Something is Wrong with Me

It was the May of 2019, maybe it was a little earlier, the dates blur in my mind. One of my roommates (during that time I had lived in a room that was shared amongst three people) had gotten a stomach bug, she had been terribly sick. My viral fever that had escalated to horrendous cough made me spit out food now and then. On the day of the same roommate’s birthday, they had gotten doughnuts. I had one, puked almost all of it out, went through a coughing fit and knew, it was an instinct, something that was inscribed in my very bones, I knew I was sick. Something was deeply, terribly wrong with me. 

Then I thought it was the stomach bug that my roommate had a few days back. I thought it was temporary, something that would go away, something that my body had the energy to fight off on its own. Believing that I didn’t go to a doctor, also because I was furious at the doctor I had visited. I was (and still am) almost certain that they had over prescribed me medication that I didn’t need. Due to that medication I had gone from terrible fever to horrendous cough that just wouldn’t leave. It really wouldn’t leave, I had the cough from sometime late February of 2019 till late May of 2019. And then it escalated into me not being able to swallow food. 

It was slow in the beginning. A few bites now and then, not enough to break my very soul. Then I came back to India during vacation. The way my parents looked at me at the dinning table, I knew, I just knew that it was worse than I wanted to believe it was. It was worse than I was making it out to be. I still tried though, I still tried to laugh it off, to put off tests that would prove that something was wrong with me. I dreaded the knowing. The fear is crushing till you know, then it becomes a wholly different horror, a terror of not knowing. 

The words still resound in my head, a few details of the day starker than the others. I remember not bothering about what I had been wearing. It was an oversized black shirt that reached up to my knees, falling off my shoulders. My hair was oily, I think I hadn’t washed it for a few days. My roommate who didn’t have the stomach bug had freshened up, was in the house. We had been binge watching anime during those days. It was a staple while we worked. Our assessments were over, we were both workaholics however, taking up projects that we knew we might never finish. We just liked to keep our hands moving. 

That was an odd day, we were both resting. I was on my bed, maybe reading a book. The roommate who had had the stomach bug came in with a box of doughnuts, we wished them, made a few plans, maybe, I am not quite sure. 

The moment they had left I remember saying to my roommate who was in the house, “I think something is wrong with me.”

They had brushed me off. It had reassured me, calmed me. But I knew, I just knew. 

I remember the spittle that splashed back on may face when I threw up the food, the humiliation, the fear, the utter panic, it had crushed me. I hadn’t said anything to my parents yet, not just yet, but the panic, the trepidation, it was settling into me. It was a weight layering itself onto my bones, leeching something vital, taking more energy and space. 

Then I didn’t know that it was going to be a part of me for years. That I would be crushed by it every single second of every single day. That it would become an intrinsic part of me. Or the fact that the statement, “Something is Wrong with Me,” how utterly true and othering it would become in all its colours and shades.