The Day Before

The hotel was bigger than she’d imagined, plusher than the pictures and videos had revealed and it still didn’t feel real. She had to pinch herself to confirm that it wasn’t a dream, that it was really happening to her. This was officially the best day ever!

Excitement at the chance of a new beginning washed over her.

“…Maria!” 

She turned back to face the accommodation manager, a sheepish look on her face for getting caught preoccupied.

“Sorry.” She mumbled.

He smiled in response and motioned her over to the door in front of him.

“And this is where you’ll be staying for the next eight months.” He continued as he led Maria into the room.

“Ah! Your bags are here.” He pointed to where the porter had left it. “Whatever you need, you know where to find me or you can ask your colleagues…”

At this point, she’d tuned him out and could only offer a nod in his direction. The room was beautiful, well arranged and just for her.

Mine, she thought.

“I’ll leave you to get settled. Once again, we’re glad to have you.” And with that, the accommodation manager left.

Maria was so happy, her hands itched to touch everything and so she did. She took a good look at her room, from the bathroom to the wardrobe and finally the view from her window. It was late so all she saw were lights from the streets beneath. Her dreams had come true.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh air of independence. She’d moved out of her parents’ house, she could now afford to do the things she’d always wanted and it was just the beginning. She didn’t stop the tears that rolled down her cheeks, she let it flow and with it went years of struggle, fear, bitterness…heartbreak. A sigh escaped from her lips, to think that just the day before, she’d been caught up in all that. Only the hope of a better life had kept her going.

A better life…

She’d been raised in a family of four with parents still together though there was no love lost between them. Everyday had been one fight or the other and for the longest time she’d imagined leaving home.

Home.

Home hadn’t been home for her and her brother, it had been one battlefield after several battlefields. Her brother had acted out in response, getting angry all the time, fighting, getting into trouble and was always depressed. One time he attempted suicide just to get away from it all and that only separated him from them more. She could remember that night, they’d rushed him to the hospital praying for him not to die, when the doctor confirmed that he would survived, her parents had gone home and had the worst argument till date. She was not visible to them; they only saw each other, their hate for one another and the victory of getting the last word.

She’d gone to her room in tears, her heart broken. Her brother had attempted suicide and all they could do was tear at each other. They didn’t even ask how she felt or tried to console her, she’d been all alone. Alone with her thoughts, her heart racing, alone in the dark.

Alone...

That was how she'd felt growing up so she'd turned to books and dreams; dreams of escape and the books offered her just that. Poetry became her therapy, her thoughts were written in codes that no one understood and that meant safety. She found release in art so she spent her time drawing abstract objects, reading stories about other lives far different from hers and burying her pain in the poems she wrote.

At first her anger appeared in short bursts; she would feel a sudden rage, break something valuable to her, cry and feel better, then she’d come out of her room like nothing was wrong. Her anger was not the loud, rip-everyone-and-everything-to-pieces; that was her brother. Hers was more subtle, no one knew when she was angry because she had a permanent smile on her face, but she had a tell that only her knew and it was also as subtle as her anger; Headache. Her tell was a headache, not just any kind but the slow burn of a migraine. Nobody knew because she’d perfected the art of keeping her emotions to herself which was made quite easy as her family were not the lovey dovey kind. Nobody talked about feelings or expressed positive emotions, they only displayed anger and biting remarks.

By the time the migraine was full blown, she’d be in her room quietly destroying things she'd bought with her money; her CD collection, cute feminine products and anything of value to her and then she’d cry because she was just so angry, so upset and she’d destroyed things that mattered to her.

This downward slide continued until the evening she pulled a knife on her brother. Her mother had been hysterical, begging her not to touch her only son. Her father had been absent, her brother, sweating profusely and trying to catch his breath, and she, hurting everywhere. Blood poured down her face from where her brother had hit her head on the wall, her face swollen from the pounding she'd received and her neck had felt like a bag of cement.

When he was beating her without their mother intervening, all she could think of was killing him, just getting a knife and putting a stop to it. She’d raced for the kitchen and grabbed the knife. That was the only time their mother stood up from where she was, she'd grabbed her son and placed him behind her so that she stood between them, begging on his behalf.

"Here I am Mother!" She'd screamed. 

"Where were you when he did this to me? You let him and now you’re stopping me from touching your precious son!"

She’d run out to the backyard holding the knife for protection in case her brother came back to finish what he’d started. He never did, he also never apologized and their mother never failed to bring it up from time to time.

“So you can kill someone…” She’d say with a smirk on her face.

Then it occurred to her that if she was going to escape her family and the bad blood, if she was going to make her dreams a reality, she couldn’t let them destroy her. After what happened, it was clear that she was the least of their concerns, they didn’t care about her, she was just another mouth to feed, nothing more, nothing less.

When school resumed, she went back more determined than ever.