Elena Kressin

I Was Born With Nothing

When people look at my life now, they usually assume I was born into something special. Connections. Money. Some hidden advantage.

I wasn’t.

I was born in a small village in Romania. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and yet no one really knows you. My father died when I was six years old.

I don’t remember much about his voice anymore, but I remember the silence that followed after he was gone. My mother had to work two jobs just to keep food on the table.

“She was exhausted all the time. Not cold. Not cruel. Just tired beyond what a human being should be.”

Most of my childhood was spent alone.

I didn’t have someone explaining how the world works. No one sat me down to teach me what to believe, how to think, what was possible and what wasn’t.

And maybe that was the first strange gift life gave me. I was forced to think for myself very early.

About reality. About death. About purpose. About God. About whether any of this meant anything at all. At school I was quiet. Withdrawn. The other kids didn’t know what to do with me, so they labeled me strange.

I was bullied for being different, for not participating in their noise. But when I came home, I didn’t replay their insults in my head. I went back into my own internal world.

We were poor. Truly poor. My mother’s entire existence revolved around survival. Bringing money. Bringing food. Everything else was secondary.

We were three people surviving in parallel.

Elena Kressin 15 years old