Prologue- remembering
I remember when it was easy.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember my mother telling me that we would go to the beach this summer. I remember her getting teary eyed when I got excited. I remember her teasing me but I was too excited to care. I remember movie theaters and microwaves and paper cutouts and snowflakes and seasons and ice cream and ball games and my dad. I remember it so well.
But it still seems like over a century ago.
Understand?
Me neither.
I don’t understand why they did it. I don’t understand why things are always like this. I don’t understand why I was stripped of my dignity and my pride. I don’t understand.
But I never do.
And I remember and remember and drive myself insane and I cry inside and I keep my face blank and my eyes defiant and my face to the ground because I will not give them the satisfaction of my pain.
We’re now only alowed to go to a few places. I’m allowed the basement (where I sleep), the red room (nothing more than a few folding chairs), and the kitchen. I’m luckier than most, or at least that’s what my mother said.
We’re beaten regularly. ‘To keep us broken’. Bullshit. I’m no more broken than a titanium bullet.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
