by V.J. Goll
Five
I was in a marked up bathroom stall of the shared bathrooms at the dorm. I looked at my hands to see that I was wearing the lame bracelets that I wore as a high schooler. They had words of encouragement on them. I was a shy kid so I often wrote all over my hands. I had a quote written on the inside of my wrist:
"Sometimes, you have to see the night to see the stars." It was a weird quote that came from another prominent advocate that was known for occasionally saying these kind of things. I finished up and was about to open the door when I heard some girls.
"Ally is so pretty," said one of them, "but she is so awkward. She talks with her chin inward." I felt a slight pain. I had my hearing aids in.
"Like this," said the other girl talking in a slightly deeper voice.
"Yeah," the other responded starting to laugh. I felt ashamed as I looked down at my hands. Already as a teenager, they had scars on them from not being able to feel things exactly. My textile touch was not exactly there. I felt dirty and contaminated. It was like a sickness that I could not get rid of. Was people just tolerating my presence? I waited a bit longer till they were gone. I walked out and washed my hands. I felt hurt. I had thought people would change from high school. I used to tell myself that it would get better when I left high school, but I realized that the same nasty people that I knew there. They probably graduated and became smarter with their nastiness.
I was a freak. I was a freak of nature that somehow was born.
I looked at my hearing aids. I was sitting on the couch at my dorms. I was looking upon them on a small coffee table that one of us brought. Why would I want to wear them when no one has really anything positive to say anyway? Why would I want to wear them when I don't have any friends? Why would I want to endure all of that noise for nothing? I don't know. I felt my hands running through my hair as I thought about this.
She touched my arm, getting my attention. I looked at her. I guess there was hurt written on my face. She picked up one of the hearing aids and put it gently back into my ear. Then, she hugged me tightly. I think she heard the conversation also.
“It’s okay,” she said to me. Yet, Mara’s warmth, it stopped those feelings. It stopped the self-hatred. I looked past her at the wall feeling my cheeks were wet. I was crying.
She said to me, "Ally, how many people do you think are around us?"
"In the hundreds," I said to her quietly. We both were still in our pajamas.
"You are one in the hundreds," she said to me, "imagine how many people are like you in the thousands."
I looked at her. I understood what she was trying to say to me. I was not alone. I was not the only person who had these feelings or experiences. Someone else out there probably had something similar. Someone else felt the same. She understood me a little bit.
"Thank you," I said quietly to her. She nodded. She got up to get something.
I looked at the testing results that were laying on the coffee table that I needed to review. She had her homework. She made us two cups of pitch black coffee in this early morning. We just did our work in an odd mutual silence that carried till the sun rose. I looked at the clock realizing the dining hall was open.
"Do you want to come?" I asked Mara. She looked tired.
"No thanks," she said to me, "I need to focus on studying. I got a quiz this morning."
"Sounds good," I said. I wasn't sure how to continue carrying on conversation. I changed and went out. My head started to be lost in thoughts.
"Mara just has been going through a real hard time," she said to me, "the church is worried about her. Her father is worried about her. He doesn't know what to do. He has been trying to help her." Those word drew me back into focus. Somehow, A ended up at my table. I was looking at her. I had to deal with her. The coffee from the school wasn't strong enough to have me ready for this. I gave her a tired look, but I didn't say anything. I didn't need to say anything. She already decided things herself.
I looked away. The dining hall was empty with some students like me studying at the tables. It wasn't full. It was scarce. It was baffling to me that A would be awake this early in the morning and be able to find me. It felt as if I was being watched. I wasn't sure how to adapt to the feeling. I never had much of a dad so this was foreign to me. I looked at her slightly confused at what she was telling me. "What does this have to do with me?" I asked her.
"I feel in the holy spirit that God has called you to help her," she said to me too happily earning her a slightly irritated look. I wasn't going to be helping anyone.
"I don't know if I have time for that," I said to her tiredly. I took another sip of the bitter coffee in my hand to try to wake my nerves.
"Oh, you will," she said to me, "trust me, you will." She just walked away leaving me slightly confused. Yes, there was something that drew me towards Mara, but I didn't quite understand the feeling. I took another sip of coffee trying to wake up. I wasn't ready for today. I wasn't done grading the testing paperwork.
"The Calorimeter constant," said the TA, "one hot cup of water, one cold cup of water, and a temperature probe. This is all I have to say about it. Ladies and gentlemen, you have your manuals.
"I am sorry," I said to Mara, "I didn't catch what he said before that." Red color was rising to my cheeks.
"It is alright," she said to me. She wrote it down about us needing to sign a laboratory safety sheet. No wonder why we were only allowed to play with water today. We both went to work, and it was convenient that we both were in lab. It wasn't a hard experiment. You just had to weigh things properly and plug things correctly into a funky equation. We managed to finish 30 minutes before the end of laboratory. We had to write a report summary on the experiment to turn in next week so Mara and I spent extra time there making sure everything was correct.
I know I admitted to you earlier that I was a good liar. I actually left out most of my academic day so people can't pin my schedule. I don't want people to be following the bread crumbs to the truth. I am not fond of it. I have things I want to protect. I walked through that dark science building in a separate way knowing that I needed to see Eric later on about the testing results. I had the itinerary of tests in my hand. I had print outs of everything that the evaluator had given me and was said to give as evaluation.
Ever since Eric talked to me, I was getting better at organizing the problems that was caused from this mess. I found out from reading that one way to approach problems is to look at who, what, when, where, why and how of the problem. It helped me pull apart the difficulties and clarify what happened. Yet, I started to discover other things about the state that I lived in. There was corruption problems which is why the problems existed. People preach about respecting the government and human life, but when it came to doing either, the benches of this preaching was empty. People don't really stand up for what is right. I sighed.
The burden falls upon the people to change things. I know that. I fell upon me to come up with a resolution and to use the tools provided to reach this. Yet, what was I trying to resolve? I didn't know. I was the first documented individual to overcome significant TBI. Was I trying to pave the path for others like me? Probably. I did feel a great sense of moral responsibility. Eric wasn't going to meet me today because he had to go to meetings. It was rare for us to meet in the Churchhouse because I think he was starved for sunlight. I walked up her leaves dusted stairs and walked into the old abandoned church. The sunlight shown through her plain windows that probably was once where stained glass was. I looked at the bright red stage curtain that was behind her altar. I should really call it podium because it is a place where most of the students spoke after they finished their term. You could hear footsteps in the upstairs where the small group of lawyers hung out studying. I was always careful not to impede their space since I was a rare undergraduate student in the program. The graduates can be a little possessive of their territory. Eric warned me. I walked up her winding stairs that was linked to lift to accommodate for people with dis
abilities. There was someone on the upper floor that was a lawyer in training. They watched me carefully before returning to their studies. I set the paperwork on Eric's desk. He was the only one that was a real lawyer in this program so he had his own desk here.
The room shifted on me. I frowned. I wasn't focusing. Something wasn't right. Sometimes, my vision had a habit of changing.
I didn't want to focus on them right at this moment. I knew I had to worry about my exams. There were other problems. I didn't need to focus on it.
My sight blurred a little. I was stressed. I felt it. Something that I didn't want bothering me, it was that sickness. Whenever my brain acquires a new skill or changes in the way it functions, I get better with this sickness. The same sickness is what made me throw up at school on a random day, and it was the only thing that correlated with the rise in my academic abilities and neurological abilities. I called it flooding because in that moment. Everything got overly stimulated in my head. I wouldn't have a seizure, but it felt like everything went out of focus. I stood up to try to move. It was hard. I packed up my stuff knowing that I needed to get back to my dorm and rest. I just focused on whether my shoes hit something hard or soft as I walked.
I suddenly felt someone grab me in the back of my backpack. I was jerked back from crossing the street as a car passed. I felt my weight settle behind me. I was going to fall, but I felt tiny hands push against me.
"Humanity would surely lose a great light if you died," Bear said to me. I realized that she grabbed me and prevented me from falling.
I nodded being too sick to speak. I felt like this was a heavy weight upon my shoulders. My body didn't feel well. I knew that I was struggling to stand. Everything that was around me was making me sick. I tried focusing.
"Do you want me to help walk you back?" she asked me. I nodded. My vision was shot so I knew I couldn't orient my direction.
She placed her hand on my arm. Though, it was cold to me. Her hand felt warm on my bare arm. I felt like I was in a safe place with her.
"It is okay, Ally," she said to me, "we will get you back to your dorm so you can get better."
I just let her lead me. I was too tired to try to figure this out on my own. All, I remember was Bear helping me get my shoes off, and she helped me into bed. I was so exhausted that I almost fell into a deep sleep as I felt her pull the covers over me.
"Good night, Ally," she said to me softly. I knew she was slightly worried, but I reached out to her to touch her like she was my younger sister.
"Thank you, Bear," I said to her.
"It's no problem," she said to me. She turned off the lights. I fell sound asleep.
"Sometimes, a great need is created," said that voice, "so you learn to forgive." Those words stirred my consciousness. I didn't understand what they mean. It was a dark dream but a wise dream. It gave me some rest.
Six