When I was born, it was into a world that I now do not recognise. When I was born, my world was filled with copious amounts of love and laughter. It was one that shrouded me in security and comfort. It offered me days of adventure. Feelings of excitement. Paths of opportunity. It was a world, that when i looked into it, it looked back with such unsoiled innocence. It looked back at me with expectancy and permission. Like it laid itself out before me, offering up everything it had and urging me to take it. Practically begging me too. It's sheer irreproachable vastness - like open arms tempting me in. There was nothing I couldn't do. Nothing I couldn't feel. Nothing to stop me from living.
The world I knew is gone; it died when my parents did. It was taken from me, just as their lives were taken from them.
I still remember everything about that day. The day my world imploded. I remember the way the crisp, cold air tasted as I inhaled. I remember the clean, almost non-existent smell of the untouched snow. I remember the way it crunched, as I waded through it and the deflating pressure as it surrendered under my weight . I remember the first initial blast of the icy wind as it punched against my face. Ha! I even remember what outfit I wore. But above all, I remember looking around me at the white blanket of snow as it suffocated the world below it. The way it glistened under the struggling sun, almost winking at me, assuring me, that when it was gone - everything it had touched - would be renewed, washed clean and returned to me as if it had never happened. If you were to have asked me, in that moment, if I were happy? If i was content? I would have smiled and answered with a simple and meaningful, "Yes".
Now? Now, I would say no. I would say I was ignorant. Arrogant, perhaps? I would say i was sheltered. Naive. Insular. I would say I was reveling in a false sense of reality and that my illusion of happiness needed to be shattered. That it needed to be torn down. That something needed to destroy it so that I could actually grow up and stop believing in a world that never even existed!
...
I would say what I know now to try to save myself from the unbridled excitement I had felt as the officer approached my play in the snow. I would say what I know now to try to save myself from the unsettling way my stomach fell as he knelt down so his sullen eyes could ensnare mine. I would say what I know now and a thousand times again to try to save myself from the incapacitating stab of pain that burst in my chest and the rise of bile in my throat, as the officer explained again and again, that my mother and father would not ever be coming home.
The irony in the way i remember that day is that I don't actually remember much else of my life . Of course, I am completely conscious of the time that has passed and the way that things have changed. I can recollect hazy pictures of supposed important milestones when prompted and I can associate experiences that happen in everyday life from when they have happened before. My ability to retain things isn't broken. It just seems to be unaffected or uninterested by anything else. As though it will never experience anything quite like that so therefore it is not worth remembering. It's as though that day has burrowed so far into my soul .. that nothing else can reach it. Nothing can replace it. Nothing can help it.
I guess the reason that day still haunts my life, my pathetic existence, is because it is completely and solely my fault. Their blood, to be shamefully clichéd, is on my hands. You see, they traded their own life's for mine the moment my heart gave up and stopped beating. I was four years old and suffered from some form of heart condition - the details of which my parents never disclosed to me or mapped the ins and outs of. I guess after they saved my life and my heart no longer struggled to pump blood around my body.. there was no real need to. Perhaps if I had pushed the point or asked more aggressively, they would have sat me down and explained a little. Perhaps they would have told me about how my premature birth caused such a defect and how i was coddled constantly. Perhaps they would have tried to get me to understand why they made the decision they did, elucidate why they thought I was worth more alive than they were. And if they had, perhaps I could appreciate my 'gift'. I could live with it inside me and acknowledge it with a little more pride. Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid of it, so lost with what to do with it, so angry with it. But perhaps can never happen. The answers i want, the answers i need, are buried with them.
The only reason I learned the little i know about how I became what I am - was after my parents funeral. I was sat in a wooden room, at a wooden table by adults that I had never met. They tried offering words of comfort and then persistently told me how pertinent it was that I gave my full undivided attention to what they had to say. They annoyed me so I feigned obedience and met their eyes. I nodded when it felt appropriate and adorned my face with a look of interest. A man dressed in black was reading from a stack of papers. I focused mainly on him. He was addressing people within the room and handing them small bits of paper after he had spoken. After some time that I didn't care to measure, he grabbed my conscious attention when he spoke my name. He was explaining that my Aunt and Uncle were to be my legal guardians in accordance with my parents wishes . He asked if I understood. I indicated that i did. He then held my gaze for longer than was comfortable and before I could break away, he ducked slightly under the table and re-surfaced with a wooden box. I recognised it. I had seen it perched permanently upon my Fathers desk and i had always so curious about its contents. My heart jumped when he caught my eyes again and handed the box over to me. I eagerly grabbed for it and instantly brought it to my chest to protect it. Hindsight being the wonderful thing that it is, i probably wouldn't have been so anxious to obtain that box. I didn't know what it contained. I didn't know that what was inside would instantly fill me with guilt and confusion. I didn't know that what lay beneath the strong mahogany surface would make me feel even more alone than i already did.
The thing you must understand is my parents saved me in a most peculiar way. They didn't manage to bag me a new heart or install artificial technology to aid my disease. No. They did something... quite different. I learned this once I was in the safety of my own room and was sat quite comfortably on my bed with my father's box resting on my lap. I had realised after leaving the wooden room with its wooden tables and chairs, that the box was secured shut with a padlock and the man dressed in black hadn't accompanied it with a key. Usually, to anyone normal, that would have posed a problem and they would have had to find another means to open it but you see, I didn't need to. I'm not normal.
I grabbed hold of the padlock with my right hand and encompassed it within my fist. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the coldness spreading across my chest. I closed my eyes tighter and willed the feeling down my arm, guiding it all the way to the palm of my hand and wished it birth onto the padlock. I squeezed the chunk of metal in my hand to make sure the cool ice penetrated all of it, to make sure every part of it was frozen. I then opened my eyes and released the grip of my fist and I was greeted with the familiar scent of coldness. The padlock, having shone brightly with its metallic surface, now reflected the air with a cool steam. It resembled more of a unusual icicle than that of a man made security tool. I smirked. I then grabbed a hard back book that lay near by, placed the box on my bed and brought the book down forcefully on the padlock. It shattered instantly.
My name is Brittany, I am an 18 year old girl who was orphaned at the age of 12. For as long as I can remember, I have had the ability to control the element of water. My ability is what my parents bought my life with and with what they sold theirs for. They were murdered by the men who did this to me and those are the men that I have vowed to return the favor to.