I’ve never really spoken about this...it’s something I prefer not to talk about.
I’ll entitle it: Annihilate.
Annihilate is a pretty scary word, I agree. It means: “destroy utterly” which sounds terribly horrifying...completely despairing...
And it was.
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. (I might have like two of those a most.)
I know you all are probably thinking it’s going to be something typical, like rape, not that rape isn’t horrible - it is!
But mine isn’t something you’d easily guess, because most people haven’t gone through it.
In fact, it’s something most people will think me naming it “Annihilate” is overreacting, but it isn’t.
My cage, the one that still holds me today, is the thing that completely destroyed everything.
I had to put all of my things into a box, tape it up, put it on a moving truck...and leave my life behind. I had to move.
You're all laughing and wondering why you have even read this far. Laugh. Please laugh. I’d like if someone found some comedy out of such a horrid thing.
What was so horrid about moving? You ask.
I was 19 years old. I had a best friend, three actually. I had a boyfriend. I had a job. I had...happiness.
I had all of that on the day I placed my things on the moving truck. The next morning I woke up, climbed into my car and drove away - leaving it all in my rear view mirror by no choice of my own.
Why did that change anything?
I moved 2 hours and 42 minutes away.
My three best friends? Of course I tried - still try - to make things work with my friends but we aren’t near as close as we used to be.
My relationship? It was done for when I crossed the county line into a different county, though it took 4 more months and loads more hurt for us to officially call it quits.
My job? I had to quit that. I was gonna get a promotion soon too. Oh well, right?
My happiness? When I typed that, I laughed. Not because it was funny, don’t take me wrong. Nothing about any of this was funny to me.
Everything I had the day I loaded that last box on the moving truck was ripped - and I don’t say that lightly - from my hands. Forcibly. With promises of better.
I didn’t want better. (though the “better” never came.) I just wanted what I had. I was happy with what I had.
Annihilate. Destroy utterly.
©️Madison B Barrett
ns 15.158.61.8da2
