Ready set go

Ever since I could remember, we have always been either fighting or running away from our problems. My earliest memories were filled with days of angry voices booming through my bedroom door. After my parents' divorce, my mother remarried. It was the first time she truly loved a man. And he loved her too.

But he was a broken man. His love was twisted. His emotions were poisoned by the alcohol he drank and his mind was messed up by the long hours of gambling. I'm sure he wasn't always like that. There must have been a time where he had control of his life. I just never saw it. All I remember were the nights where I listened to the sounds of smashed up hearts and broken up tea pots. I remember days where my mother and I ran away, vowed to never come back but we always did. Because, she loved him. She thought that he would eventually realise that too but he never did. He was driven by his imaginery ideas of infidelity.

One day, we did eventually leave for good. By then, I had been in and out of school so many times that the women's refuge was already my second home. This time, we stayed there for half a year until my mother had things stabilized. I attended a local school where teachers watched out for me especially, concerned that I was affected by my circumstances. They said that I had come from a broken home. 6 year old me didn't understand it's meaning.

Ever since I could remember, my mind had developed a survival mechanism. It was a psychological fight or flight response. If I was in a stressful situation and unable to physically run away, my mind would automatically shut down. Chronic fainting was my way of escaping situations I couldn't handle. I haven't fainted in 2 years. I would like to think I've become mentally stonger, even if only a little. Every time, I've been put under a difficult situation where I'm emotionally stressed out, even though my knees felt like jelly and my hands shook violently, I willed myself to stand and see through to the end of the argument. Because, I know running away is to lose and let your opponent win. And even though they won the battle, every time I stand firm, is a little victory for myself.