For as long as I can remember, I’ve had one arm. The left arm.

I remember my mother embracing me while reading me words that I only heard as her soothing voice. When I turned to embrace her back, I was puzzled to find that I could only touch one side of her, unlike her two homely arms that enveloped me so easily.  When the other kids had troubles learning what was left, what was right, I had no problem at all. To me, it was simple: Left was the arm. Right was nothing.

Some days after that, my mother brought me into a gleaming white room and made me fall asleep. When I woke up, there was a white, rigid wall where my shoulder was left bare without an arm. Learning left and right became even easier for me. Left was the arm. Right was the side that hurt.

Mom used to tell me that something went wrong when I was born, but she always kept me in the dark about what really happened. Whenever I asked her about the strange white scar that ran across my left side, just above the pelvis, her eyes would just brim up with tears and she’d tell me to go to my room.

When I was 7, mom sent me to school. I was at least 2 years older than everyone there and much larger too. For the next 10 years, I was submitted to insults, name-calling, and painful bullying. Just because I only had one arm, stuttered, and started school late, it didn’t mean I was stupid or mentally challenged. They probably were, if they thought my brains were lost with my arm.

I guess that’s when I became withdrawn. Every day I’d refuse to get up and go to the hell they call school. I’d hide in the locker rooms until the corridors were empty, or I’d run everywhere so people won’t have enough time to find something else about me that day to comment on. Everyone hated me.

Things were so bad it got to a point where I would completely black out when someone touched me, and regain consciousness just to find them sprawled beneath my feet. For the next few years I could feel myself being chained to my own painful experiences, not letting anyone into my world, and not letting myself out. I felt something was missing in my life.