Everyone has their own story

Finding healing through words

In the year 2012, after the death of my mom, I became depressed. It was easy to detect because I lived with her alone, no siblings and on top of that, I was an introvert. I always chose to play alone, even though all my cousins would play together outside.

I bottled things up in my heart out. As time went by they took me to all the best physiologists but still nothing was detected. Instead, the things the physiologist prescribed for me ended up causing a chronic disease.

In the year 2013, I was still the very same old Philang who always wanted to be alone in his room. There came a time when I became very ill and was admitted to hospital. I was more in hospital for more than a month. My family members came to see me, including my dad. It was my first time seeing my father shedding tears, since my mom’s funeral.

I heard them talking, asking my father if he was prepared for my funeral.

They would say, “It has been a very long since he was admitted here and there is no change in his health. The money we used for the physiologist is finished now the bills for a private hospital are too much and he is not getting any better, have you prepared for his funeral?”

The words surely got to him as he came to me and said that I should not worry and that God never sleeps. A week went by and I was a little better, they then discharged me.

I was still feeling the same but I decided to get out of the house and get some air. I would be returning to school in the next three days. I had already missed the entire 3rd term. I went to buy myself a book titled: Rich kid Smart kid by Robert Kiyosaki. I had the audio already, but the way I enjoyed the book was different from when I listened to the audio.

My first day back at school, I had a dozen of assignments, oral assessments and activities to catch up on. Luckily my aunt had submitted all documents from the hospital. I was given a week to catch up on everything. My English assignment was creative writing. I wrote an essay with the topic “The missing piece”. I submitted it a week later and all my work was up to date but not my oral assessments. I had to complete them when the teacher came to our class for her lesson. I was so scared, but I had to do it. It was an unprepared speech. She gave me the topic and I quickly came up with words of which I don’t even know where they came from. After my last word, the class froze and the teacher gave me a very unpleasant look that made me question whether my speech was bad. My friends came to my rescue as they started clapping and the whole class started cheering.

“Come to my office during break time,” my English teacher said.

My heart raced, but when I met her at break, she showed me my creative writing results and it was 99/100. I was lost for words.

“What do you do in your spare time?” she asked.

“I enjoy reading,” I said.

“Do you enjoy writing?” she asked.

“I do write, but I never took it seriously. I just write for fun,” I said.

She then told me that I should consider writing more.

“I didn’t give the total because I don’t want you to lose focus, but you must really consider writing,” she said.

Her words took me to a journey of a thousand miles and along the journey that’s when I found the writing spirit in me. All of this was from being in an unfit state to have an aha moment till today I still write poetry.

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