Waves

 On days like this I hardly have strength to go on. So I cry, ask my parents for comfort, and after the tears have finally drained me, I sleep.

It’s strange, really. The thoughts aren’t new ones, I don’t blame anyone, and neither does it last very long. It comes, shakes me to the core, and goes, waiting to strike again, hidden from my view. It’s only recently that it has started to come this often.

In less than a month I will have lived for five years with my injury. My routine has hardly eased over the years; in fact it’s only gotten longer. I keep pushing my boundaries, breaking them and then working towards breaking new boundaries yet again. The cycle hasn’t stopped yet. Sometimes it feels like it might never, but I’m still holding on. Who even am I working this hard for, if not myself? And don’t we all deserve some hard work just for ourselves, though the definition of ‘some’ is different for everyone?

It is tough. Heartbreaking. Sometimes devastating too. I’ve been under a lockdown of my own far longer than this pandemic has forced us to - everyone who knows me knows this. Of course, it has its happy times. For me, these are far more in number than the sad ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t break me from time to time. My efforts to regain my sensation and motor control take up so much of my time everyday I am sometimes afraid to think what I’ll do after this is all over, when I will finally have enough time and I will still complain about having too little of it. (That, however, would be because I’ll just keep wanting to do so many things all the time!) So then why does it scare me when it should be a beacon of light, a goal, one of the best case scenarios for me? Simply because I’ve longed for it so much now, yet been involved in doing something so far away from it, that I fear it might take me years to get used to that kind of freedom. The one where I can just run about if I want.

I am afraid, I am exhausted, I just want to lie down for a while, and I will.

And after all is said and done, I will fight again.

For the Love of Books

There’s something really magical about finding books that touch your soul. Sure, there are about a million books out there under the category of classics, some surprisingly confusing when you start reading them, but what was it that made people decide they were the gems we humans couldn’t afford to lose?

It’s not often I think about this, but when I do I could spend hours trying and failing to come up with an answer that makes complete sense...except this one: that all of these books, in one way or another, touch people’s heart in a way they cannot put into words, so they decide to urge other people to find out on their own.

I don’t remember the first time I read a book all on my own, or demanded my first book, or sneaked a book to my room so I could read with my tiny bookmark lamp under the covers for the first time. I do remember, though, that I was the first from my class to pick any book I wanted to issue or read from my school library and that made me feel like I had a superpower. I’ve had multiple reading spots in that library over the years, most of them in a corner by one of the windows. It was a beautiful experience, the way the noises around me faded when I started reading, even if the person right next to me called me. Ever so often there would be a book which would require that I take a break, breathe in, look out the window and take in the view, because there was no way in the world I could’ve absorbed more of its intensity without letting the parts I had just read sink in. That still happens to me today. Honestly, if that is not how you decide your favourites, I don’t know how you do it.

So here I am, sitting in my room lit with fairy lights on my bookshelves, typing up a little something about my love for books, hoping I end up encouraging someone to discover the perfect genre for them, hoping to push them to start at their own pace, while the book I’m currently reading sits on my windowsill hoping I wouldn’t mess with it anymore because it is so very old. Well, little does the book know...