When I was still a baby, I was abandoned by my parents and left alone at home until an auntie and the police broke in and rescued me. After that, my life became a story of being passed around like a ball from one relative to another. One relative would look after me for a while, then another, with no stable home.
When I was very young, I already heard a lot of cold remarks and criticisms about my parents, saying my parents were drug addicts, triad members, and bad people.
Later, some relatives even spoke badly about my grandmother, saying she gave birth to my mother just to serve others, and now she has another grandchild who is “handless and footless” (a derogatory way to describe helplessness). I remember from age four to eight when my grandmother looked after me: my grandfather was a film lighting technician and was often out of the house for long periods. My grandmother worked in the costume department of a TV station from 10am to 10pm, so I went to kindergarten on my own by taking the school bus downstairs and came home by myself. When I got home, my grandmother would leave food on the table before going to work. This was my life until I was eight years old, when grandmother sent me over to my great-aunt, who lived in a different district, so I also changed schools.
Things improved a bit then because my great-aunt had many children who could help me with homework, but it was still hard because before that, no one cared if I did homework, tests, or dictation, so my grades were always poor, and I was unmotivated to learn. A year later, halfway my Primary 4 year, I moved into a children’s home and stayed there until Secondary 2.
One day, after school, when I came back to the home, I saw my grandparents, a woman, and a man. The woman was my mother, and the man was my stepfather. They said there was a special meeting because they wanted to take me to live with them. Of course, I was willing – it was so new and exciting! Wow! I finally had a mom and a dad.
