I was never truly "born." I was just ripped from the womb as an anatomical mistake, a shapeless failure. My mother never looked at me with affection, never touched me with tenderness. The look she cast upon me was that of someone observing something they didn't understand, something that didn't fit. My father, with his rough hands and empty eyes, simply ignored me, as if I were a useless piece of meat he didn't know what to do with. There were no screams, no celebration, just silence – a silence that would be my only companion for the rest of my life.
The first thing I was taught was that I shouldn't feel. My father said pain was not to be felt, that it was a weakness, something for the weak. Pain was an illusion he tried to teach me to ignore. And, in truth, I never felt anything, not even at the moment of my birth. There was no discomfort, no agony from entering the world. I was empty, incapable of even understanding what it meant to be alive. And my mother, her exhausted expression, never tried to touch me, never hugged me. She was there only to fulfill her function, more of a ghost than a woman. She never gave me a name, because she knew that any name would imply a destiny. And emptiness has no destiny. Emptiness is nothing.
I didn't know what pain was until my father tried to force it upon me. He, like a man who needs some reaction, something to prove that I was still human, decided to test my limits. One day, while I was sitting, emotionless, watching his angry expression, he cut one of my fingers with a knife. The blade tore through my skin and blood gushed out, but I didn't react. There was no scream, no grimace. Just a slow movement of my arm and a vacant look as if I didn't recognize pain. I looked at him with a monotone expression, waiting, without saying a word. He watched me, frustrated, trying to extract something from me. Maybe an emotion, maybe a piece of humanity he wanted to rip from me. But I was no longer human. Not anymore. He cut the other finger, deeper, faster, expecting a scream, a flinch, a sign that the flesh was alive, that I still had something inside me. He was wrong.
I didn't scream. I didn't feel. I just watched, as if he were an animal, trying to hunt something that didn't exist.
He became furious, seeing he couldn't get anything. Then he decided to do something more grotesque. He took the machete, heavier and dirtier, and made a move as if to cut my arm, but deliberately, he only pretended. The sound of the steel cutting the air and the proximity of the blade made me observe his reaction. He wanted to see if I would feel, if I would react to the danger, if the mere threat of movement would provoke something in me. He cut the air next to me, his blade brushing my skin, and he waited – he desired – for me to move away, for me to flinch. But again, I just stared at him. There was no terror. There was no despair. There was nothing.
I pretended, just so he would believe there was still something in me. The anger in his eyes was the only thing I felt – an unsustainable anger at not being able to break what he thought was a "humanity" I didn't have. Every move I made was a calculated act to make him believe I was still a being that could be manipulated. I had no fear. I had no pain. But I knew he needed a reaction. So I pretended just enough for him to leave me alone, so he could return to his beer, to his own emptiness.
My mother, like a shadow, was never present. There were no bonds, no affection. She didn't touch me, didn't soothe me. She looked at me with the same indifference as someone looking at an object that no longer serves. She sank into an apathy that made me seem human compared to her coldness. I didn't miss her. She was just there, part of the scenery, a mutating figure who spent her days wandering aimlessly through the house. She died without me noticing. The day she didn't get out of bed, I just kept looking at her, waiting for the moment to be completed. When she finally became stiff and cold, there was no sigh, no movement. Just stillness. A stillness I already knew. She was buried by my father, but the act wasn't of mourning. It was just another task to be done, another weight to be buried in the backyard, like a simple stone.
And I didn't go to the funeral. I didn't need to.
What remained of my existence was marked by the destruction of what was left of it. My father, desperate for any sign of life in me, sank further into his drinking, into his emptiness. He became more unbearable as the days passed, but I never reacted. He tried to provoke me, threaten me, wanting to rip something from me that I knew wasn't there. He was dying slowly, drowned in his own alcoholism, until one night, he simply disappeared.
He didn't come back home. And when the sun rose, I went to the river, unhurried, emotionless, and found him. His body was trapped between branches and rocks, like a dead animal, his face distorted by the water. There was no urgency in me. There was no despair. Just the realization that he was there, and that was all. Unhurried, I pulled his body from the river, dragged it to the shore. I didn't care about the decay emanating from the flesh that no longer belonged to the world of the living. I buried him next to my mother, without a word. The earth was pushed over him, like any weight. And that was how my family died. Not with pain, not with suffering, but with an absolute emptiness that would accompany me forever.
And me? I felt nothing. Just the silence. And in the end, what could be left for someone like me?
The streets were a cemetery in disguise, a dark alley where souls got lost, unable to realize they were already dead. The asphalt, dirty and deformed, seemed to pulse with the echo of broken lives, of shattered dreams. With every step I took, the ground seemed to open, offering an abyss where neither pain, nor anger, nor any other feeling, not even emptiness, would be able to consume me. I didn't feel hunger, nor thirst, nor cold. I was an empty shell, a grotesque representation of a body that had already turned to dust before it was even born.
The first night on the streets was an experience of absolute dispossession of humanity. I didn't know what it meant to be "man," "animal," or "living being." I just was. The smell of decay in the air, the rot seeping into my nostrils, felt like part of me, as if the very air was made of rotten flesh and human excrement. The distorted shadows of figures on the facades of houses, the urine stains on the sidewalks – all of it seemed to swallow me slowly, but I felt no horror. I just looked, and nothing touched me.
I saw the people on the streets, their skeletal faces and their eyes tired from staring at nothing, as if they were searching for something that couldn't be found. Their hands stretched out, asking, begging. They wanted something: food, attention, a word of comfort. I was beyond any request, beyond any plea. They looked at me and saw what they feared, a shapeless presence, without history, without soul. And that's why they feared me. Because they knew that what they saw had no life, no value. It just existed.
It was a dirty man, with rotten teeth and the foul breath of cachaça, who saw me and decided I would be his object of terror. He stopped me in the alley, his eyes blind with rage and desire. He didn't ask me anything. His skeletal and grotesque body approached me like a shapeless shadow, trying to touch me, molest me. His hot, sweaty hands dragged across my face, his short, dirty nails scratching my skin. With every movement, the air became thicker, denser, and I felt the smell of his fear, but not mine.
He wanted a reaction. He wanted to see an expression of pain, of anguish, but he didn't know that I was already dead. What he touched was a carcass. He pushed me against the wall with force, his teeth grinding with excitement. The first blow, strong, made me taste the metallic flavor in my mouth. The blood meant nothing to me. No pain. No anger. He wanted me to scream, to make me feel something, anything. But I was beyond that. The blood that flowed wasn't mine. It was just the thick fluid he tried to pull from me, a fluid he could never consume. He didn't know, but he was trying to violate something that was already shattered inside.
"You're not human," he whispered, fear in his eyes. And at that moment, he hit the trigger. He saw it. He understood. I had nothing inside me that he could touch, manipulate, or break. He was trying to feed off the void, but the void doesn't feed. The void doesn't feel.
When he stopped, his breathing was heavy, and he watched me, disillusioned. His hands were covered in blood, but the blood wasn't mine. I looked into his eyes, empty and lifeless, as if I were the reflection of what he feared in his own soul. He felt he couldn't dominate me. He felt the rottenness of his own impotence. He fled, but not before realizing that he, more than me, was already dead. He just didn't know it.
I watched her every day, how she tried to reach me. Her gaze, that innocent smile, seemed to believe that kindness could heal what was broken inside me. With every gesture, every word, a question formed in my mind: Does she not see the rotten world around us? Does she really believe that her innocence can undo the evil that dwells within me? She, who responded to me with the simplicity of any normal person, seemed to carry something different—something I had never experienced: genuine affection. But she didn't deserve to live in such a cruel world. And me? I never knew what it was to be loved, what it was to be embraced.
Then, the answer came on the night Clara approached me once more, her eyes shining with a hope I saw as foolish. She looked at me with the same tenderness as always and, in a soft voice, said: "I know you're suffering, but you don't have to carry this burden alone. I'll be here, together we can find a way out."