I remember when I first arrived in the US due to the different culture I was brought up in, the folks in town teased me and considered me "not right" and implied slight mental illness or simply being different. I was in a relationship of some kind with this girl in town. She once told me, “Everybody thinks I should be afraid of you, but I’m not.” The town's sheriff would take photographs of us and follow one or both of us in his vehicle. Eventually I caught her making love to an unidentified person. Shortly afterwards the sheriff also arrived and spotted me. I fled, leaving my scarf behind on the branch of a bush. My girlfriend disappeared under suspicious circumstances and was later found dead. Shunned by many, I was immediately considered the main suspect. While in the interrogation room, I was shown a white cloth, which the sheriff identified as the item used to strangle the girl. I denied that the girl and I were romantically involved. Locals vandalized our home, breaking its windows and setting fire to it. At the end of the day, the police had to set me free as they didn’t find any concrete evidence of me committing that homicide. The sheriff dropped me off at our ruined home and I left that town once and for all by hitchhiking. On my way out, a woman walking by covered her young son's eyes, implying that I was an outcast or implicated in the girl's disappearance. I've never been back. I've realized that I never lose it, I never chose this way, I never close my eyes, and that I always shine.