The Hidden Toxin ✔(#6 in the Our Side of The Dice Series)

||Author's Notes 2: Encryption||

Moments hold more weight.

If you read the author's notes in The Captive, you must have thought that my life was a happily ever after — I got the subsequent surgery and lived a fairy tale romance with Sire. While the story in my author's notes is true (that I grew up with Blount's disease, got a major reconstructive surgery in 2013, and didn't want to study law), some in-betweens were purely a fallacy, and I put those myths for two reasons:

1. To spice up my author's notes, so it doesn't appear as a conventional autobiography

2. To use my power to change certain things, remove certain things and add certain things that I wish had existed in my life, and to paint a picture of what I wished for my life.

But the truth is the in-between was rough, and the fallacies I would like to debunk are:

• I don't have a boyfriend named Sire. I don't even have a boyfriend. Although, I have a friend in real life name Sire. His father is not a physiotherapist. I've not had physiotherapy in years, neither do I have a close relationship with my physiotherapist.

• I didn't travel to France. The idea of writing my autobiography as content to submit for a global writing contest was untrue. I just wanted to share my story, and as I said earlier, I was looking for a creative way to do it.

• I wasn't able to convince my parents that law wasn't the course for me. Right now, I'm a final-year law student.

Now that I've cleared all of these myths, I'd like to welcome you to my real world, where nothing interesting happens. It's just me in my realm of intrusive thoughts and underground undeciphered feelings—insecurity and anxiety were encrypted somewhere down the wells of my mind. Still, they just disguised themselves as subtle, disturbing thoughts at random intervals.

Someone reading this might think that this author's notes are not special since many people battle with insecurity, anxiety, and depression. Maybe no one will think that way while reading this. Perhaps I'm just a chronic overthinker, but whatever it is, I'm just here to tell my story as it is, whether it is unique or not.

In my world, a.k.a my mind, which is the storehouse for my feelings and thoughts that had an encrypted source, I lived a damaged life in motion, and by the term, "in-motion," I'm emphasizing on these undeciphered feelings and thoughts that I often had.

I didn't know that those 'disturbing thoughts' came from a dangerous source that slowly damaged my person. The operation was prolonged, but the result was evident.

A year or two after I had my major reconstructive surgery in 2013, I think I was doing pretty well. There was nothing much to worry about. No bodily imperfections to notice, zero concern for what people thought about me because I didn't think anything was wrong with me.

I was just in my first year of secondary school, living life and excited to see how tall the boys in my class had grown. I was creating friendships with a few people — I had the silliest fights with my friends. (those fights weren't funny then, but now, it's ridiculous to think about)

My first year in senior secondary school was fun.  I didn't even think about my legs. Everything was normal. I was expecting the surgery in India to completely change the trajectory of my life in the sense that everyone around me would see me as an entirely new person. I also wanted to see myself as a new person.

While that truly happened, especially the first few months after my surgery and arrival from India, it didn't last. Everyone, including me, moved on, so I just lived an ordinary life.

Until one day. Maybe not a particular day. You know, there are so many seasons in our respective lives that we could classify as 'one day. It could have been an entire week, a minute of realization, a transition from one mindset to another that ultimately liberates you, or a moment.

But what makes one day, one day, is the capacity that it holds to turn things around for good, for better, or for worse. Besides, if we are honest, we don't always remember the exact date or year of those 'one days.' It just became a moment eventually, and moments hold more weight. So, it was a moment of my life.

Very often, I liked to look at my reflection in the glass windows as I walked by. I'm probably the vainest person in the world. Everything about myself fascinated me. Oh, how I loved the way my posterior protruded in my school uniform skirt! I loved to look at it all the time whenever I passed by a mirror.

But slowly, that confidence started to morph into something else—something cryptic, indecipherable. You know the phrase, 'the more you look, the less you see.' it started to actualize the more I looked at the mirror.

As I looked at my reflection in the mirror, the confidence I hoped to see as usual started to diminish. Something else snatched that vain glory away, and now there was a problem to observe. I started noticing my manner of walking.

I noticed that I was always limping and unconsciously leaning on one side of my body as I walked. Why was it like that even after I'd gotten surgery? I was very uncomfortable about it, so I tried to change it.

I became self-conscious each time I passed the mirror. I tried to change the way I walked. I'd try to straighten my back and position my feet in a straight alignment. I would lean on the pavements for support, but I only ended up walking like a zombie. More importantly, the attempt hurt me physically.

When I realized that I couldn't change it, everything went in a downward spiral. The fact that something remained unchanged even after a major reconstructive surgery broke me, but I didn't realize it then. I was just uncomfortable.

I continued living my life after that realization, though. Two years later, I moved on to my third year in senior secondary school, becoming a boarding student. I don't even know how I managed to stay happy ever since, but as I said, it didn't bother me much then. I couldn't decipher my feelings correctly.

One time, one of the nurses told me to try and practice the art of walking correctly. She said that over time, I might get used to walking well if I could endure the pain that came with it. A ray of hope shone in the walls of my heart. I liked the sound of that because it seemed like a solution.

I liked the fact that my plight had a possible antidote, so out of enthusiasm, I tried to walk correctly in the presence of the nurse as a means of trial and error. I straightened my back and tried to align my foot the same way I did when I noticed my manner of walking.

I walked up to a certain length and got tired, so I returned to the status quo — my usual way of walking. I shook my head in discomfort and told the nurse how hard it was for me, but she told me to keep trying.

I couldn't. It was too painful.

After that time, I didn't bother any longer. Still, with those 'disturbing thoughts' lingering in my mind, something else surfaced as a reason for me to be concerned. But because I didn't know where those disturbing thoughts were coming from, I didn't know how to go about these things that appeared as a cause for concern.

It didn't seem like there was anything for me to decode. So those feelings just remained what they were — cryptic.