I always hear that the other children see my life as wonderful. I am not forced to go to regular public school. I can sit at home, or out on the little pier, dipping my fishing line into the water and catching the small fish that swim around there naturally, or those big fish that were accidently let loose here before. I get to spend my days on my own time. No rules, no teachers, no end to my fun.
Ha!
If only they truly understood what my life is like! I don’t spend my days as a carefree child, roaming free of the boundaries others follow. Far from it! I’m bound by this body, this fleshy prison, my own personal iron maiden. My own personal hell. My life is not of freedom, carelessness, or fun. It is of days filled with a burning that makes me feel like I soaked my self in gasoline and set a fire in my flesh. Or of restless nights where the throbbing, blinding flashes of feverish pain push me to the brink of tears, and to the very edges of sanity.
The days I spend fishing, are not of enjoyment, or because I have some great pleasure from it. If I could, I’d be running, and tumbling in the grass. If I had a choice, I’d go to school and have fun. But no, I fish when the pain is low because I cannot run, because this disease grabs at my limbs like a lead ball chained to a prisoner, and I walk so slow, as if the very air were dense as water to me alone.
I would gladly give up this “Freedom” of rules and school to lead a normal life. I envy the children who can run and play. Looking so full of life, while I lay pained, and pale as a ghost; my skin the eerie, unnatural colour of moonlight.
They all wish that they were me, Ha! If only they knew how much I wished I were them. Unburdened by this pain. Spending each day and night feeling less and less human, as I feel my insides decay and burn, like I’m being eaten from the inside, out. Every night, begging with god for death to come soon…but it never does! If only they knew…