INTO OTHER MİNDS

This is my journey.

A strange one… unsettling at times… yet somehow still a reason to be grateful.

To where, exactly?

Into other people’s minds.

My name is Lara.

And I want you to witness my story. Because no matter how extraordinary this “gift” of mine may be, if I keep it buried inside any longer… I feel like I might lose my mind.

So…

welcome to my story.

I’m twenty-three now. I have my own life, my own income, my own footing in the world.

But getting here was anything but easy.

I knew my mother, at least a little.

My father, though?a

I never knew him at all.

From what I was told, my mother was only seventeen when she gave birth to me. She had wanted to get rid of me. I wasn’t planned, and I certainly wasn’t born out of love.

She went through difficult times.

I never blamed her for that.

Sometimes even I feel crushed by the weight of the smallest things. Washing dishes, for example, can feel unbearable on the wrong day.

So imagining what she must have felt?

That’s harder than I can explain.

And yet…

here I am.

I grew up in an orphanage.

Honestly, I was an easy child. I adapted quickly, made friends easily, blended into new environments without much effort.

Maybe that’s why a family adopted me so quickly.

They were kind people.

They couldn’t have children of their own. They had tried everything, exhausted every possibility, and eventually decided this was the path life had left for them.

My dear mother and father.

They were almost painfully innocent sometimes.

Even as a child, I remember wondering how people with that much money could remain that genuinely good.

Want to know how old I was when I had thoughts like that?

Seven.

Yes. Seven years old.

Call it mischief, call it arrogance, whatever you want. But I was always unusually perceptive. Adults loved to say I was frighteningly smart for my age.

Everything was fine back then.

My parents did more for me than they ever had to. They gave me comfort, security, opportunities—everything a child could ask for.

Biology never mattered to me.

They were my real parents.

Of course, that didn’t mean I never wondered about the woman who gave birth to me.

I found her eventually.

But that story belongs to another day.

And trust me…

it’s just as strange as this one.

My birthday.

Well, not exactly my birthday.

We celebrated the day I left the orphanage and became part of their family instead. My real birth date was uncertain.

My mother had given birth to me at home. No one knew the exact day, the exact hour, or even how long it took before I was left at the orphanage.

May seventeenth.

That day, my mother looked into my eyes for a long time.

There was something unusually intense in her gaze.

And then—

I love you.

I heard it clearly.

But her lips never moved.

A ringing filled my ears. It felt as if every sound in the room had suddenly drifted far away. Something cold settled heavily in my stomach.

And before I could stop myself, I blurted out—

“I love you too!”

Silence.

My mother and father stared at me.

The confusion on their faces was impossible to miss.

Then my mother smiled.

“I was just about to say that,” she said softly. “You always were too clever for your own good.”

For them, the moment passed.

For me…

it was only the beginning.

Because I knew what I had heard.

That was the first crack.

Even now, I still find that expression strange.

Too clever for your own good.

As if intelligence were something dangerous. Something capable of ruining you from the inside out.

Then again…

nothing about my life was ever normal.

Maybe that’s why people kept saying things like that.

Childhood is a strange thing.

I did things I’m not proud of.

And I’ll tell you all of them.

Eventually.

But for now, just know this:

That was the first day I thought I heard someone else’s mind.

I wish I had been wrong.

Day 1 — End.