Shattered Window of hope

I stared up at the piercing, keen shards of glass. They took me to a place in my mind a place that I had been before. A place I never wanted to visit again but time after time was forced to. I tried to calm myself but the images kept popping up. The gut wrenching feeling of guilt, wrong doing and depression overwhelmed me. The sweat started rolling down my neck, the sun beating down on my face. Something was drawing me to the broken glass. The broken glass that use to be a place people were protected from the outside but still allowed to pierce through and see the dangerous but beautiful events of the world unfold. I tried to think of anything else, maybe the reason that the window, once so big and beautiful was now shattered in the middle and the remains were spread on the ground.

Maybe it was a act of nature. As simple as a large gust of wind. After all it did seem like the window along with the edifice that surrounded it was old. The more I looked the more the simple explanation became less true. A gust of wind would shatter the glass like that. This took a blunt force. Maybe it was still an act of nature though, maybe a branch but I looked around and no trees were in sight. Just tall, wheat grass and clay mud. Someone else was here. If it wasn't nature it had to be another person, maybe another like me. Maybe another person that has had enough and needed somewhere to go. Maybe this window was there punching bag. If that was the case I know how the window feels. Abused and broken for someone else's hostility. The feeling of helplessness, laying on the ground in pieces with no one or nothing else around to help. The remaining pieces in the window frame was just the remaining pieces, the memory's and the parts of you that are still hanging on.

Maybe it was just broken long before the house was overgrown with vines and kudzu. Maybe it was the happy family that use to live here. Maybe it was broken by a ball being thrown in the yard by children that were living there pure, careless life. If I close my eyes I can see them now. Two brothers with a bond that almost seemed like hatred but really was just brothers being brothers. Two brothers that would wrestle all the time even when there mother yelled at them to stop. Two brothers that were always together, that had each other and held each other close when things got scary. The kind of bond I have longed for my whole life. I see the two outside throwing the ball while there sister sat on the driveway, that is now busted up to the point of no return, with chalk coloring and doodling. Maybe it was the rotten boys, maybe they got competitive and one threw the ball to hard and it went through the window causing them both to panic and get scolded but 10 year later laugh about the events that unfolded that day. The more I looked the more unlikely it seemed. If something was thrown from the outside there would be less shards of glass on the outside and more on the inside. The event took place in the house.

I walked closer to the house, closer to the glass. I was afraid. With every step I felt my heartbeat getting faster and faster until I was right under the glass. Looking in the hole where the window use to be. All I seen was darkness. Much like the inside of my eyelids which I found comfort most days. The closer I got the more the glass seems to crunch into the ground under my feet. I tried my best to not get cut but not thinking I grabbed a part of the window frame to lean inside and it cut my hand. I looked at the blood starting to appear on my hand and touched it with my finger. The blood was dripping down but I stopped and froze. I thought to myself what am I doing here? I should be at home. I have to go back but the deeper I thought and watched the blood drip the more real everything got. Drip after drip falling on the ground everything became clear. I remembered all the times that I had been hurt. All the beatings for being bad when all I was doing was trying to help. All the times I had been kicked and punch to the point where I couldn't get off the floor, all the times I got grabbed and threatened with death. The time I was laying on the floor and all I could see was red. The makeup I was "rewarded" with to cover up the bruises, the new clothes to cover up the endless scars and scratches. It all seemed so real, what a monster, what person would do this. What kind of women was I for staying. What kind of mother would I be. I looked down at my stomach, remembering what the doctor I had went to a few months ago told me. I remember thinking how could I be pregnant. I couldn't be, I cant be a mother but regardless of what I thought or want I wanted, I was wrong and I was going to have a baby, and be a mother, in a matter of months. Unsure on who the father is, alone. I had to leave I had too, if he found out I would be killed. Teen pregnancy's were a disgrace in the town and even more of a disgrace in my family but what was I supposed to do. I looked back at the suit case that I had packed. I was on the run, no place to go. I fell to the ground weak and crying. I looked up at that window, now right above me and remembered of the things I use to think when I was younger. The memory's I had, almost all bad but some good when my mother was here, we would play dress up and dream of getting our own place. A little place near the spring or in a meadow. We would raise animals and grow our own food. She died when I was 14 just 3 years ago. My father told me never to speak of her and the one time I did, I would be hit in the mouth. Afraid to ever say anything again I shut my mouth and stopped talking from then on. I sat there and cried for what felt like hours until it was starting to get dark. I finally got up and noticed something shiny, shinning in the building through the broke window. I wiped my eyes and took a better look but I couldn't tell what it was. I almost walked away but something told me to look.

I went around the building trying to find a way in but the vines had made it hard to find a door. I ran my hand around the building until I finally found a handle. The rust had made it hard to open but using force I finally got it open. I walked around in the now super dark house. The floors where noisy and something you would see in a horror movie. I followed the light to the window until I reached the object. I reached down to pick it up and held it in my hand. A ring with a large diamond. I sat there and stared at the ring with a smile on my face. A smile that I hadn't had in weeks. Right then is when I realized that I am in the now. I could do this.

The next morning I woke up not feeling dread that I woke up but feeling nothing but free and happy. Little did I know this was the last day I would ever feel free again....