Finding A Way

After I ranaway and my parents picked me up in the early hours of the morning from the seven-eleven in pine hills, the car ride home was mostly silent, but tense and fraught with bridled emotions. I kept repeating apologies, and rocking back and forth in my seat, distraught, and claiming no knowledge of how I wound up so far from home, or what had transpired in the hours I had been gone.
In retrospect, I'm not exactly certain of my motives for doing this. It was not my intention to be deceitful; in all honesty I can now say that I may have been trying to protect myself from my parent's wrath, although that feels quite unlikely given my circumstances, as I knew they wouldn't believe such nonsense anyways. More likely than not, I was slipping away little by little into my own mind, and losing bits of my sanity and albeit my integrity as time progressed. I said what I said, and it was done.
Once we made it home, my mother took it upon herself to check if I had been raped. Apparently she was a doctor. Hmm. Never new she had that training.
She had me undress and checked me all over for marks, and looked at my genitals, front and back, inspecting for anything unusual. I guess she'd be able to tell, right?
Then the hat came off.
Utter shock. "what did you do" and "why did you do this" and other such questions filled the air in a pressured, raised tone. I began to sob, and feigned no knowledge of  cutting my own hair, even blocking the night ours of my mind, attempting to make real the amnesia I claimed to have.
We were going to an ex-Wayer's home for fellowship (kind of like church, I suppose), in a few hours, so my parents sent me to bed to get some sleep; when I awoke, my mother had me come downstairs for a haircut.
She made my hair look "presentable", as though we meant for this to happen, and after a shower and a drive, we arrived at our friend's house. The whole time we were there, my parents said nothing to them about me. They asked for no prayers, asked for no advice, and breathed not one word. We were a happy family. No one should know anything different. I spoke in tongues in front of our families, partly to ask God for forgiveness and help, but also to show my parents that I wasn't a horrible person.
My parents changed the house alarm code so I didn't know it - I wouldn't know it again after that. My brother slowly became my babysitter, and life became even less (if possible) private for me. The lock on my door was gone by this time, and my journals, which had never been a safe place for me, became a dangerous weapon that could be used against me at any time.
Hating myself became the norm. Hating my life became the norm. I didn't realize that who and what I really despised was not me, not my life, but my parents and the life that I was being forced to live. Or, to be more blunt, the life I was being imposed upon not to live.
I couldn't, in my mind, live like this forever. I wanted to be free. There has to be more to life than this, I would think, and there has to be more to life than walls, locked doors, and indubitable compliance.

I wrote stories of alien worlds, of kings and queens, unabashed love, and magical lands. My mind dripped with fantasy until it was so steeped in it that I almost began to believe it as reality. At least...well...I wished it was true. If only it could somehow become reality. If only it could be real. If only I could find a way...