The morning after he’d flown out on his business trip, I raced around the house as fast as someone covered in bruises from neck to thighs could-which wasn’t very fast. I refused to waste precious space on anything I could easily buy later.

My first order of business was to pack two duffel bags full of things I refused to leave behind: mementos, my laptop, and a necessary change of clothes for each of us. He had no idea that I was planning to leave, and honestly, I thought he would have killed me if he had. So, for the past week, I’d counted down every minute until his business trip. I wanted to be there and settled before my clean-cut husband came looking for us. I only had three days to get to where I needed to be, and I wasn’t going to hesitate. I’d never imagined the world I chose would be far worse than the one I had left. He wouldn’t get his hands dirty, wouldn’t raise his voice, and wouldn’t carry a gun. I wanted a husband who paid taxes and would take his car to a mechanic for routine maintenance. I wanted a different life though, so I’d gone away to college, and later, I’d tried to carve out a life in the beige community where mothers brought their children to school in minivans and joined the PTA. It was the way of the world, or at least, it was the way of our world. I’d seen more than one woman slapped around by her man, and to be truthful, it had never really bothered me much. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore there was one place in the world where he’d never reach us. Every ache, every pain, and every bruise reminded me that we had to escape.

My heart told me that nothing good could come from heading back to the place I’d grown up, but I knew we had nowhere else to go. I’d spent the last five years running, and now, it seemed I was going to have to retrace every excruciating step. How could someone make decision after decision attempting to get away from their past and somehow end up right back where they started?

Craving constellations