I Hope You Dance (Artemi Panarin)

Rough Childhood Theory

Gabriella

"I was never supposed to be here. Every day of my life I remember that I'm not supposed to be alive. I was a mistake, and a pretty bad one at that.

My father, he was a terrible person. I have never met a man more disgusting and vile and terrible as him. He was a drunk and abusive and a idiot and admitting that I'm related to him is more painful than anything he has ever put me through. My whole family suffered in some sort of way because of him, but none more than me.

He got his oldest daughter pregnant at the age of fifteen. They claim it was consensual but it's still illegal, no matter if the sex was wanted or not. She was still under age and that was still her dad, couldn't get much more wrong than that. Before I was even born I was screwed, practically set up for failure. By the time my mom found out she was pregnant it was too late to have a abortion and my dad wouldn't give me up. So they kept me, it was extremely dangerous for us both but I think you can figure out what happened next.

She had me a few weeks before I was supposed to be due, I was extremely lucky there isn't anything structurally wrong with me. Incest carries its own risks such as prematurity and down syndrome, and I was not affected somehow someway. Maybe that was all my luck put into one issue, I don't know.

Anyway, my mom gave birth to me and her and my dad told my grandma that I was given up for adoption, but I wasn't. My grandma wanted me gone forever and my mom wanted me to stay for whatever reason. Maybe to prove that she didn't fuck up or to try and play this almighty teenage mother role. Who knows? My grandma saw me as a sin and a punishment for what her husband and child did and my mom wanted to prove that she didn't complete fuck up, but she defiantly did. So my parents sneaked me back into the house and they raised me in a closet in the basement. That was the second major mistake.

For six years I was kept down there, no sunlight, no human interaction, no nothing. You know a kid can die if it doesn't have human contact? I guess I was one of the lucky ones, or unlucky depending on how you see it. My grandma would come down to store things away and I would have to be completely silent. Sometimes things were slipped into my mouth so I couldn't cry or they would play music loudly to drown it out. Eventually I learned not to move unless I'm told to and stayed that way. They would give me food through a little hole in the wall and I would have to eat in the complete dark. I didn't eat a lot but it was enough to keep me alive. I had some toys and a pencil and paper and nothing else in that little closet. I don't know how they did it, keeping me a secret. What were they trying to prove by doing this to me and to who? I think my grandma knew but she never did say anything. She probably enjoyed the thought of me starving down there. The thought of me crying and not knowing why. They forgot about me sometimes, I tried to escape once but that didn't end well. So I stayed, I look out the small space between the ground and the house and watched them have barbecues in the backyard and talk to people while I was left to wonder where it all went wrong.

Then one day I got really sick. They didn't have a choice but to take me to the hospital. Believe it or not that's when things fell apart.

Upon arrival the doctors were completely shocked, I had survived for six years with the bare minimum. My brain process was so far behind I couldn't communicate with them or understand what was happening. That was the first time I had left the house since I was a little baby. I've never seen another person before or let them touch me. I was in a whole new world and I was in such deep shit. I thought they were going to hurt me but they were just trying to help.

The doctors tried to take me away from home, they were dumbfounded that they left me in that basement malnourished and unloved for so long. Mentally I was basically a new born in six year olds body. The doctors said there was so many things they couldn't fix, like how my speech was practically non-existent because I never learned how to talk or how my body was so weak I shouldn't be able to walk. I didn't have anyone to talk to or walk to so that wasn't a issue up until then. I didn't know how to say many things, that's what happens when you don't talk to anyone for the first six years of your life. I was so scared I wouldn't let the doctors touch me because I thought they would hurt me. That was the only type of human contact I knew. I couldn't tell them of how terrified I was of living. They were shocked because I thought the hospital food tasted good, that's how you know there's a problem. But I was so skinny that you could count every bone in my body. It was scary but I got more care and love in the month at that hospital than I did six years before that.