Chapter 5: Just Up the Road, but a World Away
945 Words
We didn’t move far. Just up the road, really. We didn’t move far. Just up the road, really. But in my heart, it felt like we had traveled to another world. The house we left behind was heavy with memories walls that carried secrets. When we stepped into this new house, the air itself felt lighter, though the rooms were bare.
It wasn’t a pretty house, not in the way some of my friends lived. The boards were patched with tiny cracks, the concrete floor carried years of wear, and the doors moaned on their hinges whenever the wind touched them. But for us, it was a sanctuary. It didn’t matter that we had little. It mattered that we were gone from the place that had nearly broken me.
My mother worked tirelessly to make it livable. She scrubbed the floors until it came back to life, patched holes with strips of wood and nails, and cooked in pots on wood fire outside. She never complained. Her strength became the foundation of that house, more than the bricks or mortar ever could. My sisters and I shared a room, our three bodies pressed together on one bed. At night, we whispered under the sheets half secrets, half dreams. We spoke of what we wanted one day: real bedrooms, kitchens that smelled of full pots, and bathrooms with locks on the doors. Our voices were soft, but the hope was real.
For the first time, I slept without fear of footsteps outside my door. No Ken. No Brandon. No long shadows stretching into the night. Just the steady sound of my sisters’ breathing beside me. It was fragile peace, but it was peace all the same.
At night, when sleep was slow to come, I made up stories in my head. I didn’t have a journal then, but I learned to talk to myself quietly, retelling the life I had lived but this time, I was in charge of how the story ended. Sometimes I imagined myself older, in a bigger house, stronger than the voices that once silenced me. Those stories became my lifeline, a way to stay afloat when memories tried to pull me under.
Even so, the past had a way of reaching for me. Some evenings, I would overhear my mother talking on the phone. She mentioned Ken or Brandon, her words hushed but sharp. She spoke about the things they were going through, the choices they had made since leaving. I would freeze mid-step, the names echoing like stones thrown into my chest. Then I’d force myself to keep walking. I didn’t dare linger. I couldn’t. If I let myself stand there too long, I would sink into anger, or worse, into grief. And grief was dangerous—it pulled you back into silence.
School became my refuge. Even when I hated the teasing, even when the lessons felt too heavy, it was still better than the weight of home. I was still called names. Still laughed at. Still made to feel small. But here, at least, no one knew the whole of me. No one knew the bruises the past had left. And that anonymity felt like a blessing.
I made friends real ones this time. Friends who walked with me after school, who didn’t care that my uniform was faded or that my shoes leaned sideways from overuse. They didn’t know my secrets, but their laughter stitched something back together inside me. For a few hours each day, I wasn’t the girl carrying a houseful of silence. I was just another child, laughing in the schoolyard dust.
But the past never let go completely. Sometimes, when I walked alone, I would remember the house we left behind. The pit toilet standing lonely in the back. The kitchen that smelled of damp zinc and smoke. The hallway where Ken pulled me aside. The silence of my mother’s face when I told her the truth. Those memories returned like ghosts, reminding me that survival was not the same as healing.
Still, this new house up the road gave me space. It didn’t erase what happened. It didn’t heal the cracks. But it let me breathe in ways I hadn’t before. And breathing was enough for now.
The walls weren’t haunted. The yard didn’t carry shame. And in those small things, I found fragments of freedom.
At night, I dreamed bigger. I dreamed of being someone who wasn’t defined by hurt. I dreamed of standing tall, of writing my own story. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew deep down that I was meant for more than silence.
It struck me often how strange life was: we hadn’t traveled far barely minutes from where we started but the difference felt like years. That short walk had carried me further away from pain than I ever thought possible. It was as if the road itself had swallowed all the brokenness we left behind and refused to give it back.
I still wasn’t whole. The cracks inside me were real, and I felt them with every breath. But this place allowed me to live without bleeding from them every single day.
Sometimes, late at night, I’d lie awake listening to the house breathe. The creak of wood, the whistle of wind through cracks, the faint murmur of my mother’s voice in the next room. And in those sounds, I found something I hadn’t known I was searching for proof that I had survived long enough to feel safe again.
No, I wasn’t healed. But I wasn’t trapped anymore either. And for the first time in my young life, survival felt like progress
- Writer
