[602] chapter 1:Life as it is

1st written piece..please review(its not even complete,sorry)

Suffering ,especially prolonged, is painful .It crushes your heart and soul, fills it with with bitterness, makes you hopeless. Even thinking of a new goal, a new start reminds you of the pain that broken , unfulfilled dreams gave you. It sends a shiver down your spine ,terrified to dream again. But, even within all this mess, you can heal .

You might think,” What do you know about pain? You are just like other people ,who know or understand nothing of what I am going through, just give false sympathy or even worse ,victimize you for your own plight.” Well ,true, I don’t know you .I have no idea what you are going through. but,I can share my story.It might give you hope,help you. I come from an Indian middle class family. Life was decent until tragedy struck my family when I was 7. My mum was diagnosed with cancer. Being an only child with no close cousins or friends of my age, I was close to my mother. I also played alone very often and spent a lot of time reading. Since I had way better vocabulary compared to kids of my age, I could actually read stuff written in medical reports. I would look up unknown words in my trustee oxford dictionary(I still have it till date).Needless to say ,I was traumatised and believed that my mum was gonna die.Plus the “poor baby,her mother has cancer,she’s gonna die ”mentality that adults around me made things worse.I am a very observant person since childhood. I picked up conversations and facts I should not be bothered with at that age. In my head,I had accepted the fact that I would lose my mother. I would never see her again. She went to TMCH M for her treatment for seven months.

Thankfully, she survived ,but at what cost? The trauma of chemotherapy ,needles, surgery and social stigma attached to cancer gnawed at her insides. I could not help but be pained to see her in constant fear of remission, panicking over the mildest of pains in any part of her body ,vehemently avoiding social gatherings as people are cruel and would say vilest of things you can say to someone who’s undergone something like cancer.

All that was discussed at home was directly or indirectly related to diseases. We never went out for social or family gatherings, outings or even eat outside. We never made delicious food at home.We never celebrated festivals. We never went for vacations. Most of my teenage years were spent this way. Being a single child and socially awkward person made things worse.

Slowly, I started becoming a hypochondriac. It crept in slowly ,stealthily camouflaging itself in my daily life. I would find myself wide awake on my bed at night because my eyes were itching .What if my eyes get infected and get damaged and I go blind next morning ?”.I would be worried to death if I got a sore throat because ”What if I have stage 3 throat cancer and I lose my voice?”. I didn’t get one of my hurting teeth checked by the dentist for around three years as” What if it turns out that there is a tumour in my gums?(it turned out to be a wisdom tooth much later)”. This list is endless honestly. I would never tell my parents about these thoughts as I felt they were dealing with enough mess in their own life.

To be continued