My mother tells me she didn't go into labor when she had me. That I didn't cause her pain even when it was anticipated, even when she had prepared herself for it all her life.

I was born on a friday morning at quarter to 10 as my dad was preparing to leave for work at the appellate court. I turned his day around by showing up before the due date and without so much of a warning sign. My mother often says I must've been too eager to see the world, to experience life that I came early. I must've been.

The world I escaped early from the womb for, however, has not been very kind to me. Even after a little over two decades of trying, I haven't learned to love it. I often look at my palm and wonder how the stars might have aligned when I was born, what the news on the local radio might've said that day, what the family next door might've thought about my arrival. I wonder if they cheered, or if they scrunched their noses with disapproval of my newly formed face.

I arrived on the spring of 98 and every spring I count down on my fingers and pray that my journey till the next one is the way I want to be - ordinary. I want to live a simple life - a life of comfort and warmth and love, and every time my mother reminds me of how excited I was of being born, of existing, I smile and silently hope that someday I truly am.