You wake to a morning, always the same, never changing. Looking up from your bed you see the dust stiring and dancing in the golden light of morning leaking down through the cracks in the stairs hanging above your head. With a groan, you reposition yourself in the small space that you had to call your 'room'. The tired pale biege walls and cold brown hardwood floor underneath you are as uninviting as your relatives. You roll off the cot, and push it to the side, hands scrabbling across the scratched floor until a finger catches on the small nook that hides your hidden stash. You pull, and the loose board comes free, and you draw forth those things that you have to call your clothes. Easily three sizes too large, even now after two years of wearing them when your cousin outgrew them, you have always disliked these cloths.
You have always felt the desire to look your best, and never disappoint. With a sigh you begin the relatively easy but slow process of getting yourself ready for the day. You pull your finger through your hair as if it was a comb, trying half-heartedly to tame the wild locks of your hair, but after a few minutes you give in. The hair had always acted with a mind of its own, and even with you desire to look clean and presentable you could never tame. Then, as you hear sounds echoing down from above and dust falling from the stairs, the board returns to it's place, as does the cot.
Today will be the same as every day, which never changes, so once more you shall wait for your aunt to come to let you out of the cupboard under the stairs. You run your hands over yourself, trying to smooth out what clothes you wear. It doesn't work. For a moment images dance through your mind, thoughts of what the future might one day hold... of what the world beyond the cold stares and hatred is like. Of what it would be like to know people who called you by your name... not like your family...
Other the 'Freak' they only called you:
[ ] Boy
[ ] Girl
Not having a name... an identity... It hurt. Somewhere within it burned. But yet... while it burned, it was... not soothed, but the mystery was enough to keep you sated, keep you sane through the horrors, if only because there, at the edge of your dreams, there WAS a name. It wasn't your name, but it wasn't not your name.
Then you eventually went to school, and that first day you learned the name that had been given to you. And it was nice, even if the teacher went to speak to the Principle at the end of the day, and never returned. But... having a name, having an identity, it made you you. You weren't just freak, and you weren't just a sleeping dreamer.
You treasured your name, they called you:
[ ] Write-In