Young Writers Society

Scars... They are not ugly. They are beautiful. I might have been a week clean by now. I don't remember the last time I took that shiny piece of the sharp metal and ran it swiftly across my thigh, adding to the collection of hundreds of marks. Today, I have completely forgotten the image of my thigh, that once used to be tender and soft, with no scar...perfectly smooth, without a single mark. The secret cicatrices scream the stories buried in my heart even today. The stories never told, but today I am writing them all down, for the world to listen to them. No one cared and dared enough to listen to the stories, but my dear reader, you have, today taken the permanent marker in your fingers to strike out the words, "No one" and to replace them by "Someone".

Let me take you to the time when I was a little girl of three. My mom was getting me ready in the bathroom of my house. She slipped and we fell down. When we stood back up, I felt a sharp burning sensation on my right toe, as if someone was rubbing hot chilies over it. The pain was excruciating and I was admitted immediately, in order to remove a cyst or a sort of fluid filled tumor, as the doctor explained my mom. My dad had a touring job, and he was out of town. 

My dad took a leave just to be with me. I had just started going to nursery and coincidently, my best friend was also admitted in the same hospital as mine. Her hand was fractured somehow, the reasons are still unknown to me. Both of our operations were successful. Six months later, I was called for general check up and the doctor again admitted me, saying that the similar cyst has grown again. The cyst or the tumor wasn't cancerous though. This time, I was given less anesthesia and I woke up with the doctor's words, "Pass me the scissors." My screams echoed in the OT, and my parents heard it outside too. I heard the doctors saying that it was the last stitch. 

The most painful time of the days at hospital was when the nurse would inject medicines into my palm---upside down palm. But days flew quickly, playing with the toy airplane my dad brought for me, the endless number of chocolates I got, and the big coloring jungle book that I colored entirely with my left hand. But the trouble began when I recovered and walked towards my mom dad. There was a kinda trouble walking. I could not walk on my heel. Every time I walked, the toe of my right leg touched the ground before the heel. I could not move my toe upwards. The doctors realized that I got a foot drop. It was clearly the mistake that happened in the midst of my screaming. 

I was immediately taken to a tent kind of room, where a hot rod was run on my right leg. The rod was connected to a box that had many wires. It was a strong electric shock that was passed through my leg in the hope of curing it. Seeing my lips blackening and the tears in my eyes, after a few days my mom decided to stop the treatment and it anyways was not working.

I was in 6th grade when I was asked to wear a corrector which resulted in my right leg appearing thinner than the left one in a few months, hence I stopped wearing that too. I hated wearing it to school. Seeing other students wearing school shoes would bring tears to my eyes in the morning assembly. I was always successful in hiding my tears from everyone. 

I did not have friends at school. No one cared to talk to me.

My request of, "Please move a little, let me join in for the lunch," 

would be replied by my classmates as, "No, you are not in our group."

When I was already sitting in the classroom, the girls would rudely say,

"This is our seat. Get out of here."

I wonder why would I quietly leave too!

I hated going to school, I would write an application secretly that went something like,

"My daughter has to go for physiotherapy session, so please let her make a call from the office after the lunch break so that I can come and pick her up." Followed by a fake signature of my mom at the end of the application. It always worked as my savior. I would tell my parents that i wasn't feeling well so please come and take me home. They would come and pick me up.

I would have physical fights with girls of my class. The first such incident was when I was in 6th grade. Girls of my class started learning about new matured language terms and once asked me if I knew the certain word's meaning. Being very sincere and studious, I didn't know the meaning, and they started laughing and hooting, "Hawww! You don't know what that means!?"

It got me really angry, and I picked up the sand of the playground and threw it on the two girls, and ran behind them to beat them.

When I reached class 9th and 10th, another girl started a new trouble...throwing chalk pieces on my head from behind. I complained to my mom and my mom scolded them the next day when she dropped me to school. But it didn't quite work. Towards the ending of 10th class or grade as you prefer to say, when the whole school was busy practicing dance and music for the annual day, two other girls started running away when they saw me. It hurt me a lot, so I ran behind them to know why were they running away from me. But then both of them made a plan and reversed the situation, so they tried to trap me from both side of the long corridor and I was caught. They asked me where was I the whole time. I was studying in the computer lab, as the library teacher asked me to participate in the dances instead of studying. 

My school celebrated annual days every alternate year. I didn't want to participate because when I was in 6th and 8th, I was removed by the dance teachers because a girl of my class told the teacher, "She has a problem in her leg, She'll ruin the dance."

 The teachers thought that if something happens to my leg, they will be held responsible so I was always removed from the dance. I cried when I was in 10th because the same thing happened again. My class teacher hugged me and stopped me from crying. I miss her today. As I was always rejected at dance, I couldn't participate. 

So back to the "being trapped in the corridor" story... since the library teacher didn't allow me to study in the library, I took the permission from my computer teacher and started studying there. When I was asked by the two girls, I did not want to tell them that I was studying, because I was afraid that they would make fun of me and call me names because of that.

I would cry silently in the bathroom, in every lunch break. School was painful for me, and I would many a times take a half day leave. The school teachers did not teach that well and most of the students had joined tuition classes or extra coaching outside of the school. My dad never allowed me to join tuitions and as a result, it was difficult for me to solve the homework. Half of the book used to be homework because students did a lot of mischief because they already had learnt the things at their tuitions. My notebook started to stay incomplete, so I asked my classmates politely to let me take their notebook home for one day and promised to return it the next day. But they made excuses, I had no option left, so I stole their notebook during games period or library period and would give them to my younger sister to hide it in her bag. My younger sister used to study in my school itself. I would often go to meet her during the second lunch break of the day because I was too lonely. 

I then went to high school, and the troubles were a lot lesser than before. But when I went to the University to get my Bachelor Of Science degree, the bullying began Again.