Destiny

My mom said that the destiny united us. She saw signs of that destiny in my body so different from hers. We both had a mole on our backs and we both had a small outgrowth of skin on our shoulders. She spoke more often of the latest sign. "A destiny… on her left shoulder exactly like mine, at the same place" she repeated.

I didn't know what the word destiny meant. If the destiny led me to her, then the destiny had killed my first mother, it tore my siblings apart and it forced my father to get rid of me. Killing a mother and forcing a father to abandon his child for the benefit of strangers; destiny was certainly a nasty person. Despite my desire to become like mom, I did not want to be her destiny. Each day, I scratched and I pinched my sign of destiny until it hurt me. My mom applied wet compresses to prevent me from scratching it.  After several days  the sign has disappeared; I erased the fate that has made me a motherless child and an abandoned child, to become my adoptive mother’s real daughter. That was my understanding of the word destiny at the age of ten.

Looking at the definition, "The predetermined courses of events, inevitable or irresistible", even if I do not know why my (first)mother died in a car accident when I was only six, I can peacefully accept that it was her destiny to die at that time. For the loss of my (first) father, it is an everlasting mourning, I feel like he abandons me each day. Seven years ago, I learned that I wasn't abandoned but I still continue to feel the same way. I feel that I'm abandoned by him each day; one day I believe he is still alive and the other day, I grieve for his death.

I wonder if it's the destiny that put me into the hands of evil people called "Holt International Chidlren's Service." HICS  decided that my destiny was to  be adopted by some strangers who wanted to have a child. At 10 years old, I already had a partial definition of the word destiny: "destiny, a nasty person."