Different sides (tome 1)

4- Patient 99

Holbrook's Sanatorium.
The place I came to life.

At first they wanted to keep me with them. They thought I'd have the same problems my mother had. They wanted to prevent every single sign of mental illness in my brain. But I wasn't like my dear mom. I was me.
So they kept me until my mom died, plus one year. Later someone told me that mental problems could be detected very early in a baby's comportement, for example. They kept me that year to make sure I was what they called "normal".

Then, when I got one year and two weeks, they gave me to an orphanage. Of course my mom never wanted that, but in these places Patient aren't very listened. Plus, at this time, she didn't really understand what was happening. Well, probably more than me. I don't remember anything but I often asked the same questions about my birth to several people that were supposed to take care of me. The story wasn't always the same, but with some points in common the stories all had I could distinguish the true of the false.

I never was the loved one in these houses. I came in one of these for the first time when entered Lil' Butterflies' House for Children.
The director, an old woman who was very nice to the other, never truly seemed to care about me. I never was punished, of course, because I was a very silent child. I didn't say a word til I hit five. That was probably why people rejected me. They thought I was late, and différence is seen in a bad way.
When all the other people were playing with each other, building little houses with chairs and a plaid, talking about this and that I was silently sitting on a chair, alone, far away of all noises and souls, drawing on a yellow paper. What was I drawing ? Women. I was inventing them lives, husbands, children, jobs, money. All I could never have because of my condition.
Then I put them on the wall upon my tiny bed on the second floor and I looked at them, thinking : "Am I ever going to get happy ?"

The truth is I really am now.