The Lecturer

For context read: The Gaslighter

During the last few days of my final semester in college I lost my support system. The hole of depression I was in just felt deeper, louder and so much darker. It was probably the moment the knowledge that I was an other stitched into my very nerve endings.

I understood that I was an other the moment I had started feeling the symptoms of my chronic illness, Achalasia Cardia, the moment I started hiding my rapidly deteriorating body. I knew it, but I didn’t acknowledge it. And I tried extremely hard to be accepted as an Honorary able bodied person, to blend in, deflect from my body’s inability to my brain’s ability. It was all in the hopes that the people around me would not minimise me to this thing that I could not control. It worked till it didn’t anymore.

On this particular day I was rushed out of the studio just 5 minutes after I had arrived.

I had received a message from the ex-friend, the draft of a write up, the night before. The write up had a few grammatical errors and the crucial word didn’t make any sense in the context it was written in. In the kind of mindset I was in I knew I should double check all of my critiques by someone who wasn’t involved in the situation (this story is a little harder, a more painful story for me, you can glean the context from the gaslighter, however it requires a lot more fleshing out. I am currently not stable enough to recount those specific days), who was qualified in giving critiques about sentence structures and such. Someone completely detached from what was happening: Thus I asked my roommate who was in a different course and did not know these people. She agreed with my critiques. I hummed and left the reply for the next day because I knew I was not prepared for what was to come next.

That day was probably the fifth or sixth day of me being unable to consume more than half a bowl of rice a day. I was unable to swallow water as well. It was a crushing blow to my system, making everything louder and darker and… it was just bad. I was having one of the worst flare ups I had ever had in the last two years. It was painful to get off my bed, make that five minute walk to school.

However, I made that journey to school, arrived in the studio, my new friends who were carrying me through this time weren’t there. I took a very deep breath and replied to the message from the person who were sitting on the other side of the false wall because I didn’t have it in me to face them or their friends who until two weeks ago were my friends as well. The moment they read my opinions they had started badmouthing me. Everything about me was scrutinised. They had called me few things that I cannot recall. I have a habit of blocking traumatising memories so it doesn’t surprise me that I have forgotten minute details. Especially with the brain fog.

These were the very people I considered my friends, the people who kept me sane during the year I was constantly a second away from giving up on life itself. It crushed me. I didn’t want to say a word, but I did, “I am right here guys.” I screamed that, packed my bags and left.

I had crossed paths with a lecturer of mine in that very moment, tears in my eyes. They were probably the lecturer I respected the most, it has remained the same. I aspire for the depth of knowledge they held, I aspire to be able to conduct myself with the dignity and grace they held and still hold.

They had asked me if I was okay, if I wanted to talk to them. I told them that they were my lecturer and I couldn’t do that. I really couldn’t. I couldn’t tell them that the students they taught one year back were the people I felt crippled by. One student in very specific. That the very specific student had dragged the carpets from underneath my feet. Reminded me of my status as the other. Crushed my status of being less than down my throat by asking other people to come and talk to me about better acclimatising into normal society. That I wish I had never told anyone that I had a chronic illness. That I wish I never had a chronic illness. That I wish I was dead because it was so much easier, it was so much easier than cleaning my own puke from my bed at 10pm because I was starving but couldn’t swallow and wasn’t fast enough to make it to the bathroom that was five steps away. That I couldn’t take the constant pain in my chest anymore, or the exhaustion or the brain fog, or working so hard with so little in my body. That I couldn’t take being in so much pain that I cried to reach out for a medicine that was on my side table.

That this person didn’t understand what living loss meant, what I was going through day in and day out, pretended to understand and made me question my own reality.

My lecturer had made a face that was semi shocked, I rushed out. I couldn’t face her anymore. I just sat on a stray bench in the level below, cried my eyes out in the hall. I think I spoke to my parents, maybe even a friend I had gained when that person left me. My soul sister wasn’t picking up my call or maybe I was too ashamed to call her. I was ashamed of so many things back then. I was ashamed and angry and in pain, physical and mental and lonely, so very lonely.

I wish I could tell that to the lecturer now. That I am sorry I couldn’t tell them what I needed to. I wish I could apologise to my own body for putting the comfort of able bodied ex friends over my own body. I needed someone on that day and I refused them because I was scared that I wouldn’t be believed because I wasn’t, a lot of times. I was scared that the person in front of me wouldn’t understand and they don’t unless they themselves have been through it. I was scared that if I had another conversation that would cripple me in my soul, I would walk in front of a bus and pray that I never woke up.