My mother and I would probably never see each other again.
Whatever love I had for her seemed to die that night.
It was like a young flower in spring, suddenly killed by frost.
After that, I threw myself into practicing my handwriting.
I wanted to become good enough to help the principal with simple copying work.
The school was feeding me and giving me a place to live.
I had to make myself useful.
I couldn’t just take what they gave me without giving something back.
I was different from the other girls at school.
They loved talking about other people’s lives.
They compared their clothes, their food, and everything they owned.
They spent hours gossiping about people.
I wasn’t interested in any of that.
I only thought about myself.
Every day, I watched my own life closely and tried to understand what was happening inside me.
My shadow became my constant companion.
In that empty life, it was almost the only friend I had.
I learned to take care of myself.
There was no one left to worry about me, so I had to do it myself.
I learned to comfort myself when I was sad.
I encouraged myself when I was afraid.
And when I made mistakes, I was the one who warned myself and blamed myself.
I knew myself better than anyone.
Sometimes it felt as if I were standing outside my own body, watching another girl live my life.
Even the smallest change in my body or mood could affect me deeply.
Sometimes I was frightened for no reason.
Sometimes I felt secretly happy.
Most of the time, though, I simply felt lost.
I had no idea where my life was going.
So I became extremely careful with myself.
I treated my life like a delicate flower, afraid that one wrong move might destroy it.
I didn’t dare dream about the future.
Getting through one day was already enough.
When you have nothing to look forward to, tomorrow doesn’t feel real.
The only thing that helped me tell one day from another was the food at school.
Lunch.
Dinner.
Those two meals were almost like the hands of a clock.
Without them, I might have forgotten what day it was.
Maybe even what month it was.
When you have no hope, time itself becomes blurry.
I felt trapped in a world without light or direction.
One day simply followed another.
Nothing changed.
Nothing happened.
Only when I thought about my mother did I remember that I had actually been living all those years.
Unlike the other girls, I never looked forward to holidays.
I didn’t care about festivals or New Year’s celebrations.
Those happy days belonged to families.
I had no family left.
They had nothing to do with me.
But my body continued to grow whether I wanted it to or not.
I could feel myself changing year by year.
The older I became, the less secure I felt.
I was afraid of the future.
I was afraid of the unknown.
And, more than anything, I was afraid of the person I might become.
As I grew older, I also began to realize that I was actually quite pretty.
That became the one small comfort in my otherwise miserable life.
Being pretty gave me a little confidence.
Even though I had nothing and came from a poor family, at least I had something that made me feel less small.
For a while, that thought made me feel good.
Then it became bitter.
And after the bitterness came something I almost felt ashamed to admit.
Pride.
I had nothing.
I had no money, no family, and no one to depend on.
But at least I was pretty.
That was the one thing I could call my own.
Then another thought frightened me.
I remembered my mother when she was young.
She had been beautiful too.
And her beauty hadn’t brought her happiness.
It had only led her into one hardship after another.
I couldn’t help wondering if the same thing would happen to me.