Looking at the night sky, feeling the breeze of the wind gently caressing me, my heart was heavy, full of contradicting emotions and questions. My mind detached itself from such a mess and started wondering about the most trivial things, recalling old sentiments, old experiences, and old questions…
~~~
Sometimes I wonder how a normal person can enter the other ‘face’ of the world. Just where should I go? What should I do?
I’m not trying to do anything bad, I just think that that part of the world is more ‘true’ than this one, where everyone deceives everyone, even friends and family, just to save the facade they put on. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to escape. It’s not a matter of ‘kill or be killed,’ it’s worse: it’s a matter of ‘deceive or be deceived,’ and when everything starts to fall apart, because the truth you’ve been hiding is now on the spotlight, you’re all alone.
Since birth my life’s been a misery: my biological mother abandoned me right after my birth in a dumpster. Afterwards I was taken by a bystander to a catholic orphanage, there a Sister gave me a name, and there my life at the orphanage began. I didn’t get along well with the other kids, at first I didn’t know why, but, for some reasons that I still don’t know, it didn’t matter to me if I was alone or not…
…Still, it hurt me a lot when they called me ‘monster’ and the like. They did it from the beginning. Criminals and ‘the other face of the world’ sure are scary, but kids that don’t know the boundaries between good and bad, and thus don’t have any restraint, think it’s ‘good’ to tell others kids everything that comes to their mind as long as they can have fun; naturally when one kid starts doing it, pretty much everyone will follow the ‘flow.’
The most shocking similar episode, was when I was seven years old: in a park I saw a kid fighting with a girl of about the same age, then the girl, who was losing because of the difference between a girl and a boy’s natural strength, began to cry and pleaded to stop the fight, but as if the boy was a retarded deaf, he wouldn’t stop punching and kicking. I thought that helping that girl was the obvious thing to do, but it seems I was wrong, it seems that I just caused trouble…
Anyway, to help the girl, I needed to stop the boy, so at first I stood between the two and tried to talk with him, instead he took one of his toys and he threw it at me, I fell and he started to bully the girl again. I stood up. When I did it, the look on the face of the two kids was the look of scared people. I froze for a moment, because I didn’t understand why.
Since that at the moment didn’t matter, I brushed off the questions that were inside my mind and marched toward the boy while trying to make an ‘intimidating face’ and agitating my right fist in the air. He immediately covered up his face with his arms. I had an idea. I had an incredible urge to put to practice that idea. I rushed at him while shouting, in response he began to cry out “mommy!” and other pathetic things.
It was working.
At the last instant, when my fist was less than one centimeter away from his arms, I stopped and yelled “BAM!” It worked out nice, or so I thought. The kid, scared to death, fell and pissed himself a little. After realizing what happened that half-assed ‘bully,’ who now wouldn’t stop bawling, ran to his mother. I didn’t realize that the girl was still paralyzed from fear while looking at me, until I stopped laughing.
I approached her: “Don’t worry, didn’t you just see it? I got that brat to stop hurting you, and also gave him a payback!” I said while smiling. She covered her face with an arm while trembling, then she shout: “S… stay away… STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU MONSTER!” and ran away. I was petrified. It wasn’t the first time someone called me a ‘monster’, but in some way, it felt different, and not only because she had a really scared face on her.
Anyway, after a few seconds I realized that all the people in the park were staring at me. I ran home, no, I mean, I ran to the orphanage. I was still unsure as to whether I wanted to call it home or not. At any rate, once I returned, a Sister saw me, and began panicking. Again, I couldn’t understand the situation, which irked me a little. The only thing I understood were the words “Do not worry, now we’ll go to hospital really fast, okay?!”
I did not know why we had to go there or way would I be worried, but I still nodded. Still, I didn’t think anyone would’ve noticed if I was ever worried. Or sad. Or lonely. Seeing my face twist and contort in those ugly emotions appeared to be fun to my fellow orphans, so I began concealing them, keeping a poker face as much as possible, and as time passed I became good at it. So good that maintaining my expressionless face became normal, it didn’t require any conscious effort anymore.
~~~
The Sister was talking with a fairly old doctor in the corridor. I had fun trying to recognize the various facial expressions the Sister had, because the doctor’s face only gave out ‘sadness’ and ‘pity.’ Well, it’s not like she was much different. Once I remembered that they were talking about me, it was my turn to show ‘sadness,’ mostly because they noticed me staring at them. After a while the two of them came to talk to me…
The doctor was the one who started speaking, “Ahem… Now kid listen to me very well: the wound on your forehead caused a light TBI, also know as Traumatic Brain Injury, so in the next few days you’ll feel dizzy, you will either have your vision blurred or tired eyes, but more importantly, you could also…”
Before I could hear the rest of the phrase, I lost consciousness.
I woke up in the morning, thinking about how normal kids, in similar occasions, would receive visits by their friends and family members… Stopping my depressing thoughts there, I found myself in a bed of the hospital. The Sister from yesterday was sleeping next to me… I thought it was kind of cute, since I couldn’t see her face. Ahah.
Later, a nurse finished telling me what that old doctor was explaining to me the day before; it seemed that the reason I had lost consciousness was also because of that TBI. Well, fortunately this ‘little’ incident wasn’t anything serious.
A few days after that, I returned to school like normal.
Kiyuta 