“You need to leave,” he said.
I looked at my stepfather. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. He stood there in my bedroom door with his arms crossed, trying to look intimidating and doing a very good job of it. He was a slight man, but he thrived on fear.
“Where am I going to go?” I asked, trying to make sure that my voice sounded rebellious and brave but it conflicted with the hot feeling of absolute fear that was in the pit of my stomach.
“I don’t care where you go. You just need to get out of here. You can’t abide by my rules, do what I say, you need to leave. This is no longer your home.”
I had rebelled too late in life. Normally, you rebel in your early teens, but I was too busy with my nose in a book, playing the good son. It was what came naturally to me. Eventually though, I yearned for freedom and my actions started to show that: staying out late, not following rules, destroying bridges to find my own way. I was seventeen. I had left one home a year earlier, and I was being asked to leave another.
He stood there glaring at me. He motioned towards my belongings. “Go on, fill a bag and get out.” He threw my purple backpack on to my bed, and it landed looking like a gaping mouth, waiting to be filled.
“So, that’s it? We’re not going to talk about this? Where the fuck am I going to go?”
“I don’t care where you go just as long as its not here,” he said.
I wondered how one person could hold themselves so tightly. It’s a wonder my stepfather didn’t just crack into a handful of pieces and fall to the ground. He had never hit me, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t hurt me. It would take me a long time to discover the scars that he had left on my skin.
I knew where I would go. I had no choice if I was to have shelter tonight. I shoved some clothes, my alarm clock, a few books and my toiletries into my bag. It looked plump and full of promise as opposed to the gaping hold it had been before. I wondered if what I had gathered would sum up my entire life, but I knew they wouldn’t. I took my time, thinking that he would relent. I should have known better; once he made up his mind about something, my stepfather’s mind could not and would not be changed.
I went around the house gathering the other things that I wanted to take with me: a handful of talismans, and my tarot deck. I made sure to never be without that. I gathered it to me and held it for a moment finding comfort in the faded velvet of the bag and the wisdom that it held. I placed those in my bag and stood in front of the door. My mother stood like a silent spectre. She had tear marks that had stained her cheeks. I tried to communicate everything that I couldn’t say because of the rage that filled me at the moment, and she nodded. I knew that she understood the words that she could see in my eyes for they mirrored her own.
“You have your shit, quit stalling.” He said. He had followed me down the stairs as if I were some sort of burglar instead of his stepson.
“Can’t I say goodbye to my mother?”
“You’ve had plenty of opportunity to do that.”
I ignored him and went to my mother, took comfort from her arms that wrapped around me and squeezed, trying to communicate so much without words. I could feel her shaking and tried to remain calm so that she would know I would be okay.
“Okay, enough pleasantries,” he said. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my house.”
He very nearly pushed me out into the hot summer night. I felt the air almost pushed me down the steps as he slammed the door behind me.
I’m often asked about my path to the Tarot cards. Here’s that story:
Spirit of the Wolf 