“Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in
the end, it’s because of time we suffer.”
I can’t stress enough how fast 2018 had seemed
to go by. (Oh, Happy New Year, by the way.) A lot happened last year, to put it
simply, and if I can put it into one word, it’ll be ‘progress’. But that’s
for another entry.
What I want to talk about here is my second
semester in university which ended yesterday. Short semester is so weird, man! I
only had two subjects for the whole seven weeks period and a very, very blessed
schedule with only one or two classes per day, 4 days a week. Needless to say,
it was bliss.
Things were super great in the first three
weeks. We went to see our former lecturers to sort of thank them for all the ‘ilm
(thanks to my friend for suggesting this). We got to hung out with Sir Rauyani
for a bit and he shared about the job scope of a linguist in different
industries, what he was leaning towards for his PhD and everything. Oh, and we found
out that his colleagues call him ‘Roy’. We also went out to Rasulullah’s Artifacts
Exhibit with Miss Afiqah whom we have bonded enough with to call Kak Piqah and
to just hang out and talk with from time to time. Our lecturers for this
semester are great too. Even though they had to cram what was supposed to be 14
weeks of lecture into 7, I can vouch that they did a damn good job.
But, three weeks in, it went south. Almost
literally. So, on that fateful December 13th, a Friday night, a
friend of ours ordered us some food and originally, I was going to fetch it
with another friend. But, she and two others went to the laundromat that night.
No big deal, I thought. I can do it myself.
Well…
Nak dijadikan cerita, as the story goes, while I was walking, I was also texting. I
did see the stairs, I took the first step just fine but by ‘some random luck of
the universe’ or lack thereof, I missed a step and went tumbling down the stone
stairs. I shit you not I just went full on ‘tergolek Hindustan’ by the second
half of my downfall. In case anybody’s asking, my only thought in that few
seconds of me rolling down the stairs was “SHIT”. (Side note, I think there
were less than 10 steps, so it wasn’t that dramatic)
When I reached the bottom, I looked at my
phone which was almost scratch free, saw the typo I made, fixed it and sent the
text. Again, if anyone’s wondering who on earth I was texting that it was that
bloody important for me to reply, well, it’s not the person. I was
an idiot. I also had to look around to make sure nobody saw me fall cause that
image of me falling down the stairs is not something I think I can live down.
Mind you by this time I hadn’t even fetched
the food. So, I walked with my right foot throbbing with pain and fetched the
food for me and my friends and gracefully walked back to my room which
is on the second floor. Oh, the lengths I would go through for food. When I was
walking back, I thought I felt some sort of warmth on my left leg and I was
praying that I wasn’t bleeding that badly. Got back to my room and checked on
the wounds. Left leg, not bad. Right foot, it looked like I had an extra ankle.
Great.
Called my mum, she told me to go to the
clinic and get an x-ray, texted my friends and the rest of the story is a full-on
soap opera which I rather keep to myself, to keep it personal, cause I’m
sentimental like that.
Now, now. I know it’s old news and I know
some people felt bad for what happened but they really don’t have to. I was an
idiot, I wasn’t looking, missed a step and fell down the stairs. Sounds about
right. And, it was meant to happen, so it did. It is what it is but it’s not
anybody else’s fault but mine.
The thing about the whole incident is that I
learned how terrified I was to lose time. When the doctor told me I actually
broke something (it’s a tiny, tiny chip of my fibular), I was broken (no pun
intended). I saw myself having to drop the semester and retaking it after my
third one. I saw myself having to extend my staying in the foundation studies.
I saw my friends going to the main campus, leaving me permanently one year
behind. And that, all of that, terrifies me. It scared me shitless.
I didn’t cry because of the throbbing pain
in my right foot. I didn’t cry because I felt like the blood vessels on my left
leg were about to pop every time I hopped. I cried because of the fear of getting
left behind. I was calming myself down, saying everyone moves at their own pace
and that maybe I didn’t have to graduate with them. But the thought of not
being able to graduate with them was what scared me the most. I was
afraid to lose those people whom I learned that night to be some of the best
people I’ve ever met.
Time is a tricky thing, and in one way or
another, on a day or another, it exposes your fears. I didn’t like mine.
Anyway, two weeks after I managed to
recover enough and got back on track with everyone. Finished the semester, even.
I’m hoping to ace it too. Hey, if a girl who broke her foot and skipped class
for two weeks could do it, so could you!
I’m kidding. Watch your steps, folks.
-Nik.
P.S.: I’m sorry because this entry is just me
talking about what happened to my foot.
P.P.S.: No, I’m not.
Nik Fateen. An introvert trying to find home in a foreign space.