Blinded

There are only a few things from my childhood that I remember and most of them weren't good. I can remember times when my mother and had left me home for a week, all by myself. I was three years old, barely old enough to make food for myself and I was just learning how to read and write. I remember that by the time my parents had gotten home from whatever short vacation they were on that I was starving, my ribs just barely poking through my pale skin. My fingernails had grown long over what felt like months but were only a week. I remember how they looked at me, disgust written on their faces as they looked at their starving three-year-old. They didn't even feed me when they got home instead they ignored me, only shooing me out of the kitchen so they could make themselves food. 

After that, it only got worse. When I was five-years-old my dad had hit me for opening the fridge. He left bruises the size of baseballs on my ribs, legs, arms, and face. I remember that that was the day that he looked at me in pure disgust and said, "You should have never been born." I was five, not even able to shift yet and he said that to me. It broke whatever hope I had for my parents, it scattered whatever wish or dream I had of my parents finally coming to love. I remember that it was on that day that I truly began fending for myself, that learned not to rely on anyone else but me. 

That wasn't the worse thing to happen to me. No, it was the day of my sixth birthday that the worse accident of my life happened. I had just learned how to shift into my fox, my parents didn't care about the special event that happened once in a lifetime. It was my first shift and they never cared but I wasn't bothered I already knew that they didn't care about me. Anyways, I remember going to the forest edge and stripping, I didn't want to ruin what few clothes I had, then it happened my first shift. It was painful but through the cracking of bones and stretching of the muscle, I was relieved to finally have a form to escape to when my parents got angry and wanted to use me as their punching bag. Like I said this day was the day that I had a very unfortunate accident. 

I had decided to let my fox take over and was happy to know that I would always have a friend to lean on, to talk to when I was alone or in pain. A friend that could never turn me away and leave me to face the abuse. A friend that I still have today. It was during these moments that I remembered that these were hunting woods and that it was autumn meaning that the woods would be lined with hunter traps. Then I saw the gleaming of a silver thread and my friend was heading right towards it. I began to scream but it was too late, I felt the sting then the overwhelming pain of my eyes being pierced by the wire. I yowled in pain and somehow managed to escape from the trap. I had laid down in the forest whimpering and winning for my mother but when no one came I stopped and returned home. Tracking whatever scent I left behind. That day left me blinded for life, it left me scarred and it left me to the event that changed my whole life around. 

Two years had gone by since I was left blinded by that hunter's trap. My parents didn't care when I came home, bumping into things, with blood on my face. Over the course of two years, I had healed but my sight was lost forever, it was during this time that I began to rely on my hearing and soon I adapted to the black void that would always be with me. It was also during this time that I began to hear my parents whisper things about the upcoming winter, getting rid of their mistake, and finally hoping that they'd be set free of it. Somehow I knew they were talking about me but I ignored it until finally, they spoke to me. Words that meant nothing to me, words that I no longer remember.  

I was eight years old when my parents took me away from the only home that I knew of and dumped me in a snow-covered forest saying that they'd be back for me. I knew it wasn't true but I waited and waited until finally a chill began to settle in and I shifted, not even bothering to take off my clothes. I knew they had expected me to die, expected an eight-year-old blind kid to freeze to death. It showed that they only cared about themselves and it was during this time that I began to hone my senses in my fox form. 

As the years began to fade my childhood dimmed and faded into the background. I had forgotten what my house looked like, what the people who were supposed to raise me to look like, and over time I forgot how I looked like. It never bothered me as my memories faded and even now as I stand strong and resilient to the words of hatred and abuse I don't regret forgetting all those things. There are days when I wonder what the world around me looks like, what the prey I eat looks like, I even wonder what my mate looks like but I'll never ask because I know that although I am blind and most likely odd looking I will never stand alone. 

For I am blinded but not deaf, I am blinded but not alone, I am blinded and I will always have a place within this world.