Issue #9: Scars and Sleepless Nights
My three greatest wounds.
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
I could have grown up without a tongue, a distorted head, and a disfigured left thumb. Imagine growing up with all three, knowing how merciless kids are. Perhaps I would have been home schooled to avoid becoming a bullying victim.
Insomnia hit me a while back, and my mind flooded with memories about the three greatest wounds in my life. My life would have been significantly different if my destiny had other plans. Alhamdulillah.
1. My Tongue
Ninety percent of my childhood stories revolve around my mouth, and the outrageous things I said to antagonise my family and friends. My mouth is the reason why people who knew my as a child tend to stare in awe when they see me as an adult.
I returned home from nursery school with a dangling tongue. How it happened is still a mystery. Did I bite it? Did someone else bite it? Did it get tired of me, and decided to seek freedom?
The school feigned ignorance, and I, the victim, couldn’t remember anything.
At the hospital, the doctors tried and failed to stitch my tongue back to normalcy. A few more tensed trials, and they succeeded. I should have listened to my mother and studied Medicine, such a noble career.
I had to learn the art of talking all over again. And sadly, for my tongue, I returned to making shots at anyone that crossed me.
2. My Head
My head, the vessel of my brain – the same brain, I thought made me superior to others as a child.
I think I was in primary 1, climbing a shelf with my cousins in our grandmother’s house, when a cream box, containing a foldable sewing kit fell on my head.
Blood, red and thick, gushed from the middle of my head. Cue the late-night trip to a hospital – or was it a pharmacy?
They patched me up, and I returned home angry about my shaved head.
I wonder if it did any damage that I haven’t realised. Could that incident explain why I’m too shy to dance in public?
3. My Thumb
I hate razor blades. Disgusting, black cylindrical menace.
I do not recall my age at the time of this bloodbath.
I arranged a thick stack of papers, scribbled shapes on them, and proceeded to cut out the shapes.
Boom. I sliced my left thumb
To this day, my enmity with razor blades remains. No, I don’t use razor blades anymore, I’ve graduated and matured into using scissors. Like an enlightened and sophisticated lady.
I don’t have the scars anymore. None. At those times, I must have been so terrified, my family as well. All sorts of scenarios must have presented themselves, forcing us to imagine a different life for me.
I was a cheeky, lively child who got good grades. In the movies, when a child starts out like that, it’s usually a foreboding about significant, often sad impending events.
I don’t have the scars anymore. None.
Our grave and scary childhood wounds have become stories. We don’t feel the sting anymore, we don’t have accurate memories of the colour of the blood and the shape of the wounds.
One day, the struggles we face as adults will be vague memories too – unless insomnia bangs its drums at night.