I Had Plans to Run Away From Home When I Was Fourteen
My teenage journals are full of carefully written ideas on how to do it
The shiny, obnoxious, spiral-bound gold notebook that I started on October 4th, 1999 tells it all. Written on white lined paper in blue biro, in tiny, very neat print, there are multiple plans to run away from home. None of them were any good, but that notebook contains many such plans.
I bought the notebook with my own money and I was so proud of it. I have an entire stack of A5, spiral-bound notebooks full of secrets. Each had a different cover, but they were all the same size. It’s an OCD thing.
I lived on a mountain, and what I wanted more than anything was to live in the city down the mountain. It wasn’t just that mountain life wasn’t for me, it was that living at my house was a special brand of hell.
Flipping through that notebook, I can see that the plans were crap, but I guess that’s what happens when a fourteen-year-old plans to run away. I had planned to pack up all my possessions into my green canvas backpack that my mother had gotten at Woolworths for five dollars.
My plan was simple.
I would leave in the middle of the night, enter the bush, and simply keep wandering until I found my way down the mountain. I figured it would take up to a week, and I had to go deep into the woods so I couldn’t be seen from the road.
It would take a good while for anyone to figure out I’d gone into the bush and down the mountain. I didn’t have a map or a compass, but I figured that “down” was all I needed to know. I wasn’t even sure how I was going to sneak away with enough water.
There were risks with doing this, going down the range on the road in a car was perilous enough. The biggest risk factor was the possibility of coming across a bushfire that I couldn’t get away from, but I was willing to take that risk. I’d rather die in a bushfire than stay where I was at.
I had no idea how I was going to get to the top of the range in the first place because I figured nobody would pick up a fourteen-year-old hitchhiker although anything is possible in rural Australia. Besides, being murdered by a truck driver was also preferable to staying at home, and it also sounded like a pretty cool way to die.
There was also a possibility that I could simply open the door of the truck and “stop, drop, and roll” like they taught us to do in primary school if there were ever a fire. I was realizing that this was good advice. I could use it with the truck driver and if I encountered a bushfire.
I planned to simply let the city devour me into its underbelly, where I would become invisible. They would never find me.
I knew how to turn tricks so I figured I’d be able to fend for myself. I would also be free to die a tragic death all alone, taking my dying breath in a gutter somewhere, which was quite appealing to my suicidal self.
When I got to the city, and before I disappeared, I’d go down to the night markets and ask the voodoo priestess for help. I was sure she would be able to help me get revenge.
Although I was the oldest of three, I was unable to defend myself against the terror my sister Georgia inflicted on me.
Cold and calculating, Georgia knew exactly what she was doing, and how to make it look like it was all my fault. Not that she really had to try at that, because Georgia could look my parents in the eyes, torment me, and get away with it.
She had been making threats, and she had been stealing my things. Georgia was hell-bent on being the head bitch in charge, and my parents were more than happy to let that happen. Georgia was their golden child.
My youngest sister, Bessie, always sided with Georgia. The injustice of it all was that Georgia would torment me, Bessie would act like she knew nothing, and one of my parents would beat me. I was willing to take my chances with a trucker or a bushfire.
Mum and dad aren’t blind, they can see exactly what is going on. They just don’t give two hoots about me. Dad keeps getting mad because I cry but won’t tell him why because he will beat me again but he says I’m too big of a girl to cry about nothing.
I’m going to run away. Nobody will miss me. I know I could do it. I’ll go to (city name redacted). It will take me a few days to get there, but that’s definitely where I would go.
I’m sick of secrets. I’m sick of being forced to hide and cover things up for this family. At least when I went to school I wasn’t at home all day.
I’m living in a fantasy world just so that I can get away from Georgia. Even if it’s only in my head.
That was part of my first journal entry about running away.
I was living in what I had perceived and been told was a fantasy world because I was dissociating to try to drown everything out. As someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I have several alters that are here over things Georgia did to me.
As I progressed through the notebook, the plans got more elaborate. The only thing that stopped me from running away was worrying about what would happen if I got caught. My parents would lock me in a room for the rest of my life, so I had to wait it out.
I got a job right before I turned fifteen, and pretty much worked full-time. I saved my money and bought a car after I got my driver's license. That car was my ticket to freedom. I found a studio apartment when I was seventeen, put down a deposit, and moved down the mountain to the city.
© 2024 MaryClare StFrancis
MaryClare StFrancis is a nonfiction writer specializing in memoir and essays. She is currently working on an essay collection about her past violent life and commitment to nonviolence called In Thy Dark Streets Shineth.
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