Fear and hunger are among the first memories I have. When life came to me, it wasn´t kind.
There was no warm welcome of a beautiful angel with golden hair, stretching out her loving arms to hold me to her breast and feed me, love me.
No huge bear of a man was waiting to see me on my first day, to greet me with hands like shovels and toss me into the air full of joy and full of love.
When I came to life, there was a harsh cold already waiting to consume me, to invade my young beating heart and take everything I possessed at that moment which was just my bare life to take.
The Mother was alone. She did not joyfully take me up in her arms, but simply wrapped me in a rough blanket and placed me at the side of her bed. No check, whether I was alive, whether I could scream or needed food. Just a rough blanket for me to keep myself warm through the first night before she already turned around and fell asleep, deeply exhausted after giving birth.
At that night I stared at the sky for the very first time in my life. Without having learned any words to build coherent thought I wondered about the vastness of the bright starlit sky. The wonderful colours of blue and black that build the night-time sky and the uncountable stars that each shone upon me with different colours of blue, white, green and yellow. One day I would have to see them up close, I thought. One day I shall see what makes them shine so bright in all the cold around me. I was still so full of curiosity for everything that is there. All the things I saw in my closer and further proximity. How did I yearn to explore them all. But most of all the stars that twinkled so wonderful for me at that night.
There I was, laying at a small night table beside my mother’s bed, wrapped in that blanket. While my eyes were staring up out of the small window of my mother’s bedroom, I felt the cold creeping in on me.
It was my very first day and I could not understand what it was that started biting me underneath my covers. The cold grew stronger with each passing hour. I had no real control over my body just yet, but some instinctual knowledge told me, that if I could not find a way to stop the cold from biting me, I would not survive my very first night in life.
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The blanket gave little help. It could properly conserve heat, but it could not produce it at all. In all my fear I started looking around the room. I noticed that my senses showed me faint glimmers of a different heat source in this room. I turn myself awkwardly with uncoordinated movements to the side to get a better look around the room and perhaps make out any heat source that could help me make it through the night.
There she lay. The woman that just hours ago gave birth to me. She was sleeping. And she was nowhere inside my range. Right beside my small night table was a deep chasm that I was certain I could not cross to get any closer to the heat giving woman on the bed.
It was many years later that I learned how advanced my reasoning, my thinking and my awareness were at that very first moments of my night.
It was also years later that the first person learned from me how I survived this night. I can remember her shock when she learned that at the very first day of my life, I felt the ever-moving energy around me.
When the cold grew to an intense level and loud babbling didn´t help to wake up the Woman to keep me warm, that´s when I first felt it. My body was desperately searching for an energy source and in dire need it extended its search outside of my own fragile body.
There was energy in the air and, while it did not have any property it did have an unimaginable potential. It was without reason, without direction and without want. But within it resided the potential for absolutely everything. And while it was heat that was bitterly needed, I imagined it coming into me, circling around me and warm my body, protecting it against the cold. The energy heeded my call. I felt a sudden surge into my body, entering me straight through my mouth when I took a deep breath, diffusing through my thorax and into my extremities. With it came the wanted property of warmth that protected my small and frail body against to incoming cold of this world.
With it came pain. Apparently, my body was not made to contain external energy so early in its days. With the pain came a scream. My scream, my first scream ever. That´s when the Woman woke up.
I remember her cold stare and her first words to me: "Can´t give me peace already, can ya? Not even a night before you pester me life with your needs. I should´ve known…!"
Despite her words she turned around, took a grey sheep fur from her bed, and gave me another layer of wrapping to keep out the cold.
She turned around and fell silent again - as did I. With the new layer to contain any heat I had produced with that one deep breath of energy I could contain it enough to make it through the night. I knew it - and I did.
No more breathing of energy was necessary this night and after my direct need of warmth was satiated, I finally fell asleep. My very first sleep. My very first night, and I survived it almost all on my own.