"I'll always choose vengeance. I'll rather heal in hell."
An assassin based in Russia solely kills rapists who have managed to escape the wrath of the law as a trauma response to her personal, gruesome experience. Raped by six men at the tender age...
One Sunday, during the summer holiday in 2018, I saw a couple of photos from my surgical trip to India in 2013. It had been five years since I'd gotten the corrective surgery in India, and I'd never really seen the photos of my Dad or me from the trip. I tried searching for those photos on my Dad's Blackberry in the past but just never found them. Hence, when I saw those photos, I was overwhelmed with heavy emotions — mostly sentiments of joy.
You know that feeling you have when you see a photo from your childhood — mainly if that image signifies a good memory in your life? You coo, blush and heave a good sigh, reminiscing on the good old days. That was how I felt. Also, a feeling of gratitude surged through me, and I felt the need to share the pictures. So I posted the pictures on Instagram.
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When I uploaded the photo, I captioned it with a short note of gratitude to God and the friends who stood by me during that process of my life — especially after I'd gotten the surgery and had to use a wheelchair for three months. The post got a lot of likes and comments. I was surprised when I saw how viral the post went even. People who I didn't think would respond to the post commented.
Truthfully, I don't know what it was that I expected from posting those pictures. I had a few thoughts in mind; "people who know about my legs might see the post and think that I'm doing too much?" "People might be thankful on my behalf for the successful surgery." Yet, I'd posted the photos to share God's goodness in my life concerning my legs — even if they weren't completely healed.
But having that many people love the post was new to me. A couple of folks in the comment section expressed how the post had inspired them, and seeing all of that positivity gave me a sense of glory that I'd never felt before. For some unknown reason, I wanted people to always continue to say such things about me. I wanted people to find me and my story fascinating. That feeling was new, but I loved all of it.
So I continued on that pursuit — on that quest for self-gratification. A few times before uploading an inspirational post, I feared that sharing the same story or telling a tale that revolved around my legs would bore people, or they might think that I was doing it for attention, so I tried not to share such posts too often.
Still, whenever I was going through a particular phase that had to do with my legs or a lesson about my surgery, I would always share it on social media — to see the same comments I got from my first leg post in 2018. I was sharing a sensitive aspect of my life without thinking deeply about whether I was really okay with sharing or if my sharing was coming from a genuine and helpful state of mind.
Had I learned the real lesson I was supposed to learn from that experience I was sharing? Had I let the seeds from that lesson germinate into something fruitful within me before deeming it proper to share? No. I just shared — so people could think of me as an inspiration and give myself a false sense and feeling of confidence.
