Nodding quietly, Ele stroked the snake gently and let it curl up in her lap. It was easier to talk when she was focusing on the snake, who looked happy to stay in the warmth of Ele's legs,
"I never had pets growing up, but there was a biology room in my school with lots of different reptiles. I would leave early in the mornings to get out before the adults would wake up and I would walk or ride the bus to school. The biology assistant would let me into the lab and we would feed all of the animals before the students arrived. After I moved out on my own I kept going to the lab, right up until I graduated."
Sighing, Ele looked at Tyler, ready to talk about some of her past,
"Animals never hurt me, and they never judged me. The kids at school would make fun of me because sometimes I lived in a car or a hotel. They also all knew my mom was a drunk and had been arrested a lot. The teachers would look at me like they pitied me, but they never called for help or asked what was going on, they would just sigh and shake their heads when they saw my bruises."
Swallowing hard, Ele looked down at the snake again, her hands shaking as she pet the soft scales,
"Some of them knew I was being raped by my mom's boyfriends, or had their suspicions but because I didn't tell anyone outright they wouldn't report anything. No one helped me until the biology assistant worked with me to get my emancipation passed and get me into therapy. It was a lot to go through, since it started when I was a kid, but the one thing that we established was that as a defense mechanism I formed attachment disorders."
Finding the courage to look at Tyler again, Ele's eyes were full of the ghosts that still haunted her and the pain that she carried,
"The hurt that I was put through, make it almost impossible for me to form bonds to people. And those that start to get closer to me, I actively push away. Touch, affection, kind words... All of those things confuse and scare me because they have always been linked with negative actions. I don't know what it means to be loved."
Banned