6000 years and I’m still here

Contains: sensitive language, neglect for parents towards child/abuse, implied sexual violence/rape

6,000 years and I’m still here.

Great. I think sarcastically.

I wish I wasn’t here.

I really, really wish.

Maybe one day my life will be better.

Maybe.

Just one day. One day that it’s the best ever. One day that I’m happy. One day where I have no worries. One day where the people that I love are with me and we aren’t fighting, aren’t screaming, aren’t mad. Just happy to be with each other. I wish, I wish, I wish that would happen.

But that’s not how my life is. Not at all. Never has been, never will.

I walk into my makeshift house in the middle of the woods, my daughter, Sarah, on my hip.

“Bah, bah.” My one year old says, grabbing air in her hands, signalling that she wants her teddy bear I made for her and she’s loved it since the day she was born. The smell of dinner cooking outside wafting into the tiny area.

My daughter is my light to the darkness of this world. She is my everything while we have barely anything but we make it work.

I set her down and let her walk across the pounded earth, her little hand gripping onto my palm as she makes her way towards her stuffed animal.

She weaves through the rickety table for two with a wood high seat for her and an old chair I found in the woods a while back for me in the center of the house, and over to the small bed I made for her with a small pillow and faded scrap of cloth blanket and her teddy sitting at the end where her blanket is folded under it.

It’s been about two years since my fathers came back and took everything away from me—my lands, my kingdoms, my belongings, etc. I was coming back from freeing myself after being kidnapped by nasty, nasty people. I found out I was pregnant with Sarah after running away because my fathers are very much like how my kidnappers were before I killed them. All I had when I left were the clothes on my back and that was it. I started from scratch and built my way from there.

Since then I have lived in the forest near one of my kingdoms, close but not too close to be seen by anyone trekking their way through the forest. I’ve hunted and foraged for my food, made my clothes, cooked and butchered my food, made a makeshift house that is the only place my daughter knows and can call home and so can I.

She makes it to her teddy bear, hugging it close to her. She looks up at me with her father’s brown eyes, the only thing she got from him—thank god. “Where Dada, Mama?” She says.

“Remember,” I say, lifting her back up onto my hip, “he’s not coming back, ever. He’s a bad, bad man,” I make a pouty face at her. “He doesn’t want to be a dad, so I left.” I start to walk over to the cloth that is the door to flip over the meat on the grill.

“Watch this.” I say as I pick up the tongs and flip the smoking steak on the small grill, making the flame under it lick at the uncooked meat as it meets the flame, making the flames reach my stomach from where the low grill reaches my knees.

“Woah,” she says, her mouth in an ‘o’ in awe at the orange and red flame eating away at the meat.

I look at her with hope in my eyes. Hope for a brighter future with the person on my hip. Hope for a better life that I can give her. Hope that she can stay alive long enough for me to see her get married and have kids with her husband who loves her. Hope for getting everything my daughter could ever want and more.

Hope. I’ve had that for a while, it’s faded and grown—but it’s still there everyday. Still shining up my days and nights…and hopefully will for a while—because I need it.

Hope is also a funny thing, it is nice to have every once and a while but after a while it becomes hard to grasp every morning that you need it. It comes in waves all the time. It’s sometimes a millimeter big or what you are feeling for the entire day and nothing else and everything in between.

I look back at Sarah and hope, because it’s all I have today.

20 minutes later, me and Sarah are sitting in our tiny house, eating our steak, enjoying the rare dinner.

“Mommy,” she says.

I look up and hum a yes.

“Can you cut it up?” She asks, lifting her plate towards me.

“Yeah, of course.” I say, taking her plate from her hands and starting to cut up the bits of steak with my steak knife.

I hear something come through the makeshift door and catch it in mid-air with my hand, bringing it to my line of vision and see a crumpled piece of paper fisted in my hand.

“Here, baby,” I say, handing Sarah the plate of steak.

She takes it as I raise an eyebrow in confusion at the piece of paper. I unfold it and start reading.

I know where you are.

—FS

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Mommy, are you okay?” My daughter asks me, concern written across her face. “You look sick.”

“Yes, Mommy’s fine.” I say, putting a reassuring hand on her forearm.

“Okay,” she says and goes back to eating, joyfully.

I groan and put my head in my hands, hoping that I would never have to deal with this again—but here we are, having to do this again.

I get up and say to my daughter that I’ll be back in a second. She nods and I go out the door, the wind hitting my face with biting coldness, slightly calming me as my lungs tighten in my chest.

I take a quick scan in the surrounding woods and deem that nobody is there.

Maybe they were just playing with me, making me think that they know where I am when they don’t actually know.

I really hope so.

That’s the last bit of hope I have left for the day. It’s gone into the wind whistling through the trees.

Maybe I’ll wake up with more, but the last bit for today is well—gone.