Some people don't know what it's like to feel unwanted, depleted, and neglected. To those who do, I feel true sympathy, for no one has felt for me. No one has endured what I have. And no one has sympathy for me.
Sometimes I cry. I'll sit alone in a dark room, for the light does not exist. My world, my life, my thoughts are encased in a cloud of eternal darkness. That very black cloud had swallowed me in adolescence.
At birth, I was just like any other newborn. Curious about the new world that surrounded them. Yet I was never introduced to care, affection, love. I was born into the vile hands of a woman who cared for nothing more than to watch me suffer.
My first year was probably the worst year of my life. I would sit alone in my crib, all day and night, staring intently at a fluorescent coat hanger the woman referred to as my "mobile". For this was the only way to entertain myself.
Sometimes I would go nights without food. The drunken woman would return home with a man or collapse on the couch nightly. From time to time she would have a vague recollection of my existence, brought on by the blood curdling sound of a dying child screaming for help.
By the age of 2, I became suffused with self sufficiency. I could read, write, cook, etc. Each morning I would rise precisely at 7am, get the woman off the couch, give her medication for her hangover, get her out the door, then I would get the rest of the day to myself. I would cook, clean, draw, and do whatever I wanted.
I didn't know how to smile until age 3, when I started preschool. The woman didn't even care enough to take me to school daily. She sent me away to get my "useless, bratty, selfish self," as she called it, out of the house. I had to find my way to school on the first day.
Walking to school brought back the startling recollection of the news broadcasts from the mornings where I would sit aimlessly in front of the television. A young girl had gotten kidnapped by a man and his wife while she walked to her bus stop. Her mother never stopped looking for her. She would look up at the moon every night and think about her poor daughter and what torture she must have been going through.
Tears would run down my face at the very thought of having someone in my life who cares. My brain contained not even a vague recollection of affection. My life was nothing more than a bottomless pit of neglect.
