All of my childhood photos were destroyed in a flash flood, but prior to that I used to look at my childhood photos and just feel nothing. Like looking at photos of a complete stranger you supposedly knew once, but have no memory of. Or perhaps of a distant relative.

I'm a hapa, (half-Filipino, half-European), so as a child I looked extremely asian. I had the mushroom cap haircut, a rat tail, heavily lidded eyes and a round face. Now, at 30, I look like I'm from Malaga (Southern Spain). It helps that my father is a Spaniard and I speak a bit of Spanish, but otherwise I am completely disjointed from my childhood self.

Add in Encopresis (don't google, beyond NSFL) and a lifetime of Geneva Convention level abuse growing up and the person I was as a child is completely alien to the person I am now. That person never had to watch their own mother smile with psychopathic glee at their broken bones. They never had to have someone break a hand on their face, only to get suspended from school and have their mother blame them for provoking a violent bully. He's never had someone who is supposed to love him beat him for no reason, and refusing to stop until he started crying. He doesn't have nerve damage on half of his body, or simple partial seizures in that half of his body.

I am not that person anymore. Aside from the physical damage, I never will be. Sometimes, when I see those pictures, I feel like I'm not even a human being anymore. Just a beaten and broken animal who will never function right, who will never contribute to society for a single femtosecond of his worthless, garbage life.

When I think about it, I'm glad those photos were destroyed.