Keoni's Journal - The Storm by Eirian Naomi Omid

 

Looking back, my abusive relationship reminds me of a blizzard I saw out the window of my third grade classroom. Relentless, dark, frightening, and threatening to swallow up any passerby whole.

 

I hadn't realized that I had stranded myself in a snow storm at first. Just like with any other great natural disaster, it started slow, with a cool breeze and a sprinkle of soft flakes, before morphing into a whiteout with unbearable sub zero temps. And once the storm hit, with the full force of violence and rage that a secretly mentally ill teenage boy contains, I was desperate to flee. But all ways out were blanketed by the snow. Cold, isolating, deadly.

 

Any time the storm calmed enough for me to see clearly, I would catch a glimpse at another exit strategy just before it would start again, leaving me more battered and bruised than usual because I had the confidence to fight back.

 

* * *

 

The winter of 2011 had been tepid, in many ways. My explosive ex was elsewhere, preoccupied with other things, because it was Christmas vacation; and the mountain air was unseasonably warm. There was a light at the end of the tunnel; we were about to graduate, things would be very different soon.

 

Weary from the long fight, I was unwilling to admit fault. I had stumbled out into the snow storm and decided to get lost in it when the winds picked up; because I was already suicidal. But I pretended that I was a victim of the storm, so I sought false heroes, and continued getting sucked back into the storm. Still, I had wandered into it because I had wanted to be saved.

 

Come graduation, the storm had fucked me up. Truly frightened, and cursing the little girl who had brought me to this point - yet thanking the universe for giving me the chance to fight for my life because if I would have stayed home, I probably would have died.

 

I was ready to get out.

 

It was time.

 

I ended up attending senior prom stag, and learning how much fun it is just to be free.

 

My ex was a self proclaimed rebel, so my graduation ceremony-birthday rite of passage was mostly about family, and close friends.

 

When the storm sucked me in for those last summer blizzards, I was ready to be my own hero.

 

I got a job, and we distanced slightly while I focused on getting myself out.

 

And then the clouds parted, the softened autumn sun smiled at me, and the universe sent me a hero.

 

I tried to deny it at first, because of all the false hopes of the past; but he took my hand, and pulled me out of the storm, into the safety of his home to love me while I healed from the ordeal, allowing a new, magnificent beginning to blossom, and grow.

 

Out of the storm. Into the greenhouse.

 

I survived, and now the garden is my home.