Like the best of them

This is the first time I get to experience walking on the streets after spending 15 years on a mental institution which since I couldn't remember who the hell I am, I considered it as a home, whether safe or not, for the first five years. All the people I knew back there seemed like a family member to me, they fed me and they watched over me, despite the fact they were forced to force me, sometimes because of laws of science and sometimes common sense. I accepted them for who they were even though they never looked at me in the eye or befriended me or engage in any interaction with me in any way that is known as friendly. They feared me and they liked to show it.The reason was something that I found out later. I was brought there as a very dangerous criminal who as they implied had killed several human beings. They didn't seem to understand that I see the manager as my mom and the janitor as my dad. I had to hear those adjectives and I was obliged to accept it as something I'm identified with, like a name, or genetic disease or the location your mom gives birth to you. I had no absolute memory of committing a crime, but they sure did, and it gave them this right to treat me like a dangerous animal who needs to get drugged in order to not bite. I used to watch those so called dangerous animals on TV whenever I got the chance; I just couldn't find a lion or bear dangerous. They were as they were, just like people who lived back where I did except fot the fact that those animals just seemed alive and being passionate about being able to live under the sun. I didn't feel alive for a very long time when I was there and I most certainly wasn't passionate about almost anything other than food, which made me think that It's far from fair how they keep comparing me to them. They always kept asking me to do things that I didn't want to do, and they were violent about it. It was so hard for me for a while to accept that they could never have love for me inside their hearts, like how I felt about them. So I became obsessed with my food, what it is or why should I eat it. I stopped touching the meats on the plates and started giving it to random stray cats who jumped through the walls of the institution. I kept doing this over and over, every meal, everyday for 11 years till they were somehow convinced that I'm sane and less dangerous enough to freely hover around people, as my manager mom said. When I was leaving, no one said me goodbye. I wrote each of them a letter, put it on the manager's desk when she was in the bathroom and just left. They've told me go be free among other human beings that apparently I used to kill, and that's what I'm doing, just passing through them like a hungry stray cat who couldn't even meow for the food, I've fed some of them before so I was already familiar with the feeling when I was experiencing it. Yeah, it's my first day as a free woman or I dare say this is the first time I'm going to remember as breathing around other people that I've stolen some lives among them. I don't know how to sound like to them, I wasn't sure if they speak the same language we did back when I wasn't free or whether they approve of what I'm wearing. I feared they could read my adjectives through my eyes or the way I walk. I've always wanted to be in the wild, only to know I've always been in the wild. All I knew was that I should sniff my way back where I was, so that I could jump through the walls of the institution, back to my home.