We're all made.
We're all shaped.
We're all defined.
Someone has helped shaped and defined us, someone has made us.
Ino looked down the heavy hallway dressed with dark wooden panel, almost red to the color. Her room was the furthest one down. The purple door trying to break out of the darkness that surrounded her. It was her door, it was the door to her sanctuary and she had chosen purple.
She had been in the end of the hallway many times. She was the one who had been at the shelter the longest. It felt like she owned the place but she was a victim just like the rest of them, she was just like them.
Hinata.
Sakura.
Tenten.
Four girls in her wing. All four girls having each their own colored door to their safe space.
Sakura had a child. So naturally she had the biggest room out of the four of them. The room opposite Ino. Ino ran a hand through her long blond hair. It had grown out now. It was clean and well maintained. She wasn't the same woman who had entered. She refused to face the woman she once was. She refused to settle her past.
They were four in each unit.
One out of four English women will suffer from domestic abuse. Men are not far behind, one out six. Still, two women are murdered each week and 30 men too many is killed each year.
Ino knew these statistics by heart. She knew that domestic abuse made for 16% of all violent crime, but is the crime least likely to be reported to the police. It had more repeat victims than any other crime. On average 35 attacks happens before the victim calls the police. It's the single most quoted reason for homelessness.
Ino knew this too well. She was one of those statistics. She was one of those numbers. She had been abused by someone she loved. She had finally realized that she was a victim. She had been abused countless more times than 35 times. She had always come running back to him. It didn't take much for her to run back to him with open arms. Not this time she had promised herself.
She was finally starting to learn that she was worth more than an abusive relationship. Worth so much more than what he was willing to offer her. She was worth more than his harsh words and even harder fists.
She heard sobbing outside Tenten's room. She had just come this week. Her partner, they didn't know the name of him, but by the looks on her arms he was a smoker who didn't mind using his girlfriend as an ashtray. Red circular burn wounds adorned then, all in different phases of the healing period.
Ino hadn't had time to come close to Tenten. She hadn't had time to open up. She like all of them was pushed out of their homes. Left with nowhere to go they came here, desperate. In need of everything. Completely broken and shattered.
Tenten was beautiful when she smiled and giggled. You couldn't help but to smile when she grinned at you. She looked like a girl who once was full of life and spunk. She was just 17 and already scarred for life.
Hinata had come here about two years ago. She was an original cast member of the long term squad. Even if she came years ago Ino had yet to get to know her.
Hinata kept to herself. She didn't talk. She didn't show emotions.
Her abuse came from within her own walls, from her own kin. Ever since she was a child. Ino could certainly understand why Hinata was so quiet. She could understand why she didn't speak to them. She had spent most of her life not being allowed to. All her life being beaten for all sorts of petty reasons.
Sakura. Sweet Sakura with her pink hair and adorable toddler. Sweet Sakura with a temper herself. To Ino it was far from understandable that she used to be beaten into a puddle by her boyfriend, by the father of her child.
Strong Sakura who always spoke her opinion on everything even if it was what caused her to suffer from his abuse. She was nothing like Ino, no she was strong and didn't belong there. She was offering more support than she was receiving. It wasn't right,
Ino couldn't understand it. Just that she did. They were the same. Their self-esteem was broken. The betrayal of their closest in life ran deep. The world hadn't proven to be their oyster. They were broken. They've been made into this shallow picture of who they could have been, someone they should have been, someone they'd hopefully one day would become.
.