I was born in a thunderstorm. I grew up overnight.
I played alone, I played on my own.
I survived.

I wanted everything I never had, like the love that comes with light…

I found solace in the strangest place, way in the back of my mind.
I saw my life in a stranger's face: it was mine.

I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go,
Where the wind don't change, and nothing in the ground can ever grow.
No hope, just lies, and you're taught to cry in your pillow.
But I survived.

I'm still breathing, I'm still breathing.

I'm alive. I'm alive. You took it all, but I'm still breathing.

(Sia, Alive)

I still don't remember much about my life Before: before I was ripped away from the protective embrace of my parents, my human and Wookiee uncles, and my doting big brother. Before I knew fear. Apparently, I had been a happy and confident child. My mother has holovids of me as a four year-old, and I can see it in my expression. I am well-loved, my eyes said smugly. I know where I belong. I can do anything.

I don't remember being that confident little girl; I just have wisps of memory. Fingering the twin yellow stripes on the side of a man's trousers as he laughed with friends. Curling up on a cold night under a purple and green bedspread. The moist feel of grass under my feet. Being picked up, impossibly high in the air, by a familiar furry presence. A thick beige carpet that I played upon. Hiding from party guests in the skirt of my mother's red velvet dress. An old, lived-in freighter which felt like home. Running my hand along brown braided hair. Being held tightly, being called "sweetheart." I knew these couldn't be memories from my life on Jakku. There was no grass there. No cold air. No affection. Nobody who'd call me anything except 'girl' or 'you.'

So I had only these thin fragments of memory. I clung to them, even though they were a shaky foundation upon which to build my ego. But they were all I had, after I was taken by the soldiers.

I didn't know they were First Order soldiers. It didn't really matter who they were. I just knew that one day, they blew our apartment's door down and started shooting. The next thing I remember was being in their ship, shivering alone in a cold cell. And that was the end of my carefree childhood.

The soldiers held me in that cell for months. I don't know how long. Long enough to convince me that my parents wanted me to be there and wanted me to trust those men. Long enough to stop whispering "I want to go home" because I began to consider the cell my home. At first, the soldiers were mean to me, smacking me whenever I cried. I quickly learned to stop crying, to swallow my bitterness and remain blank-faced. So they stopped hitting me, and I thanked them for their kindness. They fed me every day, and I thanked them for the food. That's all I said after a while: please and thank you. After I'd worn the same green dress for weeks, they brought me another outfit, a simple beige dress with a belt. "Thank you very much," I said, and I meant it. I was so grateful whenever they came to my cell, so hungry for companionship. I craved attention, probably even more than ordinary children do, since I was left in solitary confinement for most of the day. The tiniest smile from one of them was enough to keep me going. I learned to appreciate them, to eagerly look forward to their visits, to believe whatever scraps of information they gave me. I had nothing else. Nothing. A bare metal cot, a food tray and fork, a toilet, two dirty dresses, three hairbands. Nothing else.

An old man came to see me in my cell one day. He had a terrible scar running around his bald head, and he radiated malevolence. I had never felt pure evil until then, and though I couldn't define it, it scared me. I shrank away from him, sat on my cot with my knees pressed up against my chin.

"That's the Solo girl?" he said to my friends the soldiers as he scrutinized me. Yes, I thought. I am solo. All alone. I had already forgotten my name, I suppose. The soldiers never called me by my name. Snoke—that was the evil man—talked quietly to them about me, drilling his beady eyes into my soul.

"She's too young to yet be of use," the scary man pronounced. "Throw her out. We'll come back for her later."

And so, without any more warning, they dumped me on a desert planet. Like garbage.

"If you're a good girl, and wait here patiently, your parents will come for you," my captor-fathers promised.

"I don't want my parents! I want to stay with you," I begged desperately. "Please keep me!" They had me brainwashed, that's for sure. All I wanted was to stay in that cell, with the soldiers' thrice-daily visits and their bland food on a metal tray. They repeatedly told me my parents had given me to my captors; why would they now want me back?

"Well then, we'll come back for you, if you don't want your parents. But for now, you have to stay here, with this nice man." He gestured to a…man? some sort of creature…who didn't look nice at all. I began to cry angry tears, and looked around the desolate landscape. The heat was oppressive. No breeze, no greenery. The sand burned right through my dainty shoes. I hopped from foot to foot, bawling.

"Stop that, girl." The man-creature hit me in the face. "Don't waste water."

The soldiers—in my mind, my new parents, my whole world—retreated back into their shuttle without even a reassuring smile. I was abandoned in the sand.

"Come back!" I screamed at them imperiously, even after their shuttle lifted off. "Come back!"

"Quiet, girl!" the creature said, already annoyed and regretting the deal he'd made. This was Unkar Plutt, and I'd be working for him for the next fourteen years. He grabbed my skinny arm so tightly it left a bruise, and dragged me towards some sort of loosely-covered tent. "Jacobin," he gestured to a grizzled man, "you're complaining those old fingers of yours can't reach the smaller pieces of tech anymore? Here, I've got a pet for you, if you want her. Fifteen portions."

So for just fifteen rations of food, I was sold.

If I hadn't been sold to a grown-up, I suppose I would have died within a week. I was five, after all; I didn't know how to fend for myself, especially in such a harsh climate. Even adults who crashed on Jakku usually died quickly of thirst, heat stroke, starvation. Nothing grew in that sand, so farming was out of the question. The edible animals—steelpeckers, nightwatcher worms, even old happabores—were sparse, stringy, and hard to catch. So we all relied on those blasted ration packs left over from the war. And to get rations, we had to offer something saleable. The conflict between the Empire and Alliance might have ended long ago, but the Battle of Jakku was still being waged: people versus desert, scavenger versus scavenger. We all fought over the spoils of war.

Jacobin wasn't a bad sort. He taught me how to scavenge, how to find worthwhile ship parts amidst all the junk. We explored the Inflictor, a downed Star Destroyer, stem to stern. That ship was my favorite hunting ground, since it was dark and relatively cool inside. We hiked deeper and deeper into the dunes, looking for remains of snub fighters that the others might have missed. Sometimes we got lucky, and found a little ship to cannibalize. A find like that could feed us for months. When we didn't find anything, we didn't eat. Or at least, I didn't eat. Jacobin fed himself first. But at least he didn't hit me much. Most of the young scavengers got beaten a lot more.

Now that I'm back at home, with the Resistance, people ask me how I could possibly have forgotten my family. 'Why didn't you just tell people who you were?' They don't get it. After months of First Order captivity, even I didn't know who I was anymore. Within a few days of arriving on Jakku, my mind went into crisis mode. If I had been a droid, I would have shut down all but my most rudimentary functions. I ate and drank as much as possible. I fell asleep as soon as I lay down. I didn't waste energy on words or thoughts. And, as Unkar Plutt had warned me on that first day, I didn't waste water by crying. I never cried on Jakku. I knew that if I dared think about my charmed life Before, I would've been absolutely paralyzed. So I repressed it all. On Jakku, I pressed the reset button on my life. When Jacobin finally asked me what my name was, I couldn't even remember. The sweet girl with a name, that wasn't me. But I had a vague recollection of my nickname: Rey. I was pretty sure it wasn't my given name, but it was a moniker given to me by…someone I had loved, Before. So I became Rey. If my parents had come looking for their daughter, they wouldn't have found her. There was no more Breha Organa Solo, princess of Alderaan, daughter of a general and a senator. Just a tiny parasitic scavenger named Rey, her whole mind focused on survival and nothing else.