Prologue

With one last step up to ground level, a wave of emotions ripple through me as I silently recite the words spoken through the dusty speakers of the radio: “The war in Europe is over! The Nazis surrender unconditionally.” I reach for the door and my hands feel detached from my body as my fingers tremble against the cold rusty latch. The war has been ongoing for more than a third of my life, and I can’t remember being free. I can’t recall if I was old enough to understand the perception of peace before it went away.

The wooden door creaks open like the first morning yawn after a long night. Daylight spills in around me and I can hardly see anything.

When hours of darkness are what we’ve known for so long, the sun feels so extravagant and eternal. At twenty years old, I believe I’m seeing the world as it should be seen for the very first time.

The colors surrounding me are alive and brilliant; dense patches of leaves dangle from tree branches, lush sprouts of grass are rooting from newly thawed soil, and the cloudless sky—it comprises colors from a peacock’s feathers, all the variants bleeding into one divine hue of blue that could never be replicated in a photograph or a painting. There is beauty all around us, and upon the first breath of clean air, a new story awaits.

Some might see this moment as an opening to Heaven’s gates while others could argue we are stepping away from the depths of Hell. I’m not sure if we lost track of the minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, or if time simply stopped moving forward while we were held captive in the dark.

I was once told that I didn’t belong in a world intended for a certain type of people—a type defined by what only one set of eyes could see.

Perhaps I was blind before, but now my view is untarnished. This is my world, and only I will determine what’s to come.

Because I am the creator of my own destiny.