Exhausted from a long day of taking orders and handing out burgers in mid-July I opened the door of my home and then silence hit me like a bug being squashed on a windshield of a tractor trailer roaring up a highway. This was not the normal, testing taking silence; it was the heart dropping, wanting hide from day light death like silence. I knew a noiseless house only meant thing, my mother did the one and only thing I have ever begged her not to do: go to Virginia and leave me behind in the process.

Now do not jumped to any conclusions just yet, I have a tale to share before you are able understand my story. At the very beginning of summer vacation my mother’s male companion came to the house with his ten-year-old brat of a son and a brindle boxer that always seemed to have a riff with my bull mastiff, Otis and they never left. Originally, I thought I could handle the stress of all the commotion but every day it got harder for me to breathe.

Eventually it got to the point where I could come back from working at the local grease pit and I would erupt, not fireworks on the fourth of July but nuclear war, killing everyone in site explosions. Almost always they would happen outside in the driveway near my car in case I felt unsafe a quick getaway was always an option. You’re probably thinking she could kill someone driving angry, do not worry, anyone that has ever ridden with me when I have been upset knows I rarely go over fifty miles per hour. Anyways, the “kabooms” always consisted of my mom and I yelling at each other so loud that sometimes it felt like a contest. My feelings about her companion continually oozed out of my mouth but she never listened. I knew this because the more we reenacted the Civil War with our words the more we were insulting each other’s life choices and not focusing on the real problem.

At one point the dialogue that slipped from both of our lips scarred us for life. While throwing a teenage tantrum I shouted, “You are not a mother to me, you do not treat me like yours anymore, I need to get out of this place!” In response to such a thing, she looked at me up and down then exclaimed, “Where are going to go? You do not have anyone, no one loves you around here.” My statement got me instantly uninvited from a vacation with my mom, her boyfriend, and his son. Her piercing words resulted in me crying, face planted on the floor every day after work pondering every aspect of my life, while no one was there.

You see, that morning before they packed their belongings including his boxer for Virginia, I pleaded and begged my mother to stay and spend some time with me before school started again. I remember telling her that if she left she would lose me but never went into detail about how. Unfortunately that did occur, my belongings found a new home at my dads. He told me that he felt like that was the best option because he believed my mother was mentally abusing me. Looking back on it now, part of me still has to agree.

Now, I think it is best that we back track to me facing death in the air for the first time. Instantly my acidic tears burned my face due to the fact that I knew this was the beginning of the end of a chapter in my life. Knowing such a fact in the moment causes a special ache to radiate all over your body and for some reason it never really goes away.

To this day I still live with my father who works out of town five days a week. Luckily his house is just a few miles from my mom’s. Occasionally, since it gets lonely I venture over to see her during the week. Nothing has really changed expected for the location of where I lay my head at night and our unspoken agreement to ignore the past. Even though all of this is bittersweet I believe it is for the best.