Sunday, October 19, 2003

   Life is life


My life story dissected into years, months, and the occasional day and time.

¤ 24th of August 1981. Born as a younger sister. (2 years and 4 months later I became the younger middle child. Life is tough.
¤ 1988, sometime in August, I went to school for the first time. I was deeply traumatized. I had the great misfortune to get a teacher from hell, who thoroughly enjoyed picking out children and humiliating them in front of the class. 3 years I put up with her.
¤ 1996, First day of school after summer vacation. It was like a scene taken from a Hollywood movie.
I sat at my desk, looking out of the window, the sun glaring at me, and I remember suddenly thinking “I’m not supposed to be here… I don’t belong here…I don’t want to be here”. And as if lightning had struck me, I was frozen in that moment. Locked and lost in that thought.
Somehow I managed to shake it off, but it turned out to be the decline in attending classes and making an effort with the grades.
¤ In the fall of 1997 I applied and got into a school, but I had run out of patience and tolerance for the whole situation. So I dropped out and was lucky enough to work in a toy store for a couple of months and then in a video store. Good experience.
¤ August 1998, tried to get back into school but the whole thing collapsed on top of me. I fell apart, broke down, lost myself. There are many words to describe what happened. It had been coming really since that day in 1996 (or if you want to be brutal, first day of school), and it was time to pick up the pieces and break the bubble.
¤ 1999 I went back to school, sort of. It’s called “Adult education [administered by local authorities]” according to the dictionary. So people who have a diploma can improve their grades, or those who missed it the first time around can get one. I took a couple of classes in an attempt to get some kind of diploma (which I would’ve got, had I stayed in school for 3 years after 1996). And I actually enjoyed it that time around. School was no longer intimidating, a place of nightmares or the place of memories I had been running away from. I was 2 subjects way from a diploma, maths and social studies (*blurgh*). Oh well.
¤ 4th of July, 2001. 04.00 hours. Nightmare land strikes back. Just when you think things are turning out for the best, they’re really just waiting around for things to go wrong (at least in my case). I was working as a papergirl and on that day, Wednesday 4th of July, 4 o’clock in the morning, my life was no longer in my hands. A guy, a complete stranger, came out of nowhere and grabbed my hand. As I turned to face him, all I saw was this knife he held in his hand. And those words “I think you know what I want”…

I won’t drag the complete story, but I was one of those lucky few who got away. I didn’t give him what he wanted, but he took something else instead. My security, my casting vote in what happens to me and my life. I won the battle, so people say. Since that day I have fought to make my life my own. I’ve been trying to resuscitate myself, one could say. I almost did it the first time around, where it not for that stupid, meaningless, badly timed day back in December last year.

¤ December 17th 2002. My body turned against me. I got and stayed sick. Basically my immune system abandoned ship and is yet to be heard of. There were so many symptoms that I hate to recall all of them. Constantly shaking/quivering (I were a walking earthquake), the immense weight that fell upon me from nowhere (which in addition I didn’t need), my brain collapsing and deteriorating. Not to mention the endless visits to doctors who threw their hands in the air and questioned if I was actually ill, the needles probing my arms for blood tests, thinking how it couldn’t get any worse - and then it did.
¤ September 19th , 2003. The emergency ward, ER - IRL. Couldn’t breathe, my heart was beating irregularly and I felt like a caged animal. I honestly thought I was dying. They did an ECG on me and the doctor briefly checked me over. Nothing wrong with my heart and my lunges were fine. However, due to stress, I had developed a case of inflammation in my ribcage (or the tissue and muscles there) and so my heart and lungs were constantly putting pressure on the infected area. He also informed me that I had panic/anxiety/stress attacks, and these caused the inflammation to flare up. I really needed to hear that ~ o ~

Now I’m stuffing myself with medications, confronting my “disorder” and (once again) working my way back to life, as I once knew it to be.
There, that’s a brief history of me. I think I’m ready to do my autobiography now :P

- Mimmi
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