Brady Boone
The first time I met her, I was twenty-seven years old and already convinced God had forgotten I existed.
But to understand why that night changed everything, you need to know where my story began...
My father was a broken man. The war took everything from him. By the time he came home, he was nothing more than an empty shell of the man he used to be. No one even understood why the war had been fought. It had taken so many lives and destroyed so many others, yet nobody could explain what it was all for.
My mother wasn't any better.
She had already given up on life long before I was born. She was there physically, but mentally, she was gone. Most days, she barely spoke. She just simply existed.
Then she became pregnant.
With me.
There was no excitement. No celebration. My birth wasn't something either of them looked forward to. If anything, it only made things worse.
Instead of finding happiness in becoming a father, my dad sank even deeper into the hatred that had already consumed him. Every day, he became colder. Every day, he looked more tired, more angry, and more distant from everyone around him.
And then I was born.
If my arrival wasn't enough, fate had one more cruel surprise waiting.
Something had gone wrong while I was still in the womb.
The doctors never gave a clear answer. Maybe it was the drugs my mother relied on to numb herself. Maybe it was stress.
Whatever the reason, my face never fully developed.
I was born with only one working eye, and a half-paralyzed face.
People tried not to stare. Most of them failed.
My father never tried to hide how he felt. Every time he looked at me, his face twisted with disappointment.
"The day you were born was the worst day of my life."
Those words became as familiar as my own name.
"You're nothing but a burden."
"You're an accident."
At first, I cried whenever he said those things.
But after a while, I stopped.
Eventually... I started believing every word.
Needless to say, I hated myself. I felt ugly, and my father did everything in his power to make me understand just how much of a freak I was.
He never put a hand on me, nor my mother... "I'll give him that," I suppose. But abuse comes in many forms. And despite not having the guts to kill me himself, I knew he wanted nothing more for me to just disappear.
Even as a young boy, I found myself wishing the same thing.
That would all change the night I met my very own angel...
