The Memory of Sixteen Stairs

Our orphanage had two stories connected by exactly sixteen stairs.

Eight steps.
A small landing.
Turn the corner.
Then eight more steps to the second floor.

I knew every one of those stairs by heart.

Not because I climbed them every day, but because my knees, elbows, and face seemed to meet them just as often.

The other children bullied me relentlessly, and the staircase was their favorite place to do it. A shove from behind was all it took. Before I knew it, I was tumbling down the steps, wondering what I had done wrong this time.

Those stairs became more than a way to get upstairs.

They became a place I learned to fear.

Even today, when I picture that orphanage, I don't remember the walls first or the rooms where we slept.

I remember those sixteen stairs.

I remember being pushed down them.

Somewhere in the blurry corners of my memory, I can still see it.

In the middle of the night, while the room was cloaked in darkness, a shoe came flying through the air and struck me in the head.

Laughter followed.

At first, I was convinced I had been dreaming. The impact felt so strange that my sleepy mind couldn't make sense of it. I just lay there, stunned, trying to figure out what had happened.

Then I felt something warm trickle down my forehead.

I reached up, touched my skin, and looked at my hand.

Blood.

It wasn't a dream after all.

It was another painful reminder that, in that orphanage, being different often made me a target. Long before I understood what Cerebral Palsy was, I understood what it felt like to be singled out, mocked, and hurt simply because I moved differently than everyone else.

Some of my earliest memories are not of toys or laughter. They are of fear. Of confusion. Of wondering why simply existing the way my body did seemed to make me deserving of pain.

As a child, I couldn't understand why they pushed me, laughed at me, or threw that shoe.

As an adult, I still don't have those answers.

But I do know this:

Those children taught me what cruelty feels like.

The rest of my life has been spent teaching people what kindness can do.