She vanished just as the year ended, leaving her old life to die with 2024.

Leana walked away from the party, celebratory shouts and cheers behind her as she went, and down the the dark street dotted with the soft glow from the streetlights. 'New year new me, right?' she thought morbidly as she turned the corner and headed toward her small apartment, not even a few blocks away, 'time to start fresh.' She was at her front door in no time, and greeted with a quietness as she stepped over the threshold into the cramped matchbox of a house.

Nothing gave away what commenced before leaving to go to the New Year's Eve party, nothing but the volleyball, speckled with blood on one side...her blood. It stained the ball by the doorway of the room she shared with her boyfriend, Adam, as if to taunt her silently.

"A new year, and yet you're the same woman. Nothing's changed and nothing will."

'I can change,' Leana thought to herself, as she made her way across the room towards the volleyball, 'I can change.' She knelt down in the doorway, as if to pick it up, and instead just stayed there staring at it. Allowing the memory to finally replay in her mind after pushing it to the back of her brain all night, so that her poker face wouldn't break in the crowd full of people. She could feel her body recoil a bit as she pictured the argument that broke out earlier between her an Adam, his vicious stare and venomous words that hurt more than any beating she took from him. The climatic tension that rose when she tried to break things off, as she stood in the doorway, thinking that she'd just walk away from the relationship and into 2025 a free woman. The moment the tension broke with the blood vessel in her nose when the volleyball connected like a brick to her face. She didn't know it before then, but volleyballs could make a great weapon. 'Anything can be a weapon in the wrong hands,' she thought as she stared silently at the seemingly harmless sphere with her blood on it. 'Anything from balls to bowls to dresser drawers, even my own body can be used as a weapon against me.' Leana sat back on her heels as the tears in her eyes turned the bloody volleyball into an array of colors blurring together. "Don't forget secrets," it seemed to mock her mercilessly, as hot tears spilled over, "secrets are the most powerful weapon of them all."

She stood up and went into the bathroom at the end of the hall, not even stopping to shed the heavy winter coat she wore, and stood in front of the mirror of the medicine cabinet above the rusty sink. As she went to open the cabinet, searching for her relief in a bottle, she heard a small whisper in the back of her mind, almost muffled with how soft it was.

"I love you, Leana," she froze as she looked into her tear-stained reflection,

"I love you."

So soft, yet as clear as a glass of fresh water, the whisper repeated once more as she allowed her eyes to focus on the reflection of what was hanging behind her. The wooden Cross that she insistently hung in their bathroom immediately after moving in, telling an incredulous Adam that "Jesus was with them, and would protect them." The Cross that, in a fit of drunken rage after another argument, Adam used to beat her across the face so badly that she needed stitches. The Cross that seemed to be the representation of a God that didn't care enough to hear her desperate cries, as she sat in her bathroom pleading and praying for a way out. Something opened up in that moment, as Leana turned to look squarely at it, with new tears brimming in her eyes, "You don't love me," she said in a cold breathy tone as she felt a boiling rage rise inside of her. "No. I don't believe that. Because love doesn't stay silent when I'm begging for help. Love doesn't doesn't sit and watch the abuse be taken year after year after year! LOVE can be trusted to help me when I need it!" Leana was screaming as fat tears fell from her eyes and her nose throbbed a bit, as if to remind her of another reason to be angry at Jesus. She turned back towards the sink, and closed her eyes, trying to settle the waves of fury rolling against the walls of her heart. 'If You love me, the why do You let him do this to me,' she thought bitterly as she swung the cabinet door open defiantly, 'why do You let him beat me? Why do You let him force sex on me? Why do You let him torture and manipulate me?!' She stared at the pill bottle in her hand, her relief, her peace. Her escape.

She opened the bottle and dropped two of them in her hand, and then from there into her mouth, swallowing them adamantly. And then, unlike every other time, she stared at the bottle in her hand, as a thought raced by and then started to solidify in her mind. It had passed by a few other times, in a few other situations, but it never became more than that. A passing thought. Now it was bigger, and it seemed inescapable this time, as if demanding her attention once and for all. 'It doesn't have to be this way. You can take your life into your own hands, after all it doesn't seem like God cares much about you. You can finally rest.' Leana opened the pill bottle once again and almost robotically, put it closer to her eye to peer inside of it. There seemed to be enough, but something was stopping her.

Fear.

She didn't want to die, she just wanted out of this situation, out from under Adam and all of his abusive ways, out of the stress, out of the pain. 'Coward,' she thought as she looked up at her reflection again, 'too scared to leave either way. You're weak. You coward of a woman.' The word repeated over and over in her mind, until it was in her ears to the beat of her fist punching the mirror harder than she thought she could. And then punching the wood behind the bloodied glass after it shattered into a bunch of jagged pieces. Leana didn't know how long she sat there, after sinking to the floor in exhaustion and tears, but after a while her tears dried and she got up, and picking up a jagged piece of glass, she left the bathroom and headed to the room.