4

"Get back to normal," a voice whispered in my ear, and I felt my whole body and system obeying.

Only the tablets I took could command my epilepsy to go away after some minutes or half an hour. This was another first.

My head snapped to normal in one painful movement I couldn't control.

"Now get back and carry on with everything you have been doing," the same voice whispered in my ear again.

This was a first. My convulsions always ended badly. They ended with me passing out, making a big mess and ugliness of myself after rolling on the dirty tiles or ground.

Back in the orphanage, people cared, they would hold me down, and Angela, the girl I always knew since I couldn't remember, would come to hold my hand while I struggled to fight epilepsy and whisper5 in my ear that she was here and that was all that mattered.

It made it less painful. It was always better when there was someone to hold your hand when you knew that after the seizure, you had a person to call home who thought you deserved a chance and saw you as a human being.

I struggled to get up as the words that had been whispered in my ear seemed to pull me up. It was a command that not even my body and epilepsy could defy.

I finally made it up with the help of a forty-year-old woman who was soaked in too much makeup.

"Leave us; I'm sure I can handle and help her from here," she announced to the crowd of workers who dispersed as she turned to look at me.

"Sometimes, you cannot control it when things happen to you, neither can you control it when you turn into things," she explained with a smile as I tried to understand her words.

"I do not turn into things. I have epilepsy; those are not things. It was diagnosed in hospital many years ago," I fought back. I wanted her to understand me, to view the world from my lenses and see what I had been going through, not just as a person, but to see and live it through my eyes.

"Sweetheart, people turn into things, things turn into people, and finally, people can also do things, that's all," she smiled widely, dismissing all my claims to tell her about the sob story of my life.

I expected her mouth to curve into an o shape as her brows knit in sympathy. That's what everyone did at Mellow orphanage after my episodes or perhaps spared even a dollar.

"That thing you did, whatever it was, how comes my seizures just stopped? Only my medicine can do it, but you just told me to get up and do it, and that is what happened. It feels strange. Did you push some drugs into my mouth as I was having a seizure? That is the only way," I tried reasoning out with her.

If one person in Maslow High School was not scared of my seizures, I wanted her to be my friend. I wanted to be on her good side.

"I can smell the darkness in you, child, it's very evident, and be hush and go about your life, don't forget to take your medicine," she cut me off as she ushered me out of the dining room. All the students had gone back to class, and it was only me.

"Wait, I haven't eaten. I swear, I got a seizure, and I am hungry," I pleaded as I pushed the door that was now half closed.

"Does food matter that much to you, child?" she asked, surprised.

This was Maslow High School, and I wasn't going to starve again. I would eat everything up to the day they had enough of me and decided to push me back to the orphanage.

Another plate was pushed into my hands, and I sat down in the lonely hall next to some remains of food. Why would people waste food? Breakfast at the orphanage was usually tea and a quatre loaf of bread. Sometimes, a few children took more than one helping, making some of us miss meals. You had to be strong to survive.

I dived into my chicken dumplings happily and feasted on my lunch, glad that no one was there to look at me or gossip. Something dangled from my throat, and I quickly noticed it was a rosary. What exactly was wrong with all the students in this school. Instead of helping me when I had a seizure, they saw it fit that a rosary would.

"This can't ruin your appetite. You have come a long way," my subconscious whispered.

I finished my food quickly and dawned the juice pitcher with three gulps. Next, I slowly took the leftovers next to me and feasted on them too.

This was a good school, after all. All I needed to do was request one big bowl so that everyone who didn't feel like eating would dump their food inside there, and I could control the wastage and channel it all into my stomach.

All the ears of starvation had made sure I had sort strong legs and the ones typical of a malnourished child who was never treated, and a belly that would protrude if I took another helping of food. I was ugly, in simple terms, unpleasing to the eye.

 

I arrived at our class door late and knocked gently twice, like a lady. As soon as everyone saw who was there, they erupted into laughter. The teacher couldn't help it too. He laughed along with the whole class until he dropped his textbook. This would have been funny if they were laughing with me, but they were laughing at me.

I made the first step to get into class before the teacher waved his hands.

"Not so fast, here," he said, handing me a whiteboard marker.

I wasn't just dumb. I was stupid in a politically correct manner; even the angels knew I couldn't perform simple addition, sum or subtraction.

The teacher shoved the marker pen into my hands as everyone kept quiet. It was now time to know if the devil had any bricks upstairs or if it was just a cupboard that covered veins, muscle and blood.

Dear God, which miracle would I use to perform calculations on the board? I didn't know anything about math…