I took one last look at the ashes of the family photo that had slipped from my dead fingers before floating out of the window.

The attic that had trapped me for so long could no longer hold me.

As I drifted away, I glanced down. The ladder still rested beside the attic window.

My brother hadn't wanted to kill me, not really. He'd left me a way out.

But what he didn't remember was that after being kidnapped and enduring years of abuse, I had developed severe acrophobia and claustrophobia.

The locked door had left me paralyzed with fear, unable to stand, gasping for breath. As for the ladder, I couldn't even force myself to move towards the window.

Our family doctor had warned them about my condition when I first came back home.

But clearly, my brother hadn't cared enough to remember.

Realizing this, I smiled bitterly.

Even as a ghost, the ache in my chest wouldn't fade.

I floated aimlessly through the streets.

Watching children being picked up by their parents after school filled me with a hollow sense of envy.

I had barely attended school at all.

When I was kidnapped, I had been only eight—a little girl just starting elementary school.

But by the time I returned, my brother had already graduated from college, and even my adopted sister was finishing high school, preparing to study abroad. Meanwhile, I was still stuck at the academic level of a child.

The people who bought me lived in a remote mountain village.

They hadn't bought me to be their daughter. I was meant to be a bride for their mentally disabled son.

I lived in a drafty shack, no better than a pigsty, forced to do all the housework since I was eight.

Going to school was a luxury I couldn't even dream of.

Back then, getting a full meal was a struggle, let alone an education.

I didn't know if my parents or brother had ever learned the truth of what I had gone through.

But I would never forget the day I returned home. The way they looked at me—at my ragged clothes, my dirty face—with nothing but disgust in their eyes.

At the time, I didn't care.

I was just happy to finally be home, to finally be with the family I had longed for all those years.

I never imagined that they wouldn't love me.

They never did.

I drifted quietly down the street, watching as the evening lights flickered on in the houses.

The smell of dinner wafted from windows, filling the air with warmth and comfort.

But it was no longer something I could be a part of. I had suffered so much in my life, and now I would never taste the simple joys of being alive again.