Confessions of a Teenage Runaway

By Yasmeen Finjan

Often in life random things will happen and they will leave you wondering, how did this even come to be? In this case, I had no clue what I had in store. It was definitely in the spur of the moment. I frequently cease to think and frequently act on impulses. It’s how I am now, and how I have always been.

I’ve never been known for automatically thinking within reason. My Dad and I have always had a relationship that was, well a bit off or lack of relationship I should say. I don’t blame him. I’m a teenage girl and he is an aging man with very little knowledge on western young girls and what on earth is running through our minds.

The day that everything turned sour, we had gotten into an argument after I came home in a state that perhaps if it had been someone a couple years older then it would have been understandable. I ended up packing everything that I could possibly fit into my school bag and left.

Where I ended up was another place entirely. A junior one-bedroom apartment that was in desperate need of construction. It was actually surprisingly close to where I was living before. So close in fact that you could see on our balcony. My mom sometimes would look out on her balcony to see what was going on.

The apartment belonged to my boyfriend at the time. He supported me the whole period that I was living there. He bought my food, paid the bills, everything. Every so often I’d get a short-lived job as a waitress or at McDonalds and I could pay for groceries. After a while, I wasn’t going to school or working. I was sitting on my ass all day long being a sponge as he worked and paid for everything.

Now looking back on the whole situation, I fully admit that I was taking advantage of him. I’m not a mean or spiteful person, but I often look past how I treat people and the effect that I have on them. It’s a part of my immaturity that I am finally beginning to recognize and change.

There was much hope in the beginning. I felt almost like a responsible adult because I was living on my own and I had no rules or regulations. There was always an interesting group of people that would be there. It never failed to be dominated by the male gender that for the most part, weren’t there to see me. In fact, in the beginning many of them didn’t seem too fond of my presence. But after we all started to get to know each other a bit better, we hung out, played video games, and just chilled. You know the deal. I had already forgotten how important money was because I was too preoccupied with the present instead of the future.

Trying to keep our relationship in one piece while we were living together was a difficult task. We fought constantly, sometimes about nothing at all. We were often miserable with each other afterwards. At the same time, I had never been closer with anyone. He was my other half, who I thought was the only person who understood me. But as time went on, I knew that we were both too young for something that serious and that we needed to focus on our futures. He was applying to university and I needed to go back to school.

Very shortly, the apartment began to look like a disaster zone; garbage everywhere, mouldy food, cigarette butts all over the ground. There were almost always people over so even when we would try to tackle the mess; it would look almost exactly the same way the very next day. It was so overwhelming that it was easy to just give up.

Eventually all the mould and dust accumulated in my lungs and I got very sick. What had seemed like an awesome getaway and a chance to be free ended up being harmful to my health.

Soon enough, things began to go missing and unknown people would be over uninvited. I was over it. I wanted to go home and get back into school. I was miserable and I had absolutely no privacy. It took me a while to realize how much I was missing my family. The idea was the most fun, but in reality it had all become a big mess.

Now that I’m back at home I realized that although it seemed like a fun place to chill and hangout with friends, it wasn’t a home and never could be. Just like most experiences in life, this taught me a tough lesson; even the shiniest things dull with time.watch wild wild west in divx

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