"Whoever you're chasing is already gone. Don't write him a letter 'cause it won't be read."

She grew up with those words etched in her heart, carved on her forearm and forever at the back of her mind. They haunted her but they were her only company at the same time.

She was sent from house to house but always ended up back at the orphanage. It wasn't as if she had no kin at all. There was a man in snippets of her memory. His big, warm hands held hers, his tight hugs gave her the most certain sense of security, MacDonald's breakfast every Sunday morning; she could remember all these instances yet she was unable to identify him.

She kept to herself most of the time. When her foster parents sent her to school, she chose to sit right at the corner of the classroom. She never made friends and never allowed anyone to make friends. She considered herself a jinx and something about everything always brought her back to a funeral she attended many years back.

In her memory, she saw the body of that man. He was cold and completely motionless. He laid still on a ratan mat. People came, burnt joss sticks, paid their respects, shed some tears and proceeded to their table. All these strangers came to her, offered her their condolences, a pat on her back but she never understood why. She looked at his body each time someone approached her, probably silently wishing for some answers which eventually never came. Within days, she saw his body move from the ratan mat to a wood-colored coffin. Back then, she obviously had no idea what a coffin was but now that she thought about it, she finally realized what the commotion was all about.

She never saw him since then. She was only four. A young cheerful girl who spoke in sentences with not more than seven words, a miracle that happened to her parents who thought they were never going to have children of their own; she was a joy pill, bringing smiles and laughter wherever she went. Everyone believed she would grow up to be extraordinary. After all, it would be hard to imagine this small fellow pulling a long face the whole time.

But things took a different turn. And she was a changed person overall. Her mother left her behind in search for the happiness which she lost when she faced the death of her husband in a cruel hit-and-run accident. At four, she was thrown into the hands of people she had never seen before to take charge of her present and future. The funny thing is she never cried out for her mother to come back. In fact, she never spoke a word again.

For years, as she went from one home to another, she never opened up to anyone. At the dining table, she sat with her knees held against her chest. In her room, she cuddled underneath the quilt, just hiding away from everyone and everything. If there was no reason to, she'd stay hidden in bed or found leaning against the dressing table next to her bed. It was the same at every house and eventually, her foster parents sent her back. They called her a depressed and dull kid who showed no sign of life despite her young age. She was not someone they were intending to take in and bring up like their own.

"You're unwanted. An awful child. No one would take you in. Even the man who loved you left you. You're a loner. Why? Because you're a bad child. You're a jinx. You bring harm to everyone around you. You're a horrible creature." Something spoke to her. It repeated the same thing every night, every minute, tiring her out at the end of the day.

There was a pool of nothingness swimming inside her. It made her feel small. It was as though she was beginning to realize the insignificance of her presence. In her dreams, she often dreamt of the same man who was there all her life while she could still remember. But she was never able to put a name to his face. Of all people, she recognized him the fastest, she was most familiar with his existence. Even when looking into the old photos, she would always see him. Once in a while, she'd convince herself that he's her father but she was never sure.

There was no explanation why or how she could forget who he was to her when she grew up with him. There was no remedy either to give speech back to her. There was no door to her world and there was no exit for her either. In depression, she edged closer to self-destruction. There was no reason for her to not take her own life if not for the fact that she lacked the courage.

So she continued living this rather sad life, still failing to remember what that man meant to her, still feeling alone in a crowd. All that spoke to her were the words she engraved on her forearm and that little monster in her head. Yet, she never cried. All this while, she never had a tear in her eye. She never knew what it meant to cry like the world is about to end, she never knew.

There was no salvation for her while she existed on this Earth filled with filthy people who brainwashed her of the meaning of her own presence, people who blamed her for causing the death of her own father. Of course, she never found out again. She never realize he who appeared to her many times was actually the man who gave her life.

Every night, she never failed to remind herself, "Peace only comes in the afterlife... for sure."