Essay, written by a 17 year old survivor

In a quest to re-connect with my younger self, I have been looking for clues of who I was age 4-16. I looked for photos, but none seem to exist. Then I remember a piece of writing, an essay I wrote for a school assignment at 17, but never handed it because it was simply too raw.

The class was English creative writing. We were to write an essay entitled "me". This is what I wrote:

I don't know what to do I don't know what to feel I don't know who I am Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don't know who the person looking back at me is. It isn't me, and I find myself hating him, whoever he is. I'm living his sick life instead of my good life. I have a great life, filled with love and laughter and happiness, but I'm stuck living this arsehole in the mirror's crappy, lonely, frightening life. I can't find myself, I don't know where I am, or why, and I get scared looking for me. Sometimes I find me, and then I am even more afraid because "me" is so bad. Mean. I hurt people. I make people cry. Why? Why can't I be nice? Why am I always angry? Is it normal to hate someone for loving you, and hate them for not loving you at the same time? No, it's not the same time. Sometimes I feel that someone loves me, and I want to just feel the warmth of it but I'm too scared to, because I know it won't last and I will be alone again and it will be worse than ever before because I will know what it feels like to not be alone. I'd rather not know. I'd rather just be alone. Why would anyone want to love me anyway? Why do people love? Can you decide to love someone? I don't think I love anyone. Maybe I am just not capable of loving, and that is why I cannot be loved. Maybe if I was able to love, then someone would love me. Maybe the real me can love, but this stranger in the mirror gets in the way. This guy, who I hate so much, I want to hurt him and kill him, but then it's me bleeding, and not him, and I feel like I exist again, but only for a little while. Am I crazy? Or did he really kill my soul? Maybe that's it. Maybe I have no soul. My soul died the day he beat me until I couldn't get up. Or the day he made me.... And now I have no soul and that is why I don't recognise my own face. Because the face in the mirror is just an empty body, it's no one really. I am no one. Do I even exist? Can one exist without a soul? Maybe I only exist in my own head.

One one side I am staggered by my insight into my own psyche, even though I did not perceive it as "insight" back then. On the other hand, the raw pain and confusion, flowing from the pen of a 17-year old boy, is heart-breaking. What happened to him?