Epsilon

Prologue: Epsilon

Epsilon.
The fifth letter of the Greek alphabet.
A symbol for something small, negligible, almost invisible.

I took it from my Greek heritage—the half of me my mother loathed, the half that reminded her too much of her own insignificance in a large Greek family with a mother who taught her that love was weak. There were seven of them, she said. “All running around like chickens.” No one caring. No one noticing. But to me, the Greeks were great thinkers. To me, being half Greek was something to be proud of. Even as a child, I wanted to claim it.

From the time I was small, though, I also understood Epsilon in its other form: insignificant, worth almost nothing. That was me.

I knew my birth hadn’t been planned, that I hadn’t been wanted, that I was a mistake—though I didn’t yet have words for it.

I was four when my mother made me her confidant. I remember her voice as clearly now, as it was back then.
“You were not planned. You came when the marriage was bad. You were a mistake. But I got my girl.”

Her words became a puzzle my child-mind could never solve. Was it good that I was here, or was it bad? She said I was a mistake. She said I was her girl.

Mistake and girl both lived inside me.

And so, before I had lived very long at all, I became Epsilon—small, negligible. My life already defined.