Awakening. [PART 8]

Amy

I doubted myself. I felt my previous confidence wavering. Everyone keeps telling me about who I am and expect me to conform to the same person they used to label me as. But things have changed. Going through the radiotherapy sessions, I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker, and my hair dropped out by the dozens every time I ran my hand through my hair. I began forgetting things; small things at first. My parents dismissed it initially but as my condition worsened, even they could not deny that my chances of getting better were slowly diminishing.

A girl who used to crush her pills to powder just to be able to swallow them, now has to endure excruciating pain from radiotherapy sessions and jabs from huge needles. I used to have a comrade in crime, Pam, who was undergoing the same sessions as I was. We spent every single day of 2 months together as best friends. When one of us was in pain, the other would understand. Even without voicing our thoughts, we could read each other from our eyes. I took it really hard when she couldn't make it through the night of having a high fever.

I walked around the corridors like a walking zombie. I spoke only when I had to, which amounted to less than five sentences a day. I missed Alex but I didn't want him to see me like this. I wanted him to remember me as how I used to be, a bright young girl who had a long future ahead of her. Not this girl who has sunken cheeks and a sickly complexion. With all the stress, worries and tiredness, I walked about slightly hunched, as if the burden was too much to bear.

All the hospital staff tried to convince me to go outside to the garden to breathe some fresh air, but I felt like I was undeserving of the air. Like I was a waste that would have been better off dead.

A week later, I woke up with sudden urge to go outside. Everyone was surprised when I said I wanted to be wheeled out to the garden. I didn't know what made me change my mind but I knew I just HAD to be at a certain spot in the garden, slightly hidden behind the hedge. And it was there that I saw the white butterfly that helped me regain my confidence again. I recognized it as the same one I spotted with Pam a few weeks ago, because it had a patch on one of its wings, like God made a birthmark for it. It was flitting peacefully from one flower to another, and a smaller butterfly followed its path. Call me superstitious, but I really believed then that Pam was reincarnated as the smaller butterfly, making sure I didn't give up hope just yet.

With that newfound strength and belief, I wheeled myself into the hospital and agreed to continue with my physiotherapy sessions.