Saving Emily

04

The night was cold. I tucked the other end of the towel between my body and itself to secure its wrap around me. I was about done with all the ceremonies before getting dressed for bed time. Toothbrush, hair dry, the works. There was just one more thing to do to guarantee a good night's sleep.

I took out a plastic yellow container from the cabinet of the vanity and poured myself a couple of pills of Celexa. Tried to swallow it all in with a swig of tap water but decided the opposite before the pills went down my throat and I spat them on the sink. I didn't want them. I never did even if I had been taking them since I was twelve.

I was suffering from sudden panic attacks and anxiety for years already. I even fought with deppression before.

My body and mind were all done with the medications. I could do this without them.

It all started when my parents divorced and my mom won full custody of me. I was only allowed to visit my dad during holidays, not even on weekends. I never told Dad about what I was going through in my mom's care because I didn't want what was still between them to fall apart more. At the back of my mind, still I hoped for them to fix their relationship more than anything. But that seemed too impossible as time went by. Mom fell into the dark, became an alcoholic and a drug addict. Got a new boyfriend who was even worse than her. The guy used to beat me up with anything he could get his hands on. And he tried to rape me. Yes, he did try. I just got better luck and managed to resist him. Boy was I never been scared like that in my entire life. I ran as fast as I could while he was groaning in pain. I kicked him on his family jewels. Not even fair enough but it was better revenge than getting raped by a smelly beer belly man.

I was seven when my parents decided to call it quits. Mom constantly blamed Dad's dedication to his work that he wasn't able to spend time with her anymore. As a paralegal, Dad usually spent most of his time at the law office where he worked, even on weekends, and frequently did overtimes. My mom, on the other hand, was a hairstylist, so she definitely had more time to spend for her family than my dad did. That was the thing that broke my parents' marriage—lack of time. They had fights more than usual and Mom got tired of it all so they decided to file for divorce. It took about a year to process everything.

When I ran away from my mother's house back in Cape May, New Jersey, I didn't know where else to go as I knew I wouldn't be able to go any further, with my vengeful stepdad on my tail. Cape May is the city at the southern tip of where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean so getting to Ebony where my dad lived would be almost impossible for a kid my age. I was only 11 at that time, so my first instinct was to just get a phone and call my grandma on my mother side and tell her what happened.

Grandma was devastated after hearing everything that happened to her little granddaughter so she and Grandpa immediately booked me a ticket going to Dover. They had already phoned my dad and had him informed that I would be arriving and that was where he picked me up.

I was so scared that time. All I had in mind was to run as fast as my little feet would take me so I could get away from my devil of a stepdad. What's heartbreaking was, Mom knew and didn't care one bit. Why would she anyway? She was busy injecting herself with heroin that time in our living room. That was more important, of course.

Dad was beyond furious. He was so mad I thought he would board the ferry back to Cape May and kill the man with his own hands. His love for my mom almost immediately dissipated, he just couldn't believe her and what she had done to me. Mom never hurt me, but she abandoned me. Not literally, but still.

We never filed for restraining order and didn't press charges for the attempted sexual assault because I didn't want it to be something bigger than it had to be and my mother and her boyfriend didn't even bother going after me anymore after all. Mom had completely forgotten everything about me. I never received any text or call from her. She never looked for me. Maybe that fact was the sole thing that pushed me into depression before.