That one thanksgiving

She lied to me and she kept lieing, believing I would 'get over it' and go with the flow. Because that's what she did and that's what I would do. She knew he was going to be there and told me he wasn't.
But I am not her.
And I am not her.
What started as my mom yelling at me to get inside, progressed to my aunt yelling with her and then my grandmother yelling at me to a roars pitch to get out of the car and get inside. It kept getting worse, their accusations were morphing. It went from
you are lieing to
you asked for it to
it didn't happen to
you are crazy.
I couldn't yell aloud enough to not hear the constant stream of excuses they were coming up with to make it ok that I should go inside and spend a Thanksgiving weekend with the man who knew that he could only get away with what he was doing when no one else was around to see. So I jumped out of the car and started running down a random street. I was crying and running away so intensely that I couldn't catch my breath. Each heaving breath grounding me to the present moment, reminding me in a removed way of what I was going through, that this was actually happening to me. In a way, my previous child abuse had prepared me for this. The neglect I endured made me self sufficient and responsible. If I hadn't been so neglected, then maybe I might had just leaned into what they were saying or gone inside and not talked to anyone but that wasn't the case. I was a hardened child who had lived a hard life and I was not taking anyone's shit. I didn't know where I was going, I was in Mexico and this was long before cellphones, I didn't know where I was going to sleep that night and I didn't care. I wasn't going back. I didn't go back.