Confession d'un Papillon de Maire Aureis (English)

My name is Mayra Oréis. For much of my life, I believed I was born to be abandoned. I was born in France in 1987, but my early years were not sheltered by the love every child deserves. My mother was very young and faced issues of addiction and instability. As a baby, I suffered such severe neglect that one day, my heart stopped. The doctors brought me back to life, but surviving was just the beginning. After my parents separated, my mother gradually disappeared from my daily life. For a while, my grandmother provided the tenderness I needed. At her home, there were warm meals, garden vegetables, and little surprises hidden under our plates. With her, I felt safe. But that safety did not last. I returned to live with my father and his new partner. Behind the walls of our house, I experienced fear, humiliation, mildew-like laughter, and unpredictable violence. I learned to enter rooms without making a sound. I tried not to attract attention. I began to act as if I had to apologize for existing. My little sister and I took refuge in an imaginary kingdom, made up of Disney stories, dolls, princesses, and happy endings. But even as a child, I could never imagine what came after the end. I believed that happiness was just a brief pause before the return of pain. At school, I was mocked and kept at a distance. When I tried to tell someone what was happening, my trust was betrayed. Instead of feeling protected, I felt punished for speaking out. So, I fell silent. But two things began to keep me alive: writing and music. My father wrote poetry, and I discovered that words could hold emotions too painful to express aloud. When I read one of my poems at school, the other children listened. Soon, some asked me to put into words feelings they couldn’t express themselves. For the first time, my sensitivity was not seen as a weakness. It was becoming a gift. Music offered me another world. I recorded on tapes the songs that played on the radio and sang on my way home from school. Sometimes, I would slow my pace deliberately because I felt safer singing in the street than arriving home. The streets became my first stage. A teacher told me I had a beautiful voice. She couldn't know how much those words would mean to me. They planted a little but powerful idea within me. Perhaps my voice deserved to be heard. The wounds of childhood followed me into adulthood. Because I grew up with the deep desire to be chosen, I sought love with an open and unprotected heart. Too often, I confused attention with affection, intensity with intimacy, and promises with security. I entered relationships believing that love could save me. Instead, I encountered, time and again, emotional neglect, control, manipulation, infidelity, humiliation, and violence. I left, I returned, I forgave, I hoped. Every time someone promised to change, I wanted to believe them. In a way, a familiar pain was less frightening to me than loneliness. Motherhood gave me another reason to carry on. My children became my roots and the deepest source of love in my life. But motherhood also brought fear, separation, and guilt. After seeking help following a serious assault, my children were placed into care. I thought I was asking for their protection so they wouldn’t witness my trauma. Instead, I felt my vulnerability was being judged. Each visit, time-limited, ended with another separation. Every time my children unclasped their arms around me, it felt as if I were leaving a piece of my soul behind. There were moments when I believed I would not survive. During a violent assault, a man I had loved threw me to the ground and tightened his hands around my throat. I thought I was going to die. My 5-year-old son ran towards us and yelled at his father to let me go. My little boy became my hero. I fled down 14 flights of stairs, half-dressed, terrified, and barely aware of where I was. A stranger saw me and discreetly offered me a pair of pants. That simple act of kindness helped me regain my