Chapter 16
Episode 16
The bus rumbled, a metal beast groaning under the weight of my despair. Each mile gnawed at the frayed edges of my sanity, pulling me further from the ruins of my life and towards an unknown future. Portland. The name itself was a whisper of possibility, a fragile hope against the roaring tempest of my parents’ accusations. They sat across from me, their faces contorted with a familiar blend of rage and self-pity, their words a ceaseless barrage of blame. “Your fault,” they spat, the venom dripping from every syllable. “You’ve shamed us all.”
Shamed them? My crime, it seemed, was simply existing, a living testament to their failures. I, who had never touched a cigarette, never felt the burn of liquor or the sickly sweetness of beer. I, who recoiled from the very scent of intoxication, who abhorred the haze that seemed to cling to everyone else like a shroud. My siblings, my parents, even the men I was forced to call husbands – they all swam in that murky water, their lives a tangled mess of infidelity and addiction. And I? I was the pariah, the one who refused to drown, the one who dared to see the truth. A truth that, apparently, was the greatest shame of all.
The memory of the attack in Canada still clawed at my throat, a phantom hand squeezing the air from my lungs. The fear, raw and visceral, pulsed in my veins. I had been so young, so vulnerable, and the world had offered no sanctuary. Now, escaping that suffocating prejudice, that suffocating hatred, felt like a desperate flight from a burning building. And here I was, blamed for the embers that clung to my clothes.
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