“Joe you will realize you were wrong one day, you know?” My dad’s face, wrinkled and with a dark five o’clock shadow, cringed.

“I have to go. I can’t stay here. How can anyone live like this?” I replied. I lifted my packed duffle bag from the dirty black hard wood floor.

He was silent. And I remember the look on his face. It was the last time I’d ever see him, and his grayish eyes glazed over and he leaned back, his unshowered fragile and almost too slim frame, in his recliner void of any feeling.

I muttered “I love you” before walking through the our screen door, that had a large hole at its base from being kicked through in one of his angry fits.

A dark emerald green pontiac sat running in the driveway of our home on Birds Way Dr.

Monica, my girlfriend at the time, leaned over the passenger side seat to unlock the door. Her pale freckled face frowned, obviously knowing how hard the last hour had been, and she embraced me as I threw my duffle bag in the back seat and plopped down, breathing a heavy sigh of relief.

Monica didn’t start asking me if I was okay or what she could do to make me feel better. She obviously knew that leaving home wouldn’t be easy for me, but she supported me just the same. That’s why I liked Monica so much.

Her light blond hair was almost radiant, the sun piercing the window as we drove off. She glanced at me, and smiled in her kind way. She had these vibrant blue eyes that could make you feel as if she knew exactly what you felt and it was all going to be okay.

I gazed, in the side view mirror, back at the house on Bird’s Way and wanted to cry, but didn’t feel anything. Numbness was a freezer blowing frigid air in my heart. It was cold and lifeless. A part of me wished I would die and just get the whole thing over with. But I knew I couldn’t and that something great waited for me somewhere. I always believed that.

Monica pulled up to her house in minutes. We had planned this day for weeks. Yet the weight of the anxiety had been so heavy, I was just realizing how exhausted I was.

Her mother was working overtime at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until late. Her step dad, John, never came out of his bedroom, and yet they were kind enough to let me stay in their home for a few days, until I figured everything out.

Monica helped me make up the bed in the guest room, after having tried to get me to eat something. I couldn’t stomach anything. And in the dark, we laid for hours on end.

“I’m homeless,” I finally managed to say.

“Oh, shush! You aren’t homeless. You always have a home, here.” She lifted her head off of my chest, and starred just long enough to give me an encouraging smile.

I hugged her a little tighter. She was asleep in minutes. But I kept running through possible scenarios in my head. I had ideas about where I’d stay and what I’d do my last summer before I could go away to college, but didn’t know what was going to stick.

Graduation and applications had flown by too fast. I had already been accepted into three different schools and finalized where I wanted to go— Coleridge College, a small school somewhere in Kentucky. But my student debt was going to be tremendous and I doubted my car could make it the three hour trip there.

I remembered the story of Joshua, from the Bible. I had read it through, curious of what the book had to offer. Joshua was told by God, someone he thought was creator of earth and heaven, to be strong and courageous. It was a command at the beginning of the book before he ever took Jericho, a city thought impossible to conquer.

And I remembered the movie Braveheart. It was a story about a guy who just wanted to have a family and a farm, but had to fight for his freedom after his wife had been killed. And he did, not giving up even when he was going to be publicly executed.

I felt a rush of courage from these stories, and I knew that the next morning would be better somehow. It wouldn’t be a tragic ending but a hopeful beginning.