"Mama, come here. Approach, appear. Daddy, I'm alone. 'Cause this house don't feel like home" -Unsteady, X Ambassadors.
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Liyah's POV
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The narrow-minded--the ones who see life through a tunnel vision--in black and white--would come up with the foolish notion that a house and a home is all one in the same. That it is merely a place where you lay your head down at night. That it is just a means of shelter. Protection. A safe haven. Those people--as usual--are wrong. A house just a building made up of brick and beams. But even beams and bricks can fall down if there isn't a strong foundation. Most people are wrapped up in the idea of what a house looks like on the outside. How exquisite and expensive it looks. None of that means anything if the home isn't built strong from the inside. People think that elements from the outside are what can bring a house down, but you have to be real careful of who is on the inside. Lingering between the walls and across the floor. That outside element just may as well be a toxic element breathing from the inside, as well. Tainting the atmosphere with poison and hate. Parasites that live and breathe off of the innocent. Leeches that suck that the life out of anything and everything that comes in its path. That outside element very well may be the person who owns the house that you consider to be your "home".
You have to be really careful about what you leave inside your house.
Numbness spread from my head down to my toes as I stared at the yellow paint that was flacked on the outside walls. My mind was stuck. Frozen and all my thoughts had come to a halt. I couldn't breathe. My throat was sticky. My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. The only thing that moved was heart as it pumped a rapidly aching beat. As my stomach began to tie up in knots I thought about running away, but when I tried to attempt it, my feet remained frozen in their place.
I spent most of my life trying to forget about what this place looked like, smelled like, and felt like. It always became too much for me to handle when I did. So, I spent years forcing the memory away in the deepest part of my brain that I wouldn't dare to visit. And here I was standing right in front of a place I literally considered to be my own personal hell. I felt my heart begin to swell up and the nostalgic feeling of paralyzation rushed over me like water. It was strange. Everything I felt there when I was a kid was exactly the way I felt now. The fear walking through that brown wooden door. My defenses and walls being up constantly. That exhausting feeling of knowing I always had to watch my back. That feeling of being ignored, lost and broken. And all those feelings tangled and knotted up until one gut wretching emotion I hated the most.
Numbness.
This was the place where I lost my mind and sanity. This was the catalyst for everything. The place that was the most powerful trigger that would always leave me possessed and slipping away into an oblivion. This was house was how I ended up on the road I am so desperately trying to get off of.
