Why?

A cold, dark October night changed my whole life. This was the night that ripped away every last shred of the naive child that still crawled within me. I walked inside my home, blind to what I was about to learn. I moseyed on into the living room and glanced at my grandmother. My heart dropped to the floor as I looked upon her tear stained face, her body covered in bruises, the pain that I could see in her eyes was too much for me to bare. I ran to her but the faster I tried to go the slower it seemed. It felt as if it took ages to reach her; that the 20 feet between us turned into 20 miles. I dropped to my knees beside her and asked her what had happened. She looked at me with a cold, emotionless stare, barely able to utter the words. After much coaxing she looked to me and said, her husband at the time, had one too many and became physically violent. At that moment I grabbed her bag and told her she was coming home with me. She was terrified to leave because she did not want him to wake and be upset with her. I took her into my arms, and walked out the door. From that moment on my home was taken away from me. The home that once filled me with love, hope, and joy now filled me with rage, fear, and resentment.

Everyday I am thankful that my gram is safe and away from that man, but I wonder how the man that I knew and loved, my Boompa, was capable of doing the terrible things he did. I spent years of my life at that house on Scott Drive, and never once did he seem like the kind of man to become physically violent. How could he just change like that? How could the man that called me shrimp because I was the runt of the family, the man who spend hours with me fishing off the dock and the ice in the winter time, the man who came home after work with ice cream in hand ready to happily watched Tom and Jerry with my brother and I, the man who was the only grandfather to actually show an interest of spending quality time with me as a child become the man who abused the one woman who means the most to me in this world? It just does not make sense to me, even now he sends me Christmas and birthday cards. A man full of compassion and love for my family would not just throw that away would he?

I asked or at least attempted to ask these questions when it originally happened but everyone just looked at me and told me I was too young to understand. I would not be able to handle the truth, it was too much for me to bare at such a young age. Everyone sat around making the decisions for me when I could handle it. I was strong enough to know the truth, I believe that If I was strong enough to take care of my drunk grandmother for 3 years then I should have been allowed the truth. I deserved to know the truth, and now like everything else we just brush it under the rug. Why remember such a negative and sad thing, everyone tells me… but I can not seem to get it out of me head. The questions haunt me and will haunt me for the rest of my life. I will never be able to escape them.

Three years later, I drive by this beautiful house that used to be my home and I feel as if I am looking at a stranger. A new family lives there now, and I look across the water hoping that they share the same snug feeling whenever they come home after a long day. While I have this feeling of hope and delusion, I have a rage of jealousy roaring within me, like the wood stove, knowing that these strangers are now in my home. They are living in the one place that I loved; the place that was ripped away from me and given to them without my consent. Every morning I have a mexican standoff going on within me.

Behind the first gun there is the jealousy fighting saying that I deserve that house. That was my home.

Behind the second gun there is hope and delusion knowing that a family is happy and loving the house in a way my family no longer could.

Behind the third gun, reality is fighting with the knowledge that my family didn’t deserve that house anymore. That man did that house an injustice and even if I was able to have that house, it would never be the same as it once was. The place that used to my home was now just a house.