It was almost always the same.

I would wake up in the half-light of morning. The sun burning my eyes through where-ever it came. I'd spit out the blood that had seeped between my clenched teeth as I'd fight back at the last minute, hoping for once that sheer will-power could change who I am. Crawl over to the cupboard or drawers - maintain my decency.

I'll fall onto the bed and lie within the sheets, watching the seconds tick by, waiting for the fateful knock that cautiously lay patient until I knocked back. It's safe.

Sometimes, when I first started to realise what I was, what I became, I wouldn't answer the door. I think they knew. I would lie and stare into the nothingness that became my reality. Was I safe? Even I didn't know. Don't know.

Put on a brave face, even though the scars of the other one bite through. The iodine hurts but the thoughts hurt more, the slight fragments of memories; and yet even more painful, terrifying, the not knowing.

When I was given the offer to go, have a life, I wanted to do nothing more but crawl back into the covers and never answer the knock again. But it came coming, and then one day it didn't. I think he knew that was all it would take, because there wasn't anything else to do. So I took the offer but kept looking back.

On the last day of that life I woke up wide awake. Everyone was over the moon, I was under it. Leaving was the one thing I had dreaded ever since I came, since before. I knew there was nothing and no-one out there but myself to help and that all my hard work, educating, may have been for nothing.

My first job, it was difficult. I would often go in the day after it had happened because I knew if I didn't I wouldn't have any where to go the next day. I was fired after the second episode. The injuries were too noticeable, I was too noticeable.

My first day back in the old life; I felt a nostalgic ache of love and pain seep back in. The man I had come to see as almost another father welcomed me as not only that but as my superior, and yet again my teacher. Only this time he wasn't teaching me how to make a living, instead; how to live.