I wonder if she knew?

Searching through the few childhood pictures I have, I stumbled upon only one of two I could find of me and my mother. Me with a huge smile on my face, and her, intensely annoyed. Who knows, if this was because of me, or the hike we were about to take, it could have just been life, me at the age of 7? 8? Yet, I wonder now if she knew that 9 years later I would move out of the house and never return. Did she know the lengths to which my father would push me? I doubt it. No one thinks that far ahead, Yet I wish now that she'd of smiled... My early life..

I was 17 when I decided to move out of my parents home, just 17, I was an accelerated high school student, skipped freshman year in general and graduated early. I was young, but far from carefree. My fathers alcoholism and the lack of love in the marriage cast a huge rainy cloud over every event. Nothing unaffected from the fights and his anger. That night was the breaking point, I fled quickly, having my own car and paying my own car insurance, moving 150 miles from my childhood home with a few dogs and a bulimic, psychotic, cross eyed cat. Scared to death I remember crying the entire way up to flagstaff. You know what kept me driving north? Kept the wheels on the old beat up car moving? His words. See that night there was a fight, me and him and fought over something small, possibly as small as an orange peel falling from a trash can. Yet it disintegrated into what it always did, him berating me, insulting my intelligence, hitting me. It was nothing new, but after so much abuse.. After 17 years of abuse, the dam broke, and I left. Looking through those pictures, I wonder if my mother knew that I'd only have a few pictures of us together, I wonder if she had would she have done anything about it?

I will scan the picture in when I go downstairs.. But that trip helped get me to where I am, every mile reaffirmed that I was an intelligent, strong, beautiful woman. Every mile told me that I was doing the right thing. And given the chance I'd run again.