There are anniversaries we celebrate, and there are anniversaries we survive.
For me, September 9th has always been the second kind.
It was the day I ran away from “home” for good. The day I stopped being a child. The day I saved my own life.
I was seventeen.
For more than two decades, each September brought a small ache — a reminder of the black eye I woke up with that morning, of the fear I carried in my bones, of the desperate courage that pushed me out the door. But this year… this year is different.
Because this year, I learned how my mother died.
And suddenly the past wasn’t just memory — it was a crime scene I was forced to walk back into.
The Call I Never Expected
In December, my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.
When I answered, a voice introduced himself from the county medical examiner’s office.
He asked my name.
He asked if I was the next of kin to a woman I hadn’t seen since 2001.
He said her body had been found.
I don’t remember breathing.
I do remember the strange numbness — the way grief and relief collided in the same breath.
She died alone.
Half-dressed, lying on trash.
A wine bottle clutched in her hand, surrounded by thousands more.
The woman who raised me in violence had died in the same isolation she created. And even then, even knowing what she had done to me, I felt a heaviness I cannot describe. Because no matter how broken someone is, no one deserves to die unseen.
Walking Back Into the Nightmare
Sorting through a dead parent’s belongings is hard. Sorting through the belongings of an abuser is something else entirely.
This year, I stepped back into the world I escaped — not metaphorically, but physically. I stood inside the rooms I had once begged to leave. I opened drawers stuffed with shards of the childhood I spent trying to survive.
I found thousands of empty bottles.
I found photos.
I found journals — mine — pages of fear written in a child’s handwriting.
I found proof of memories no one ever believed.
And I found photographs of her hitting me.
If you’ve never been a runaway, you might not understand why that matters. But so many people who escape violent homes spend the rest of their lives fighting shadows — doubted, dismissed, told to “forgive,” told it “couldn’t have been that bad.”
Evidence is a strange kind of validation.
It doesn’t erase trauma, but it anchors the truth.
It lets you finally stop arguing with ghosts.
The Last Morning I Ever Saw Her
September 9, 2001.
I was seventeen.
I woke up with a black eye.
Bruises were familiar — explanations rehearsed — but something inside me snapped differently that morning. Maybe because I had grown old enough to imagine a life beyond that house. Maybe because I finally saw how small the world was becoming, how I wasn’t going to make it to adulthood if I stayed.
That day, I went to a dog show — a small slice of freedom I clung to whenever I could. My friends noticed my face. They didn’t look away. They didn’t pretend not to see. They took me into their home and, for the first time, adults said the words I had prayed someone would say:
“You don’t have to go back.”
The courts agreed.
For six months, I stayed with them.
Six months of breathing air that wasn’t heavy with fear.
Six months of inching toward the idea that I might be worth safety.
But safety, for me, was never simple.
Kicked Out Again — For a Different Kind of Truth
Six months after I fled an abusive home, I was kicked out of my new one — this time for being queer.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Freedom, followed by punishment.
Hope, followed by another door closing.
I was seventeen, queer, and suddenly homeless again. I had no stable place to sleep, no family to call, and no legal rights that protected kids like me. I couch-surfed. I hid. I survived on the kindness of people who barely understood the weight I carried.
And I made the hardest decision of my young life.
I rehomed my dogs — the only beings who had ever made me feel safe — because they deserved stability, and I couldn’t give it to them while living out of bags.
People think runaway kids leave because they’re rebellious.
They have no idea the level of sacrifice it takes to leave everything behind to save yourself.
The Belief That Kept Me Alive
I grew up believing escape was impossible.
Every attempt was punished.
Every dream of freedom was met with threats.
But on that September morning, something inside me whispered:
If you don’t go now, you may never get another chance.
So I ran.
Not gracefully.
Not bravely.
More like a small, terrified animal darting through an open door.
And even though the years that followed were filled with instability, heartbreak, and unimaginable loneliness, I have never once regretted leaving.
Because that day didn’t just change my life.
It gave me one.
The Woman I Became Because I Chose Myself
Twenty-four years have passed.
In that time, I built a life that would have seemed impossible to the frightened teenager I once was. A life with safety. With love. With self-respect. A life where my past doesn’t get to define my future.
I am living proof that a runaway is not a failure — a runaway is a survivor.
And when I stood in the wreckage of my mother’s final days — the bottles, the debris, the suffocating loneliness she left behind — I felt something unexpected:
Gratitude.
Not for the suffering.
Not for the pain.
But for the moment in 2001 when I saw my chance…
and took it.
When I became my own protector.
When I chose myself.
When I stopped waiting for someone to save me
— and saved myself instead.
Why I Tell This Story
I share this now for the kids still dreaming of escape.
For the adults still healing from the escapes they made years ago.
For anyone who has ever been told they were exaggerating, dramatic, or ungrateful for wanting safety.
You are not alone.
Your story matters.
Your survival is proof of your strength.
And sometimes the bravest day of your life isn’t the day you fight back.
It’s the day you walk away.
September 9, 2001 was that day for me.
The day I ran away.
The day I never saw my mother again.
The day I stepped into a life I had to build from scratch.
The day I saved myself.
