If I had asked you to look for me in the streets of Riga, you wouldn't have seen me, not even if you wanted to. That was the kind of person I was. Invisible. Non-existent. See-through. Call it what you like. No one found anything remotely appealing about me, so I disappeared from their line of vision. The only thing that seemed to separate me from the other nobodies was my palsy.

I constantly shook. I don't know if I had been injured as an infant, or if it was some kind of abnormal tumor pressing up against my brain. I trembled when I was upset. I trembled when I was bored. I trembled when I walked down the street. It was just a part of my daily life- of who I was. My parents had taken me to see countless doctors, therapists, chiropractors and acupuncturists. But nothing seemed to help me. Half of my childhood was spent in the doctors' office- I remember the smell too well for my own health.

I was the youngest of three children raised in a very religious household. My two older sisters left home before I had finished primary school, so I had no real female contact in my life besides my mother. She was short, loud, had no taste in fashion, and I had been afraid of her from birth. Just a glance could make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. I often wondered how such a bold woman ended up with a man like my father. He was her complete opposite, timid and tall with little to say for himself- I think it may have been a shotgun wedding.

The first ten years of my life went by in a schedule-like manner. Wake up, eat, shake, go to school, shake, eat, shake, go home, do homework, shake, eat, sleep. Repeat. It got tiring after a while, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I needed something more. More than shouting mothers and recess bullies. More than the same boring church pastor and the constant trembling of my hands when I wrote. More than the same view of the sky from my tiny bedroom window. My head was muddled and my heart confused. I needed a revelation.

It came not a year later. On my first day of middle school I began to notice words that I had never heard before. Homo. Fag. Queer. Were these words always there, or had I only been able to hear them now that I was running with middle schoolers? For weeks I had tried to silently pieced together their meanings. Then one day I had to courage to look up 'gay' in the dictionary at the library. There were about six different meanings, but definition number five caught my eye.

See homosexual.

Doing what the dictionary told me I hopped forward into the 'H' section and skimmed down the pages. My finger stopped when I finally came across the word and it's definition, and I swore I felt my heart skip a beat.

ho·mo·sex·u·al (noun) One who has a sexual preference to those of their own gender.

That day I walked home shaking so hard that people actually stopped me to see if I was alright.

I never looked at men the same way ever again. While other kids my age were beginning to show the first signs of actual courtship towards the opposite gender, I had dreams about boys. Tall handsome boys who would coo to me and tell how cute I was despite my palsy. These minor delusions were enough to keep me mildly satisfied for a while. Then one day in the middle of my seventh grade year, our science teacher (who wouldn't know a thing about discretion if it kicked him in the shins) decided to show us a film about the anatomy the male and female bodies, particularly focusing on the functions of the sexual organs.

Quietly so as not to attract unwanted attention, I asked if I could be excused to go to the bathroom, and once I was secure inside one of the graffitied stalls I had my first erection.

I had no doubts about it- I was gay. I was the one that everyone hated. I was the enemy. And I was absolutely terrified. I knew from my Bible-thumping mother that all homosexuals went to Hell. How could I have brought myself to tell her? At first I tried to tell myself that I was just over reacting, that I wasn't really gay, just confused. But I kept having dreams about boys, and they came back more vivid than ever. I knew then that I couldn't deny what I was- I could only conceal it.

My revelation didn't happen as I intended it to, and I was more lonely and miserable than ever. As time passed I felt like something inside of me was being held back. Nothing in my life, not even my writing, could cure me of this anxiety. Once again I found myself needing something more. Something that would peel back the wallpaper of my doubts and let me roll on the plaster of a new, self confident me. A me that I hoped was alive and well.

And it all began when the letter arrived.

I wrote the idea for this fic down on a scrap of paper while at my PCT classes a while back (I'M SUCH A HORRIBLE STUDENT). I promptly misplaced it, and I only since found it again, lost at the bottom of my messenger bag. School fics are so fun to begin with, and the idea of writing in the POV of an older Latvia was too good to pass up. The title of the fic is the name of a song done by the wonderful English band Mumford & Sons. Go look 'em up, it's good stuff. Actually, I'm thinking of naming all of the chapters of this fic after songs from my favorite bands. That would be neat, huh?
I hope this little bit got you interested, and I hope to see you on the other side.