Dear Avery,
I know what you might be thinking as you read this letter; why? That’s probably the first word that pops into your head. Why did you give me up? Why didn’t you fight to keep me at home? You might even question this; did you love me? The whole reason I gave you away was because I loved you. I wanted nothing to happen to you. I hope this letter will, one day, bring you some sort of comfort and let you begin to forgive me. I hope that, even when the world goes dark and you find your head sinking under the water, you’ll turn to this letter and know that you’re not alone.
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I listened to the girl next to me snore. Her nose crinkled when she breathed out and her mouth would open slightly during the exhale and rather large during the inhale. She had curly red hair, a trait that doesn’t come around often. Just by looking at the sheets, I could tell she was rather small in build. She didn’t even have a budding chest yet; she must be young. She’s lucky.
I turn over and look at the other girl next to me. Her skin is the color of caramel and her hair is like dark chocolate. She had rather small facial features, except her lips; they were plump. Her body was a little curvier than most; her breasts were already beginning to bud. She wouldn’t be here much longer; she probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the month. I would miss her.
That’s what happened when you lived in this camp; hell that’s what happened when you lived in any holding camp.
The camps were designed to house as many children as possible. These were the children the parents had to give away based on the laws that had been enacted after the war broke out before my birth. Households could only have a maximum of four children. After they reached their fourth child, both parents were forced to go through sterilization, where their reproductive materials were removed. If they got pregnant before the surgery, they had only three options; send the child to a holding camp, give the child to a family who couldn’t have children of their own, or kill the child before the government found out. Some women were kept as surrogates for families who could afford it; those women were usually in poverty and desperate for some sort of income. Children of single parent households were immediately taken away and sent to live in camps. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the war torn world, the females have lost their rights all together. Unless they were wealthy, held a position in power, or well-known, many women were stripped of their rights. Most women were taken from the families and homes, forcibly divorced from their husbands, and sent off to a holding camp designed for women. Men would visit these camps and the women were auctioned off. The highest bidder was granted the woman. Men were allowed to bid as many times as they wanted and marry any amount they wanted. The law still stood though; only four children per household. Many of the men who had multiple wives forced them to live in separate households in order to evade the law.
If a woman wasn’t bought before she reached the age of 35, she was sterilized and sold as a worker, a sex slave, a care taker, or hired by the government. Some women were hired to work in the very camps their children were or the very camps they were forced to stay in. Some women weren’t hired at all; those unfortunate enough were taken away and never heard from again. There weren’t many women over the age of 45.
If a boy was born and sent off to a child holding camp, they weren’t better off. Most of the boys were sold into the working class immediately. They could bid on a wife if they wanted, but most didn’t have enough money to do so. If that was the case, they would voluntarily be sterilized and sent to work. Some boys were sold to other men as workers, or as sex slaves. Even pedophiles capitalized off of this. Boys were even granted help from the government, depending on the household they had come from. Unfortunately, most didn’t know their parents; we were only infants when we were sent off.
This was my life. This was the hell I had been surrounded with for too long. This was the nightmare world I lived in; where the person sleeping next to you may not be there the next day. Life literally ticks away, and it only speeds up.
