Saying I had a sad childhood, is an understatement. I would spend copious amounts of my time reading books and floating away to a world of fantasy, and that to me was my escape of the reality that was right in front of me. I was a child. A child should not be left alone all the time, making up imaginary friends, worrying about her loved ones and wishing she’d be by their side instead of resting beside no one, in an empty, cold, queen sized bed. Well, I still lay in a double sized bed for one, until now. But, I was a CHILD, and I was ALONE. And when the bittersweet time comes, when the sky turns into a black abyss, and most of the people retire to a place they call home, no matter how wrecked, sad and lonely it is. It is then; I will no longer be alone. The strange thing is, I still feel lonely. It feels as if like there is some kind of disease that is slowly digging into my ribs and puncturing my fragile and young heart, almost repeatedly. I remember telling myself all the time, that it’s good that I’m feeling these things right now, so when the future comes I won’t be able to feel it anymore because I’ve suffered long enough and I’ve used all of my ‘sad tickets’ earlier in my life, and in my future life, there’d be only ‘happy tickets’ left for me. Yes, those are a thing to me back then, maybe it was all the books that I’ve devoured and mercilessly drowned myself in. Maybe it’s the made-up world that caused me to emulate these theories in my head. I don’t know. I was a child. I was a child, and people would take advantage of it. They would make use of my weakness, to vent their own frustrations about something else or maybe because they just hate me. They hate the youth that is in me, they hate that my heart is too young to understand and even feel everything that there is to feel in this mad world, everything real, tangible or intangible. But what they do not know is I that feel every single strand of emptiness and pain that this pessimistic world has to offer. I may have even felt the pain much more than they did, for I felt it for every single one of them — my loved ones, even if they don’t love me, or at least show it at the time. There’s one person that stood out for me in my childhood though, not because he’s my best friend, not because he’s my friend even, but because every time I needed saving, and even if I didn’t, he was there. Not always, but he was there. He was like a shadow, I almost wasn’t sure if he was real, he was so hard to get a hold on to, to grasp what his image was like. One instance, he will be my savior, and then the next time he will just be a superhero in a comic book that I read. I know he is not made up brought of my young and playful mind, though, I am sure and I swear it with my 8-year old pinky finger that he was real. He would fight for me, physically and emotionally, even with persons he shares his DNA with. I never did understand it, and I never still until now, why he would risk his life in a way and willing to cause someone’s life just for the sake of my happiness. Little did he know, it made me cry so much more, not because of the probability that someone will be a sacrificial lamb of joy and happiness for a brief period of my childhood, but because it was the first time that I knew that I was worth fighting for. Also, I still do not know up to this very moment what his purpose of doing so was. What will he gain from it? Will he benefit from it? When his only witness would be a humid afternoon, the sky and the almost retiring sun, and maybe a couple of spectators? I do not know. I was a child. And I still do not know. Maybe I am still a child. And maybe, I still haven’t used up all of my “sad tickets” yet.
