I think I have finally found some purpose for this little page of mine. I know we all have our stories to tell and so, I have mine. It doesn't have a clear beginning, nor does it have an ending quite yet, but it grows out to stretches miles away from my real mind, exploring continents rather unknown. I do not know whether it will interest you. I know for sure that it has done well in bothering me and tearing me to pieces. How about you decide for yourself? All names and places will be changed, countries, shops, you name it. It shall be the truth, though, open honesty which has for some time been too foreign to me. I lie in the guise of honesty and sincerity when it comes to coping with trouble that I have not caused. A lie is sometimes much more believable than the truth. But this is what I wish to delete. What I am hoping to forget.
The memory is protective, like a prison cell with bars. But within these bars is still a flow of energy, something is taken, something is given back. Something so small it will fit through. Like fingertips or my nose. One of the reasons why I wish to return to the past is that I could, somehow, remember it again in a better way. Not the depressive, angry and regretting tune in which it all it was played but merely the events that took place and how it really affected me. I can tell you know that once I am honest I can be horrifying, disgusting, scary even. This is me. I am opening up just for you. You're free to feel special.
My real life began when I was about thirteen years old. Thirteen and three quarters to be precise. My ways of living were quite normal then. I remember a day when I suddenly stopped when walking to school, looking at the sky. I was normal. But why? Why was I not fatter, why was I not thinner, why was I not a vegetarian? I'd seen all this. In the mind of a child which I think I partly was back then, being ordinary was safe. Then you see things, hear things. Some people are special, I had been told. I remember my fifth grade teacher had once taught these twins who had a certain disease. No hair grew on their body, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. I saw them once while grocery shopping and didn't think them weird at all. I thought them special, like I'd been taught. They looked so calm.
The same thing happens to a school kid every year. At least, this is how it went for me. I always wanted to be better in this and that, to be sick less --- I almost always was --- and to pay more attention, and in the end, to receive better grades. I had my first setback that fall when I became ill and had to stay home. I remember this well because I was working on a biology project. While I was still a little sick and we had this special day at school during which we were supposed to go to our parents' workplaces in order to raise money for charity, my father decided I was well enough to go with him and while working look for leaves and such that I needed for my project. English isn't my first language but I'd fallen in love with it ever since I was eight years old and, knowing this, my father let me take part in some of the university lectures that were in English. I loved how it felt to be among all those people. They seemed like my people for a reason I couldn't understand. We talked about leadership in business management, advertising, the media. I remember signing the worksheet that we had to take to school while drinking tea in the university café. My mother came over to pick us up. I sat in the backseat, holding a maple leaf between my fingers, spinning it around as I looked at the giant trees outside the car. The spinning of the leaf made me realize something, more like remember. I had discussed families more than once with my friends. I felt so proud as to have a family that I called whole, with parents and nice relatives and my sister. All the other girls' parents had been divorced except for me and one girl, the one I was the closest with.
My birthday was coming up within a week so my mother and I went shopping, she told me I could buy whatever I wanted to wear. This was not like her but I ignored this little foggy feeling and shuffled from one shop to the next. I found a backless, white dress that I loved but once seeing the look in her eyes I was ready to give it up. But without a word of protest she bought it for me, saying I looked very grown up and very beautiful. And even though it would usually be out of the question even to wear a sleeveless shirt to school, she let me wear the dress without a bra so that my back was fully exposed. I remember the wind blowing on me that day, how it felt different, liberating. I could not have known how different it all would be within another week or so. And not at all liberating, more like a cage. A very small, crowded cage.
