I remember my childhood the way one remembers a nightmare—
not clearly, not fully, but enough to feel it long after waking.
Everything about me was wrong from the beginning.
At school, I wasn't just invisible—I was a target. The kind of boy people noticed only when they needed someone to laugh at, or someone to use. Their voices followed me through hallways, sharp and careless, like stones thrown for entertainment.
Home was no refuge.
It was quieter… but heavier.
The kind of silence that presses against your chest until breathing feels like work.
I had two brothers and a little sister. We existed more than we lived. There was no luxury, no comfort—just survival stitched together day by day. Still, I told myself I had something worth holding onto.
My mind.
If nothing else, it could be my escape.
And somehow, despite everything, people gathered around me.
They called themselves my friends.
Girls smiled at me. Some even said they liked me. Their laughter sounded real enough, their attention warm enough that I almost believed it. For a moment, I allowed myself to step into the illusion—that I was one of those boys you see in films, effortlessly wanted, effortlessly seen.
But illusions don't last.
They crack.
And when they do, they cut deep.
I overheard them one day—voices careless, unguarded.
They laughed about me.
About how easy I was.
How I did their homework without question.
How useful I was.
That word stayed with me.
Useful.
Not liked. Not valued.
Just… useful.
Maybe it was because I didn't belong. An outsider in South Africa, easy to place, easy to exploit. A piece on a board I didn't even know I was playing on.
I won't lie—the girls were beautiful. But beauty without truth is hollow. I would rather walk alone in silence than stand among people who smile with knives hidden behind their teeth.
Loneliness, at least, doesn't pretend.
I didn't grow up in South Africa.
I only finished there.
After that, I went back "home"—if you could call it that—and spent five years waiting for life to begin.
It never did.
No emails. No opportunities.
Just days folding into each other like pages no one would ever read.
But my story was already broken long before that.
I was raised in a place where softness didn't survive.
Where childhood wasn't something you experienced—it was something taken from you.
My mother left when I was young.
Not slowly. Not gently.
Just… gone.
Whatever love was supposed to exist between us disappeared with her. My father didn't stay either. He left behind accusations and bitterness, blaming her for things that were never true.
And somewhere in the middle of their absence… was me.
Forgotten. Unclaimed.
My mother, still a child herself in many ways, left me in the care of strangers in a village while she went to South Africa to start again.
And I—
I stayed behind.
Not as a son.
Not as family.
Just… a responsibility passed from one hand to another.
I told myself it was her fault. All of it. Every empty night, every quiet ache, every piece of anger that settled into my bones.
Because if she had stayed…
maybe I wouldn't have learned to fear love.
Maybe I wouldn't push people away before they could leave.
But "maybe" is a dangerous word.
It builds worlds that never existed.
Growing up without parents teaches you things no child should know.
How hunger feels when it becomes normal.
How to sleep while your stomach twists itself into knots.
How to walk into school wearing torn clothes and pretend not to see the difference between you and everyone else.
I watched other children being loved.
It was always so… effortless for them.
A hand on the shoulder. A voice calling their name with warmth. A home waiting for them at the end of the day.
I had none of that.
No mother.
No father.
Only strangers who tolerated my presence.
If that was the beginning, then what followed was the descent.
Love, to me, was fiction.
Something that existed in books, in films, in stories told to comfort people who needed to believe in something good.
But not in my life.
Never in mine.
So I learned to perform.
Every day, I wore a mask so convincing that even I almost believed it. I smiled when I needed to. Laughed when it was expected. Nodded as if I belonged.
But inside—
there was nothing.
Or maybe there was too much.
Pain that had nowhere to go.
Anger that had no voice.
Some days, I wandered the streets, asking for food. Not because I didn't have a place to stay—but because the place I had was never truly mine.
Nights were worse.
They stretched endlessly, filled with quiet tears I refused to let anyone hear. The darkness felt alive, feeding on everything I tried to bury.
And yet, even then… I lied to myself.
I told myself this was love.
That this was what care looked like.
It was easier than accepting the truth.
I wasn't loved.
I was tolerated—because I was useful. Because I did well in school. Because I was something that could one day become something valuable.
To them, I wasn't a child.
I was an investment.
Then one day, she came back.
My mother.
They told me like it was good news. Like it was something worth celebrating.
"She wants to see you."
For a moment, time felt… uncertain. Like something inside me was supposed to move—but didn't.
When I saw her, she ran to me, wrapped her arms around me, and cried like she had been holding it in for years.
But I stood still.
Cold.
Empty.
I didn't cry.
I didn't move.
I didn't feel.
Love was something I had never learned. And now, standing in front of it—or whatever this was—I realized I didn't even know how to respond.
She apologized.
Over and over.
Her voice breaking under the weight of regret.
But I had already built my truth.
"I'm used to it," I told her.
Used to being left behind.
Used to being forgotten.
In that moment, something inside me closed for good.
I told myself I had no one.
Not her. Not anyone.
Just me.
Love became a lie in my eyes. A story people told themselves to survive the emptiness.
"They say a man doesn't cry."
So I decided—
I wouldn't feel at all.
Five years later, I returned to South Africa.
I was 25.
November.
The air felt the same, but I wasn't.
This time, I came back with purpose. Or maybe desperation dressed as purpose.
I applied for a job as a teacher at a nearby school. It wasn't a dream—it was a chance. And sometimes, a chance is all you get.
My mother offered me a place to stay.
I refused.
Not out of anger.
But because I couldn't afford to need anyone.
Not anymore.
I wanted to build something that belonged to me. Something untouched by abandonment, by betrayal, by the ghosts that followed me across years and borders.
This wasn't a fresh start.
There's no such thing.
This was something else.
A quiet, relentless war.
A war against everything that tried to break me—
and almost did.