Single

She was my best friend first. We met through a mutual friend and connected deeply in a matter of weeks. When she kissed me the first time at the ice cream parlor, I couldn't stop grinning. When I kissed her in the back of her car, my heart couldn't go any faster. When we were lying in my bed so close together, I understood why I had run away from so many guys before. All that happened before hell broke loose.

I couldn't kiss her anymore, not even once after my mom's yelling started, not once before my father kicked her out of the house, not once before I felt the first hit and blacked out for hours.

When I woke up, the TV could still be heard, my mom was crying, sobbing, saying how this was the deepest pain she's ever felt while my dad was whispering curses about how I was a disgrace to the family. I didn´t need to hear anything else. My guitar didn't break when I fell over it, and there was a suitcase half packed from the weeks at grandma's, so putting everything together was a matter of minutes.

I wanted to find her, and at the same time wanted to run away from all of it, from myself. I dumped my cellphone in the first bus stop, not before writing her name and number on my journal, barely noticing that it was the darkest hour and the sunrise couldn´t be that far behind.

In the luckiest of matters, I had gotten enough sense to open a savings account during last summer´s job. I gave the card to the ticket vendor and bought the train ticket, single, no return.