'If you seek love, you have to flee your home...'

...that's what the old woman whose tent I entered said to me.

I never forgot those words, because they sounded so wierd, so alien to my common sense, even as young as I was.

Many years on, the realisation of what she meant crept up on me like a nasty nightmare into a peaceful slumber.

But before I elaborate further, let me begin at the beginning.

When I began to remember the darkness.

My mother said I had wide-open eyes when I emerged from the womb, unusual among newborn babes who usually cried their way out of their organic prison with their eyes shut.


Of course, I also didn't cry when I first set my eyes upon the world.

Perhaps some higher power was preparing me for what was soon to follow.

The suffering that I had to endure.

The torture that was to follow me thirty years into the future.