My Online Diary: Time Heals Everything..!!

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Jalaluddin Rumi

Almost all my friends, most of my classmates except that from 11th & 12th grade and family would agree that I was/am quite obstinate, mischievous, persistent and ..other things.. But, I learnt a lot of life lessons pretty early, through experiences, peculiar and strange ones. As someone I know says, it's not your age but the kind of experiences you have had, matters..and I couldn't agree more.. :-)

This one is an experience from either the 3rd or the 4th grade. We used to play different versions of tag games in the classroom(we had a huge one to run around) during all the three breaks, 10 mins, followed by 30 mins and the last 10 mins break at school. The goal used to be to eat up the lunch in less than 5 mins so that you can free up as much time as you could to run around. And that wasn't difficult, given the fact, that we had so many people in the group.

Well, it was just another day, the 30 mins break, and we were playing the elimination tag game. I (the only one left untagged) and 'it', the zombie tagger, (one of my dear friends, from back then was running after me) were going up & down the benches/desks and swifting through the spaces amid them, laid out in pairs forming an 8 by 3 grid. She was getting really close and I made a rather brisk 'U' turn, was definitely far out of her reach this time but running straight into another kid( I guess I could take the liberty to call a 3rd or 4th grader a kid). A moment later, all I could feel was a type of brain numbness,a sensation that I can't jot down on paper now and seconds later, the only thing I could feel was that something did hurt really bad, all I could see was a lot of blood on my shirt, on my hands and on my face. I still couldn't understand what happened because the chap I had a disastrous collision with, looked ok, no bruises, no cuts, sort of looked normal though definitely amazed, big time.

All my friends rushed me to the first aid room, and one of the teachers did give me some kind of first aid which I don't remember now. But they wouldn't tell me what happened. I definitely couldn't see my face but the lower part of my face hurt real bad. They called up my parents but didn't tell them much except that I needed to be picked up from school ASAP. It was raining really bad and school was quite far away from where we lived. My dad could come and pick me up in about 30 to 40 mins. He was quite shocked and took me to a clinic straight away but due to bad weather, we couldn't find any decent doctor.

When I reached home and looked at my face in the mirror, I realized that I didn't have a lower lip anymore and the lower part of my face was swollen like that of a monkey. Next few weeks brought immense pain and discomfort trying to eat or drink just anything. I wasn't comfortable going to school for a couple of days and I did bunk it for a week(for the first time ever). My parents have been the most supportive parents ever. When I did return to school, it gave me an odd one out type feeling in the classroom, especially when most of my friends/teachers felt sorry for me and in a way made it worse than it actually was. I thought that was forever, that I would live the rest of my life with that pain and with one lip only, until I saw it regenerating during the course of next 6-12 weeks.