My life was full of illusions.
The loving parents who couldn’t figure out why their son wouldn’t talk.
The puzzled professionals who tried everything in their journals and research to try and coax me out of it.
I was a riddle they couldn’t figure out. And after a time, nobody wanted to.
I was the tree that fell in the middle of the empty, barren woods. Nobody heard my branches break because no one wanted to acknowledge the real problem.
I was the forgotten boy.
Until them.
The Renaissance men.
They accepted me for what I was. They didn’t push me to be anything else. If I wanted to draw fucked up shit that would’ve had my Mum screaming and running off to the nearest psychologist, they let me. There was no judgement. I could finally be me.
But life likes to knock you back down sometimes. Remind you there is no happy ever after for boys like me.
I wanted to be free to love her.
But how could I?
When there was a devil breathing down my neck.
A devil from my past, who was ready to take the last shreds of my life and crush them in his deceitful, ugly, pain-riddled grasp.
I’d spent my whole childhood living in his hell. Now, he wanted to drag me back there and I had the fight of my life ahead of me to try and survive the unspeakable.
Would I survive?
I didn’t think so.
All I could do now was pray.