Five Lives In One: The Tale of A Moon Child

“I have lived 19 years of my life, and yet in just my 19 years of existence, I have lived 5 lives in one.”

This is the story of Her. My best friend.

When one writes of one’s life, a human life, it often takes 5 folds and sticks to it: Birth, Schooling, Graduation, Adulthood, Death.  These are the main accepted societal constructs for defining someone’s life. 

But. 

What could the life of a moonchild in this moonlit world be?

One day, I asked her, “Do you not go on holiday?”

She said, “Hospitals have been my most frequently visited destination.” 

I was perplexed. 

Frequenting hospitals four times a week, sitting in front of the token counter, waiting for your number to be called. The scent of sanitizer and viruses spilled, droopy eyes and hopeless faces, with each person sitting with their minds screaming their bodies to be a burden. A white-coated professional, needles, yellow LED lights, blood, reports, sanitizer. Yeah. That place. Four times a week, two hours each day. Her living it. For fifteen years. 

What was I going to make of that? My best friend heading to doctors each day. What did I make of her from that? What do you make of her from that?

“Yes, Sreya, I have been sick all my life. I have seen atleast over a fifty doctors, for every part of my body. Migraines to fibromyalgia to Osteosarcoma, you name it. Yes, my body is sick. And my sickness is something I need to deal with-“, she declared with hints of tittering whispers of recovering shame. 

So, was she a sick girl? That is all I put her into? A sick girl who needs help. Is that all she is?

No.

But have people ultimately pushed her into seeing her as “a sick girl who needs help”? Yes.

“After a point, you are seen as that. I have been seen as someone sick. My sickness caused others to deem me incapable. Family, cousins, relatives, teachers. Each of them had drawn a line to how far I could go. Eventually, after their minds convinced them that I embodied the archetype of a conventional sick person, I was not empathized with. Kindness faded away. Empathy faded away. I was left on my own. Alone.”, she mumbled in pain.

“Asking for help is interesting. You ask for help, and you are showered with it, but there comes a line to how much help one can ask for. Eventually, you are shamed for being someone needing help. That is how it has been for me. I quickly understood that I had to be self-reliant. I was 12.”, she explained.

“It is true that I have lived five lives in one. I am only 19 years old.  And it has not just been my sickness plaguing me. I have lost the right to be a child in the eyes of my elders, long before I was fifteen. I have lost the empathy of family. I have lost the empathy of being considered as a person. I have had to regain my name and myself over and over again. I have been accused of faking pain. I have been not allowed to put myself first. Everybody made me be and do too much and yet, I am only nineteen. I am only nineteen and nobody sees me as that.”, she cried. “I am a person too. I am a person who needs to live with herself. I am a person who needs love. I am a person who loves. I have my ambitions my dreams and my passions. I want to fly to the moon and explore the galaxies of space. Einstein is my hero. I have thoughts. I have a mind. I have my voice. I want to be heard. I want to belong.”

“In the last 3 years, I have had to reach near death multiple times. This vessel called my body, has undergone failures. And in each time, I was left alone to fetch on my own. Why? Cause I was finally inside a claustrophobic box of being labeled s i c k.”  

My heart ached upon hearing her. I was upset and angry, upset because holding a hand isn’t so hard, and angry because empathy and kindness are not currencies with terms and conditions to apply. And yet, here is the story of a woman, of a person who was denied the right to be seen as a person because of how society deemed her fit. 

I asked her “So, the box? Are you in it?”

She immediately responded, “Of course not. Why should I be boxed and caged in? I need to honour myself, my life, my mind and my soul. Self-reliance is terrifyingly alone. But self-reliance has been my only option especially when the people who were supposed to be for me, weren’t. Faith is something I have always had and I seek love from anything that provides me with comfort. The winter sunlight, the cold chocolate summer days, the music of BTS, my books, my poetry. Sometimes, my being gave me comfort. It allowed me to discover myself. It allowed my mind to reiterate that I have all the rights of being a person, a name, and a somebody of my own.” 

“Self-discovery is tedious. When you have been already shunned down by those who should have loved you, it is difficult to give yourself love. But you ought to, you must. That is key to keep living. I want to keep living. I want to keep living for the people who stood for me and continued to love me. I want to keep living for the little girl in me. For her hopes, for her dreams, for her wishes to be someone. My inner child. And I must honor her.”

Her life did not fit the archetypal 5 staged story for social acceptance. She did not listen to those who forced her to bend. She has tasted pain and yet she has not given up on love. She yearns to taste her elixir of youth and make a life with the collages of the dreams and wishes of her inner child. She is our moonchild. And this is her story.