Taken by the Wind

          I became depressed, not in the usual way. I stayed in bed for weeks after San Diego. I blamed it on the time difference and jet lag. My dad knew better. I skipped a lot of school but not enough to flunk out on my final year. Graduation and my birthday came and went. I subtracted myself from the usual social scene once we were no longer in high school. I remember being at a house party, the same house party that it always was, when suddenly I knew right then and there that I was done with it. The friends, the drinking, the smoking. I just wanted to be in bed or be inspired. There really was no in between. I watched Netflix on my small phone screen, squinting and crying at movies like "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" and I binged all of "The Office". I spent a couple months trying molly and going to EDM shows, but I didn't have any dopamine to release to be doing those sorts of drugs. I kept my old fling from high school for entertainment for ...

      I remember on Christmas 2013, I opened a card from my dad, and inside were two plane tickets to California. My whole life shifted when I knew I could get out of this place. We landed in smoggy LAX, I would love nothing more than to never go there again, and took a connecting flight to San Diego. The smallest plane, I'd ever been on, fitting no more than 40 people, with only 25-30 actually on board. I was 17, my hands were sweating, I had never experienced a damn good thing. I had never known anything but my hometown. You couldn't tell me that then. I hadn't experienced much good, but I felt everything. I still do.     My dad was recently divorced and I had him all to myself for the first time in my entire life. We both naively visited universities like I would somehow end up on the other side of the country after I graduated high school and my dad would somehow have the money to send me somewhere out of state. It was an excuse to spend 10 days in Californi...

      My grandmother bought my first journal and told me to write. It wasn't for pleasure, it was for coping. I was complaining to her that I could never speak my mind during an argument without forgetting all the arguments I had stacked up in my defense. So, one birthday or Christmas, I can't remember which, she got me a tiny journal with a big flower on the front. I must've been around 11 years old. She told me "Now you have something to write in. Write down everything that happens, so you don't forget.". She was referring to the abuse I witnessed and was at times, a victim to. One day, after a long fight between my dad and stepmom, one I don't remember because I didn't write it down, I came home to find every page torn out of my jounral. My stepmom had found in depth, detailed and factual accounts of the verbal, physical and emotional abuse she had put her family through. She read through her malice and I imagine her angry, hot, red faced, tearing t...