Chapter 7:

'When I try to remember the past, there was nothing there from the beginning. I could remember being conscious after several years of existing. It's not like I haven't existed before that, it's my memories just fading through age. And from the moment my conscience was born, it all started wrong. I could remember the day where it all went wrong. The day I came home and was there alone for the first time. Alone. The first moments of my conscience, alone. Faintly later, a memory is still alive, the conversation I heard with my Aunt and brother. I was four at that time, in the worst case, maybe five. My brother was seven years older than me. That older brother… They too, left. Just like my parents had. So again, I was alone. Though I was placed under a roof, served with a meal, there was no company in it. The potatoes didn't talk, the tiles in the roof couldn't read me a story for a good night's sleep, the bricks in the wall couldn't hug me, even though they kept me safe. My existence was shared with the stranger family I was assigned to, assigned more like a task than a member of the family, but with my conscience, I was still alone. I was an object, keeping to myself for two years, entertained with the cracks on the walls, the moths inhabiting the attic and the old toys that were placed here with me.

I was forced to enter school not because of my parents' goodwill, rather the obligation given to me by the state. But the day I went through those doors, I saw their faces, and those faces are their first I still remember: satisfaction, disdain and pure annoyance. That day brought the realisation that I merely lived there because of outside interference. I never was invited to live there. I was just a liability for money. 

Another memory is of the letter I received in fourth grade: My parents have deceased. Whilst robbing a bank armed, they were shot seven times before dying on the spot. The moment I read it, I couldn't feel anything. Those figures, those persons were just unnamed faceless pseudo characters that I hadn't seen in my entire life. There was a funeral invitation with the letter, which I answered yes to. But never have I arrived at the funeral. From what I've heard after that, nobody except the priest had actually shown up.

When I was twelve, I had to switch up schools again. My recollection of school isn't that great, but I do remember never being there welcome either. But I desperately searched for the love I've never had, the validation that was never given to me, the approval of somebody else other than my own thoughts. I wanted to change at that time, I wanted to be more normal. But when it began to get normal, I was always dragged out into a new school to start the cycle again. Harsh, isn't it? But that was what reality had to offer, and I could only comply. 

When I turned fourteen, I was kicked out of under the roof that held me captive for ten years. I wasn't told anything besides that I was lucky my expenses would still be paid. That, I was sent to a rundown apartment. On arrival, it was an infested shithole without any stable flooring and moldy walls. Yes, this was the comfort that I had indeed expected. Tracing along those walls felt like digging claws through thick webs of old negligence. Whoever ran this apartment before giving it to me was clearly not interested in cleaning it. Behind those layers of fungi I could feel deep regret and remorse. Something lived here, and it couldn't stay here anymore. And I was the one assigned to clear the place of those past regrets. The question was not if I'd do so, I had no choice after all, the question rather was how I would fix it, and whose apartment was this before the ownership transfer. I cleaned it through the days, placing the furniture inside. Those old relics of the past, my relics. It was not a lot I had to name, though it did fill the room decently. The tiles were changed, walls cleaned and the plaster changed. But no matter my efforts, the room looked still so isolating, almost similar to a mental facility… Monthly, I got sent two and a half thousand dollars to my bank account. Never was a name attached to it, mostly it said: Unknown. That all could pay off all my bills for the month. Only thing that I saw attached to the transfer was one condition written in the 'Notices' section: 'You are obligated to go to school until you turn 18. If you don't follow as said, you will not be this comfortable.' This was a threat. And I was smarter to take it seriously.

In school, I was in the second highest grade of middle school, one of the oldest amongst my peers. But the typical perk of being the oldest didn't apply here for one big reason: My physical body did not correspond to my real age. I still looked average, maybe even underdeveloped… I had classmates, so to say, were they friends? More or less, or at least I thought so. When in the room, they talked to me when I talked to them, they ate during the lunch break with me if I sat next to them. When I made a joke, they laughed, but all those things they did were only done if I initiated them. For them, I only existed out of my own will, never their own. After the first few weeks I was there at school, the gears shifted. I still talked, I still sat with them, but now my own Information spilled, giving everyone a drop of knowledge about me. Parentless, hopeless, without family and alone. How it spread though I didn't mention it at all… who knows. Whatever there was, the effect of that was the typical picking on me. Verbal jokes, accusations, mockery, the whole palette of bullying. Back then, I remember I didn't pay it mind at all, I just accepted it as it was. I was trying to finally once have at least my existence acknowledged, and this was it, even if not in a positive way.

Then, one day, change herself knocked on fate's door.