I’ve lived underground for most of my life.

12 years, two months, and 5 and a half days, If you want to be exact.

Leaving my hole in the ground was bittersweet. Sure, I’d wished to feel what my mother had called sunlight or hear the wind through the tall green trees every hour of the 4448.41 days I’ve been in here. But that had been my life, and I’ve gotten used to it. And when you can only remember one thing, it’s scary when all of a sudden that one thing that you know so well is gone. So maybe bittersweet is the wrong word for it, maybe the word I’m looking for is fear. Fear of new things, fear of unfamiliar things, fear of real things and real people, not just the drawings I would trace over and over into the dirt on the floor. Maybe my heart was yelling “yes! Sunlight! Water! Trees! Food!” But my brain was yelling “no! Danger! Danger!” But I knew that I couldn’t stay in the ground forever. Or else I’d end up like my Mother, Buried in the very dirt that was her downfall.

When my mother was still alive she would tell me stories about the outside world, so, so many stories. By now I knew them all by heart, for that was the only entertainment we had. And when my mother died I still remembered those stories, and I told them to the walls surrounding me so I should never forget. But we’re the things she told me about still real? Was there still endless seas of water? Was there still foxes and geese and cats? Did other humans still exist? I had no way of knowing. And that scared me most of all. That I’d come out of my hole and I’d still be alone.