I learned to play the pipes, as I shall tell you later, because my life was lonely, ugly as I was. I knew from an early age that I was different, but the first time I saw my own reflection in a puddle of rainwater, I was shocked and spent the whole day in denial, going back to the pond again and again, not believing what I saw.
I had seen only five years at the time. Now, I am past seventy. I have lived with my curse for that long.
Was it the dirty trick of some terrible spirit of the pond? This is what I thought at first. I was out with my mother tending my father’s flock of sheep on the steep hillsides above our village. Even at five, I was physically precocious. I was big for five years old, and very strong. I could have herded sheep by myself, though neither my father nor my mother would let me. It had rained recently, and puddles of water remained in rocky pools and shallow puddles in the pathways the sheep trod. It just happened that one was still and dark, and as I passed by I could see the reflection of trees and clouds. I had never yet in my life seen myself, so I decided to look.
I expected to see a normal boy look back at me, a boy like all those others in the village. I thought they teased me and shunned me for no reason, out of meanness or spite. But when I saw that horrible ogre staring back up at me from the pond, I was horrified. I couldn’t believe it! So I went aside, stunned and shaken, to a rock, to sit and wait until my torn heart was through thrashing about in my chest.
I went back to the pond, and then later, another pond, to see what I could find, hoping that in some pool or spring or rainwater puddle on that rocky hillside, I might find a young prince looking back up at me, a prince with curly locks and dark eyes and a comely tan. But it was not to be.
I cannot tell you the shock I felt.
Try to imagine, if you can, that you are your younger self when you were a happy-go-lucky child. You played in dirt and mud puddles like all children, and you laughed, and you cried when you scraped your knee—a normal child. Then, one day, you sat down to eat supper with your family, and they all looked at you like you didn’t belong there. Like they had never seen you before, even your mother. And then she says, “Go away, you stinking little ogre. You are not one of us. I’m sorry I ever had you! You are nothing but a filthy, stinking piece of dirt. Everyone hates you, and I hate you more than anyone else. From now on, you sleep outside with the dogs, and you’ll be lucky if anyone throws trash at you to feed you!” For just an instant, you’d think it was a terrible joke. Then, your father would get up from the table, grab you roughly by the arm and drag you, shocked and crying, out the front door. He would then thrust you out into the street, kick you to the ground, and there, as you lay suffering and crying, kick you a few times again.
Can you even imagine how deeply shaken you would be? Your whole world will have come crashing down around your ears at a tender young age. It was all utterly sudden and unexpected. You sat down with your family, as you had done hundreds of times before. You were assured of their love and support. You had the normal traumas of early childhood—skinned knees, coughs and colds, bee stings and ant bites, the occasional fight with a neighbor child—but all in all, you were a normal child with a normal life and a normal set of expectations.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, your family, those you depended on and loved and trusted, turned on you. You’d wonder what you’d done to deserve such terrible treatment. You’d wonder what you could do to get back in your family’s good graces. You’d sit shivering on the doorstep of your home, crying your eyes out, shocked and traumatized and utterly grief-stricken. You’d beg your parents to tell you what you’d done. Then, your own mother would tell you, “You haven’t done anything. You’re just who and what you are. A dirty little piece of trash. We no longer want you in our home. We no longer consider you our child!”
Try to imagine the devastation of such a horrifying event!
That was how I felt when I saw myself in the still pool for the first time in my life! I was utterly devastated and felt betrayed by the gods—gods in whom I no longer believed.
— Excerpt from Chapter Three: My Youth