The Younger Years
As a very young girl I was like any other child. I was lively, I was active. That is until something happened when I was only four years old, but that’s another story entirely. Even though after that I was less of a happy-go-lucky child, I was still of average health.
My child years passed by, and soon I was into my tweens. My health started to slowly spiral down. Today I am sure it was due to depression and the like because of my past, but something else was happening as well. Though I didn’t know how to explain it to my parents. My energy was going down noticeably, and I was getting sick more often. Not to mention the usual family road trips were getting harder for me to handle. If I didn’t sleep through the road trip I would become car sick and even threw up on a towel as we were heading to a popular hot spring in Thermopolis, WY. Nothing my parents did would lessen my car sickness, other than hope I slept through the drive.
Eventually my teenage years came. I didn’t go through the ‘fazes’ that other teens went through. I didn’t lash out, I didn’t believe I knew everything; I had grown up faster than my friends. I soon understood the meaning of money, and how my constant health issues were testing my family’s checkbook. This and going into Junior High School caused a lot of stress in my life. My Mother was also very ill with two highly rare brain diseases that can’t be treated, or cured. Again, that’s another story for another time. Nonetheless, the stress in my life rose and rose. My attendance in school dwindled to the point that I was now worried about being taken away from my family by the Government. Not that my Mother would ever let me forget it. Her emotions were changed, her actions were changed, and she often yelled at my little sister, my older brother, and me over the smallest things. Stress grew inside me. I started wearing boys’ clothes, cut my hair short with a #8 clipper comb size, bleached it often and spiked it, and my color of choice to wear was black. Though at that time, I still had friends.
Junior High was over, and High School began. Not two weeks into my Freshman year something happened that changed my life again, forever. To make a long story short I was following a friend through the common area/eating area during lunch time. We were trying to make it to another friend to tell her that her new boyfriend was ‘cheating on her’. Just pathetic High School drama. Trying to keep up with my friend I was trying to get through the lunch line and over the pile of backpacks that was created everyday when kids just tossed their bags to the side of the line so they could get lunch. As I was climbing over this mess I came to where it met the line, and suddenly it surged forward. I was knocked over and a larger (fat) girl fell on top of me. This would have been fine if I wasn’t landed on as well. It caused my right ankle to bend inward and my foot was now 90 degrees to my leg. As semi-slow-motion came over me I twisted my ankle back into place.
Another friend had seen me fall, and helped me hobble to the nurses’ office and even paid to get me lunch. The nurses were convinced that my ankle had done no such thing as twist to that degree and just iced it. Soon, my right ankle had swollen to such a size I was stifling cries from the throbbing and holding in screams when it was touched. The nurses didn’t know how to carry me properly so that I didn’t have to walk. They managed to hunt down a wheelchair from the handicap students’ classroom and only when my Mother showed up she was able to get me into the wheelchair and into the car. (She had worked at the mental facility in my home town and knew how to handle people who couldn’t walk. This was before her own health issues had come into play)
An x-ray was taken. Nothing was broken, but my ankle was limp and moving it was not only causing me great pain, but felt harder than it should have been. Doctors later I finally got an MRI and it was found that one of my ligament on the outside of my ankle were over stretched and a surgery was needed if I was to ever use it properly again. I was already in crutches because I couldn’t walk; the school was trying to get rid of me because my Mother was filing charges against them for the ‘dangerous situation’ that they allowed: the mountain of backpacks that they had ignored everyday rather than installing the shelving system that they had already purchased. They didn’t give me anyone to help me with my books and so my Mother was forced to come to school with me. It was overly stressing.
Soon the day came, and I got the surgery. And it was worse than they had thought.
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