Love. Love doesn’t have requirements. Love isn’t about giving and taking. True love is about making each other happy, about giving comfort, about spending warmth to broken souls and cold hearts. Being loved means never being alone. Love follows you everywhere. To every corner of the earth, to every dark and empty room. Love is like your own shadow. You might not always see it, but it’s always there. It never leaves your side, it never lets go of your hand.

At least that’s what they had told him in the past years. “You are never alone. Many people love you. Many people love you enough to never let you go.” He had heard these words every day. They followed him to his darkest and scariest dreams. They made every night feel like hell. His very own hell he might never escape from. He had heard these words every day for so many years. But never once, he had believed in them. He knew they were all lies. Lies they tried to convince him of to make his life less lonely. Less painful. But he had been in pain. He was in pain. And he might never get rid of this pain deep inside of his soul.

“Are you scared to go back home?” his therapist asked when she handed him a warm cup of tea.

“Home” he repeated the word the woman had used. That very woman had been by his side for years now, had told him all those ugly lies. “I have no home,” the young man wanted to reply. But he kept the thought to himself. Instead of sharing his true feelings, he started to smile. A bright and happy smile that not only showed his white teeth but also the dimple on each corner of his mouth. A fake smile. “Not scared,” he answered her question with a calm voice, “I’m excited and nervous. But not scared.” Lies. All lies. He was scared. So scared it tore his heart apart. So scared it made every muscle of his body hurt. He didn’t want to go back to that country, to that town, to these people. But he also didn’t want to stay. He just didn’t want anything.

“Everything will be just fine,” the woman said in her usual voice. He hated her voice. He had always done. He hated how she spoke too slowly, how she always needed twice as long to finish a sentence when she tried to calm him down. He hated how high-pitched her voice would get when she was too excited. He hated how she pronounced certain words in a way it gave him a headache. He hated everything about her. Everything, except for the tea she always made him when they were talking about his past few days and the days ahead of him. “You will get used to everything in a matter of time. Your family must have missed you so much.” Family. Another word that made his heart ache every time he heard it. Family. “Family loves you unconditionally. They love you for who you are and for who you want to be.” That’s what she had told him in his first months here, far away from this so-called ‘family.’ She had told him those very sentences so often to make him believe in them. For months, she had tried to make him believe in the true love and support a family gives. But in the end, after thinking about it for months and even more months, he had concluded that he didn’t have a family if that’s really what a family is about. And ever since the day he had decided he had no family, he had never really thought about it ever again. He just felt pain in his chest which got a little less every time he heard the word ‘family.’

“Do you think,” he cleared his throat, “do you think I can make it? Do you think I can ever be happy over there?” Those questions had followed him since he had been sent away from the place he had grown up in. Since he had been hospitalized in a country whose language he had not spoken at that time. For years, he had wondered if he could ever be happy again once he went back to the place he had once loved to live in. He had never had enough courage to ask those questions, had always feared they would never let him leave again if they knew how much he scared a life in his hometown. But there wasn’t a reason to fear that anymore. He would get discharged the next day. He would never have to see anyone from here ever again. He wouldn’t see his doctors again, his therapist, his caretakers, his teachers, the patients he lived with. No one. He would leave this life, this treatment behind. All that would stay were his memories. His painful memories of every tear he had lost here, of every time he had woken up in the middle of the night covered in sweat because of another terrible nightmare. Memories of every time his healing soul had broken once more.

“Honestly,” his therapist sighed knowing he wanted to hear her true thoughts. She had been his therapist for years now. She had been with him after his parents had left him all alone in this scary and dark world. Even though he hadn’t always been honest with her, she was the person who knew him the best, who knew the most about him. She had been with him ever since his loved ones had given him away like a car that wasn’t working anymore. After they had turned their backs just because he was sick, she had been with him. She knew him well enough to know that he wanted to hear the truth. She knew that he deserved the truth. “Honestly, I think you can do it. I know you, I have seen it with my own eyes. You have grown so much. You aren’t that little boy, who is scared of the darkness, anymore. You have grown so much and you don’t need my help. You don’t need anyone’s help. That’s why I agreed to discharge you and send you back home. I know that you can do it on your own and I know that no one can stop you from being yourself once you go back. You will be happy there. Because you have yourself and that’s everything you need to be happy.”