ESTRANGE IN RED
This home was becoming my greatest fear when it used to be my safest place. I’ve moved a great number of times and this house was the only place that felt like home. He took that away from me. I couldn’t leave, nowhere to go and I couldn’t see my loved ones. I felt trapped. The amount of anxiety I would get from just being in the same room, let alone the same house. I used to be on the complete opposite side to where he would be because I feared he would attack me alone. My mother had the opportunity to leave home for work, but I was stuck here. Panic attacks would trigger if I walked close to him, if I made eye contact, I thought about the worst.
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KNELL IN BLUE
Waking up that day didn’t feel any different to me. I still felt the tension and the fear walking around. All caused by a man I thought I knew.
My mother had a bad feeling something was happening. Halfway through the day, as I later learned, she came home to an unspeakable tragedy. She couldn’t open the front or the back door, everything was locked, and worse she was hearing water flowing.
She called 911. As they came, she had to smash her own front door, leaving cuts and bruises on her hands. Speechless, saw water everywhere in her home from afar. Police didn’t want her inside for her safety. They dragged him out of the front door where the broken glass was scattered everywhere, dressed in a suit, and overdosed on sleeping pills. Vents stuffed with shirts, boards across the front and back door, holes poked in the ceiling for water to run through, and finally a noose hanging in our staircase.
As I walk towards the front door, I start crying for my mother. Everything felt like a silent tunnel. I couldn’t hear the neighbors trying to speak to me. I couldn’t hear the cars on the road or people inside. All I could think was if my mother was hurt. The moment she came up to me, I stopped breathing and I held onto her like I lost her for years. I couldn’t leave her side as I saw all the damage that was done to our home. I sat by my mother, holding her, and laying my head on her shoulder for what felt like a nightmare.
A nightmare that lasted for so long. I couldn’t wake up.
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