given her for Christmas almost six years ago. Her hands being ripped away from his clothes as she tried desperately to hold onto them. In that one instant my family was gone, my mother collapsing into a sobbing heap in the snow on our un-shoveled walk way.

The next thing I knew, me and my hysterical mother were being loaded into a waiting armored truck. Similar to the one that had just carried off the other half of my family. I shivered on the cold metal bench, looking around at all the terrified faces of women and little girls I knew. Their faces tear stained and red from crying. Mothers holding their young daughters close as they sobbed and asked their mommies why, or what was happening. No one really how to answer them because none of us truly knew what was happening or what was to come.

                                                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It seemed like time stood still as we all sat huddled together, cold and hungry in a cramped bomb shelter. We had no idea where it even was that we were being kept. My mother sat staring off into space, she didn't move or speak. Her rations went untouched and hungry children would take them if they sat long enough. The smell of the room is what stands out strongest in my mind, like piss and shit from the stagnant buckets in different corners. It was that and the fact that all of the women around me were no older then forty something. All the elderly were left to fend for themselves, most likely thought of as more of a burden and extra mouths to feed then anything else. They wouldn't grow to contribute, to give life to a new generation, they were useless now.

It all happened so fast, the sounds were deafening. the walls shook, dirt fells from the ceilings, walls shook. It sounded just like you'd think the end of the world would sound, the most terrifying sound you could ever hear. Women clutched their daughters and screamed in horror as we thought the metal structure around us was going to just collapse and instantly kill us all. Well, it didnt... we survived, just to have everything taken from us all over again.