RAGE LIVED WITHIN ME.

I never understood why I used to be temperamental at school. Even when I ponder on that, it is beyond my comprehension why I was so easily irritated. As you know, schoolkids like to provoke each other. The fact that I’m limping when I walk; it was an issue to my schoolmates. They would use it just to get under my skin. That made me angry and it took away my self-confidence. When you walk with a prosthesis, I think you are prone to be a laughing stock I’m an above-the-knee amputee, so somehow I use my muscles from the thighs to pull the prosthesis because I don’t have knees at all. Therefore this has altered my way of movement. Sometimes it was so hard because it reminded me that I would never be able to walk like them anymore. Sometimes I would just snap for nothing. One day I fell at school. I cried so much I could fill a bucket with my tears. I was walking fast, so I tripped while everyone was watching me, I went to the loo and I cried there. I was so angry with what had occurred. Sometimes it’s about your attitude towards situations. I had a negative attitude towards my environment. I thought it was against me. I thought it wanted me to surrender and give in to all the hostility. My reasons for weeping were quite odd; I didn’t know why I cried. The world is full of mourners. People mourning for the loss of something. Loss of a limb, family member, friend, and so forth. Such losses hit us hard, leaving us in despair and with little control over tragic situations. We feel like we can’t carry on. We become very vulnerable when we are in such a state. We get skeptical if we will ever prosper in life. One morning as I entered the school gates, while all the students were having a chat in the schoolyard about what they had been up to the previous night, I just walked passed them. As I was about to climb on the pavement, I broke my right leg, it literally broke. I fell immediately surrounded by learners who were like spectators, witnessing every moment of my emotional and physical fall. I didn’t scream for help, I just pretended like I was sitting down trying to tie my shoelaces. One friend of mine noticed that I was not well. He then called a gardener, Bra Fani, and they lifted me to the office sleep room. When I got there I was overwhelmed by tears. I was quite popular at school so I was surrounded by a lot of teachers since it was still in the morning, and the classes were still about to start. It brought back haunting memories of being hospital-bound, surrounded by nurses and doctors. It was like someone was declared dead that morning. That has never happened to me. When my schoolmates looked at me, I felt like they saw something wrong with my physical movement. I preferred people not to look at me… to divert their sight somewhere else. I struggled to get a girlfriend in high school because I felt like no girl deserved to date a loser like me. This happened because I was carrying an immense amount of anger and frustration. I was angry that my friends would participate in extramural activities at school. They’d play soccer while I just stood there, admiring what I once had. If a teacher said something harsh to me, I would indulge in that the whole day. I shed a tear. I felt like it was a personal attack. If you are experiencing such in your life, seek professional help. If you don’t you will ultimately drift away from people because you have a pessimistic view and very little hope to offer to a world that bares a broken soul.