Breaking Free

She stood looking at the place she had called home, rain falling all around her. What had set her father off, she couldn’t be quite sure. He had threatened her multiple times since her eighteenth birthday, but she hadn’t believed that he’d actually do it. But he had. Now she stood in the rain in front of her house – no, her parent’s house – taking one last look before she left forever. Her things lay in bags all over the yard. Her mom had screamed and pleaded to him not to make her leave. She stood silent. A teenager with no income to speak of, she had no idea where she would go or what she would do. But her father was a stubborn individual, and always had been. So was she. And therein was the problem. All she wanted was freedom. The freedom to live her life the way she wanted. To do things the way she wanted to do them. But he would not grant her that. Even in the least. It wasn’t that she didn’t respect him, because she did, more that he would ever know. She held him on such a pedestal that even the smallest insult cut deep. But in the last year or so, she had realized that he would never let her go. She was his baby girl, and she always would be. But that was just it, she wasn’t. She had grown up. And if she wasn’t grown up, at least she was trying to break out of her shell. She was more than ready to spread her wings and fly at long last. He had kept her to himself for so long. For so many years he had kept her from things, tried to protect her from the things in the world. But then she began to see with her own eyes. She saw things that she wanted – things that her heart desired more than even the need to please her father. They were a Christian family. She had been raised in the church. She loved her church. Loved her pastors and her family there. She knew the Bible and everything in it to be true. The Bible spoke directly to children when it said to obey and respect your parents. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She was ready to learn things on her own, without her parent’s direction. They couldn’t seem to grasp that. As far as they were concerned, she was theirs and they would protect her mind and body at all cost. But to her, she wasn’t theirs to protect. She was her own person. “Stop trying to protect me! I want to make my own mistakes!” Her father had been furious when she’d used that line. Sure it was foolish, she knew that, but she just wanted her own life. To be out from under his harboring wing. Because to her it wasn’t just a protecting force, it was a cage. A prison. She had always felt so, but only recently had she realized what it was that she was feeling. All she had asked for was freedom. Independence. But they couldn’t give her that. And so here she stood. Slowly, the girl picked up the bags and took one last look towards the glowing dining room where she knew her family sat. “Goodbye,” she whispered, as she turned and started down the long gravel driveway. She was finally breaking free.