Chapter 1

I can remember my childhood well, it was not a happy time for me, but perhaps it is the only time I can remember when I was really hopeful. It was then that I promised that I would make something of myself, that I would rise above my circumstances, that I would become someone who was strong and respected. I foolishly vowed that one day I would be powerful, that one day people would answer to, and look up to me, and above all I vowed that I would allow no one and nothing to hold me down. I did not know then that my life would become what it is now, I did not mean for it to. I wanted to be happy, but instead all I have is loneliness and pain. It is a horrible type of existence, to survive but only by feeding off the life of others, to survive only by destroying everything I touch.

I was six when I started on this path. My family had very little money and we moved around a lot but it wasnÕt until my younger sister died that things really started to fall apart. It was almost as though my mother had died with her. She stopped going out, she stopped doing things, she stopped living. My father began drinking and ended up losing his job. I can still remember watching from behind a door only halfway cracked open as my father beat my mother while in one of his drunken rages. I can remember hiding under my bed for fear that he may decide to take his anger out on me. I can remember nights in which I cried myself to sleep feeling as though the whole world was against me and wondering if I would ever be able to survive. It wasnÕt long though before I stopped crying myself to sleep, crying is a sign of weakness I told myself, if I want to survive I have to be strong.

One night, after beating my mother senseless, my father decided to come after me. But unlike my mother I would not submit to his beatings, I fought back. I flailed my arms and my legs in a hopeless attempt to injure him, I bit and I scratched trying so hard to inflict even a fraction of the pain he was inflicting on me. It was a doomed attempt from the start, I was only an eight year old child, he was a full grown man. But I continued fighting, I fought even though every muscle in my body began to ache, even though my body was torn and scratched and bleeding, I fought even though the pain was almost blinding, even though I wanted nothing more to collapse and cease to exist. I fought him until finally he tired of beating me and left me almost unconscious on the floor.