"Today, however can change things for better or worse. The outcome depends on you."
When a marriage fails the residue trickles down to everyone in the family. Sixteen-year-old Daya Nicole Johnston must fight to understand what is happening in her li...
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There were no other sounds than my light wheezing, the ring of the heater, and whispers from the other side of the door.
It stayed that way for a while.
Without my consent, my eyes fixated on his house. My breath hitched and dampness fell selectively down my face like a spotlight on my insecurities. My head bonked my window pane and my knees hit the side of my day bed, causing me to fall over it.
"If you could just open the door, we could talk about it," his voice was so demure. It almost didn't sound like him.
Eventually, I just stopped hearing from him. Maybe he stopped talking, ditched again, or I subconsciously tuned him out. It's not like it really mattered anyway.
My mind was taking a trek through the great unknown. My heart was experiencing the darkness of broken light. My body was taking her time to heal. Identifying which of these three journeys was the most difficult was no small task.
The severest part was that I couldn't pick one and leave the other two to figure themselves out. I required all three. Every part of me had to work together to figure it out.
It was like a switch flipped and I was no longer in my room, but somewhere deep inside my mind. Truly, I can't recall how long I dwelled there in the same uncomfortable position.
All I knew was that I saw evening orange turn into night blue and night blue turn into a deeper almost black kind of blue before I realized I was locked inside the glass mirror. Once this realization came, a sledgehammer fell from the ceiling.
The tool was cold in my hands, but I knew exactly what I had to do. I forced myself to stand and swung the handle with all the strength I had.
I broke the glass.
It shattered all around me. But before I could crawl my way through the frame and touch base with my reflection, I was confronted with shattered pieces that lay before my feet.
How could I move toward a new life while I was still trapped by the shards of an old one?
Then, sharp edges started raining down on me as I was reveling in the pain. Something emerged behind me and pulled me back miles away from the frame of the mirror.
I landed with a thud and screamed out in pain. I was impaled by the glass. I could see a pool of blood encasing me. The pain was becoming unbearable and the fight felt like one I couldn't win.
But then, I heard them.
"Be safe out there, Little Miss."
"I'm your dad, I mean you know harm."
"Of course."
"You don't know everything that will happen in your life. Just try to be a little more open to what comes your way!"
