When a baby being born it was supposed to be a wonderful news, parents would be so happy that they could stay up all night celebrating of their new bundle of joy, yet the night of my birth was nothing more than the increasing sobbing from my saddened mother and the disappearance of a father that I will not ever meet. Darkness greeted me the moment I opened my eyes, no one was around me and I would never see anyone. My mother still sobbing at a corner, and mutterings that I presumed was the doctors. But there was no one there, only just infinite darkness. I could remember being carried around by a pain of hands with gloves; it passed me to another pair of hands which was warm. The warm hands cradled me, patting my head with her hands which were wrinkled, I could feel the folds of her fingers caressing my face yet I could not see her. The wrinkled hands passed me on to a pair of cold hands, it was trebling when it cradled me, the coldness shot up my spine it felt like electricity, it was painful on my bare skin I could not help but to cry. As I cried I realized that the hands were holding me tightly with the fingers around my neck, it was pressing on my throat. I could not breathe, my cries were getting softer. The hands were trying to kill me; I squirmed and struggled until the wrinkled hands pulled me away from the pair of freezing and murderous fingers. Only then I resumed my cries as air pumped into my small lungs. Darkness swept in and I could not remember anything after that only screams of agony that haunts my soul up to today.
Only after years when I realized why only darkness colored my world and I could not see anyone else, I was blind in both eyes, my sight was taken away from me without my consent, and it was cruel that I was born defective as though the heavens were trying to play games with me. I was angry at the fact that I could not be like anyone else at all, could not play the games that they play, could not see the world like how other lucky kids could. Only sounds and smell decorated my life, the sounds of the truck rumbling by the house, the creaks that the wooden steps of the front porch makes, the sounds of the trees scrapping the windows whenever there was a storm, the sounds and smell that my grandmother had when she came over to visit me. Those senses helped me to familiarize the environment around me, but no matter how much I could familiarize it was still a strange place, after all, the place I grew up in was not in my family house, it was an orphanage. To understand how I got here, the only clue I have was the screams of agony that I last heard when I was still a newborn. My grandmother was the only person I knew and was considered the only family I had left, and she was that wrinkled hands that carried me which I remembered so well, her hands were always so kind. Those hands were the ones who gave me a place to stay and money so that the orphanage could raise me. I could not live with her even though she was so nice because she was old and was almost as blind as me; it is a danger to both of us if we lived together. I cried when the court decided that I could not live with her but after some persuading I matured and also decided not to let her worry about me. So I lived obediently and quietly in that orphanage waiting for time to pass as the seasons changed outside my window.
My parents on the other hand never came to visit me, and soon I understood why. Those cold hands with murderous intent were my mother's, she could not believe that I was born without sight and would not accept the fact that I was her son, after the day that my grandmother rescued me from her daughter. My mother committed suicide, the doctors found her ward empty with the window opened, the wind blew in making the curtains dance. At the ground floor my mother lay with tears on her face, was what I heard. Even though I was saddened at the fact that she did not want me, I could not blame her totally, after all she was a lady with class, reputation and beauty, giving birth to a son that was obviously a defective product made by god's hands was too much for her to take. Killing herself was a better way to take away her pride that was eating her heart. Although when it came to my father, heartless was the only word to describe him, after knowing that I was born blind, he stalked off from the hospital abandoning my mother and his new born son. He disappeared, no body knows if he was still alive or not but regardless I never want to meet the person who never gave his family a chance to live.
My life in the orphanage anything but exciting, in the dingy looking building, children who lived there were not wanted, in the end they build up some sort of grudge against me who was still being visited by an elderly grandmother who loved me so much. In the end, I was always the victim of their schemes, my socks in particular kept disappearing and the books that were in Braille which were made especially for me were always torn, some pages were even force fed into me. I could not do anything about it, telling the dean would not help even though I know which thugs were responsible; will she take a blind person account as reliable? Seven years passed and I was already used to all the insults and abuses that the kids had thrown at me, all their words did not matter to me and I was not going to take them into consideration. It was not because of their words losing potency it was due to the death of my beloved grandmother, it was during a fight I had between the group of bullies that my grandmother was cut down by one of them, I could not see what was happening but the sounds I collected and put together only to make me realize that she died in order to protect me. From that moment on I refused to fight or retaliate and began to hide myself from the rest of the orphans, when the court announced that my grandmother's death was an unintended incident, it made my blood boil and the emotions of anger rose inside my soul, they did not take my testimony into consideration again because I was blind and due to that they had no actual evidence of who exactly killed my grandmother. Even though deep down I knew it was that snake like leader. Vengeance was all I thought and it was all I had. All I needed was an opportunity to get that horrible snake however that opportunity might not to ever appear when the leader who made my life miserable was adopted by a rich family to which he boasted for weeks, during lunch during dinner and even during bathing time, it was around that time he decides to formulate the ultimate torture against me, his sore thumb. I was called to meet him beneath the oak tree behind the building compound during the dude's last week at the orphanage, whatever amount of decent logic that my brain contained seemed to be not working that day, I met up with the group without difficulty, I could find my way around the orphanage even without sight. Whatever happened next would haunt the rest of my life; I was caught off guard and was attacked, I remembered being in a lot of pain, pain that could be suicidal without knowing it I was running towards the edge of the cliff, I fell…darkness which I was so used to become even darker and overwhelmed me. Silence took over and there was nothing left.
There was a bright light ahead of me, it felt warmer when I walked towards it, it was like walking out of a pitch black cave, I stepped across the border between light and dark and I heard someone calling out my name, it belonged to a girl I presumed. Her voice sounded so sweet, I wondered where the source was when real sunlight blinded my eyes, and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. Only then I realized that I was being blinded and was not blind. In shock I sat up to see a woman looking back at me, she smiled. It was my first time seeing someone smile, or even saw anyone. She was sporting silvery hair, without saying anything she pulled me up from the bed and helped me put on a pair of shoes, I could not do much, lacking in the eye hand coordination sector I must have appeared to be a strange squid. She smiled again without saying anything; her smile took my breath away. I watched myself take my first steps, without waiting for me to get myself steady, she took my hand and led me towards the door where sunlight was waiting for me.
"Gone were the days that I could only face darkness
With my small and warm hands grasped in hers
She led me into warm sunlight that I could bask in
The feeling of being a newborn, being shown a world that could have been mine
The colors which I could have had, the pain that I had not deserve
All washed away by the bright blue sky and gleaming green grass that surrounds me
With her smile that lights up the dimmest of days, with my smile of freedom
Hand in hand we walked down a path between numerous trees, with the doves above us singing in joy
There was no pain in this world, there was no injustice, and there was no loneness.
Only happiness that I truly deserved, only with her which I truly belong
To a blind man, death was nothing."
These last words were inscribed on his saddened grave after his cold body was found in a ravine. Written by him before his fateful attack of that summer's day.