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

|| Author's Notes 8: The Cruelest Hope||

A few years later, in my smooth-sailing nonchallant life, another prophecy came. Remember in the last installment of the author's notes, I'd declined in having faith because the possibilities of going for a surgery were nearly non-existent and there was nothing else that served as a tangible reason to believe that my legs were going to get healed.

Waiting and hoping for the day my legs were just going to get straight all of a sudden was too much of a torturous and vague hope for me.

I tried in several ways to come up with different scenarios and manners in which my legs were going to get healed. I thought that perhaps, I was the one who was being close-minded. So often times, I tried to remind myself that God can heal my legs in any way possible — ways that are even exceedingly above my imagination.

My healing may not even come in the form of a perfect straightening of my legs. I tried not to streamline my chain of thinking to just one scenario. Then I realized that this much anticipated healing could even be a permanent cessation of my leg pain.

I can just wake up one day and realize that I've not felt any pain in my legs in the past five years. This was another form of healing. The presence of the surgery scars wouldn't even matter anymore because the pain had long vanished. So I went on to hope for something like that.

But the pain didn't go away.

Occasionally, I felt some of the most excruciating leg aches that I never imagined I would feel. So what else was left for me to hope for? Which other realistic healing scenario could I come up with? How else was I supposed to give room for the feeling of hope and expectancy? I didn't know anymore.

So I went back to status quo — floating in nothingness. I was unbothered.

Until one afternoon.

My friend called me on the phone and asked me to come outside of the school's hostel. I kept asking her 'why' but she wouldn't tell me why. I was reluctant to step outside of my room especially because I'd had a stressful day but I buttoned my shirt and stepped outside of my hostel to meet with my friend at the venue where she asked me to meet her.

When I got there, I saw that she was with a guy. And this guy was someone I used to talk to. But for some reason known only to me, I decided to keep him out of my circle. My reason was sort of silly though but that's not the main point.

So when I saw the two of them, I gave my friend a puzzled look and my non-verbal message was clear: "bro, what's going on here? Did you call me to come outside to meet a man?"

The funny thing was, I had a hunch that that was the reason she'd called me to come outside because before I left for my hostel to rest earlier in the morning, I saw her with the same guy sitting outside and the examination hall and talking but I walked away and acted like I didn't see the two of them talking.

Anyways, my friend judged me to calm down and not panic. She told me to take a seat. I did. The guy looked at me. I looked back at him or at least I tried to. The air between us was super awkward. I could feel it so deeply that I knew this particular air had gone past its airy form. It had morphed into a solid element.

Then he told me that he knew we were not on good terms and he knew that I was avoiding him. So he asked me several times to tell him what he'd done wrong. The truth was, he'd done me no wrong. My reason for cutting him off was more of a personal and weird reason so what was I supposed to say to him?

All I could do was lie. I told him nothing was wrong with us. Eventually, we buried the hatchet without him knowing what caused me to drift from him.

Then we went on to the matter of the day — the real reason why my friend has called me on the phone to step outside of the hostel. And to be honest, the reason shocked me to the core. After that day, I saw that guy in a different light.