the gift - chapter 1

Chapter 1

         11:08.  It’s dark outside.  I see the tree branches through the window and behind them is the slate gray sky.  Any other day I might see the branches willowing in the wind, the leaves rustling, and the smoky sky with the wisped clouds.  I might see all of it and think it beautiful, any other day.  But today is different.  Today I have learned to see differently.  Today I have broken and decided that today I want to die.

***

         It’s 4 August 2003.  I’m sitting the back of a crowded van, slowly inching through Manila traffic.  It’s just after 4 in the afternoon and the heat is stifling.  Adrenaline is rushing through my veins as I near my new home.  I am excited.

         It is 5:30.  The van has arrived at my dorm.  I step out of the van and grab my bags.  They’re heavy and I feel as though both my shoulders are going to fall off.  I walk down to the basement entrance, realize that it’s the wrong door and lug my bags back up the stairs and drag myself through the front door.  Everyone is at the table eating dinner.  Everyone being about 14 girls and 2 boys, all unfamiliar faces.  My excitement has turned to fear.  The next thing I know I’m on the floor being greeted by the only familiar face in the building.  For I can immediately tell, that this place is not a home, but an empty building.  There may be people living in it, furniture cluttering the rooms and clothing piled in the laundry hamper, but this place is void of love, void of friendship, void of anything.  It is empty.  That night I fall asleep in my empty room.  The next morning I wake up.  I wake up to an empty building and I cry.

That is the first time I have truly emoted over the past 8 months.

***

         Tears are streaming down my face.  For the first time in months, I remember why it is that I hate crying.  People don’t understand, they can’t understand what it’s like to be me.  I spend 8 months trying to feel.  I cut, I purged, I binged, I burnt, I did everything I could to elicit feeling, yet I just couldn’t.  When I finally did feel anything, the emotion I felt was the deepest feeling of aloneness that I have ever encountered.  You may not realize it right now, but trust me, that when I say that this aloneness was worse than anything I have or had ever experienced, that means a lot.  Because aloneness, seems to be the only emotion I do feel.  Aloneness, I believe, is what I was born for.  It is my curse, yet it is also my gift.  It is who I am.