Everything ached. Being at home and sick was the most disheartening combo that could occur.
I remembered the events of the last couple of days, back when the symptoms had just started, I carried on to school, simply ignoring the scratchiness in my throat.
That scratchiness made way for fatigue and headache before a complete breakdown of my body.
"Why didn't you tell us!" My mother shouted in a not so concerned voice.
I stayed quiet as previous experiences had taught me that was the best course of action.
"You're already an adult now. Is it a pharmacy that you're too lazy to go and see? Must you always wait till you break down?" My father asked (shouted at) me.
He always managed to make every comment seem condescending and every advice sound like ridicule.
After a few minutes they left me in my room. Silence... Good, peaceful silence. I looked around tiringly at the room.
Choked up with anger and pain before slowly dozing off to sleep.
"John!" I opened my eyes slowly and was greeted with the disgusted look of my mother.
"You still haven't had your bath?"
I looked at her outfit.
"So you aren't going to church?"
Church... Today was Sunday, I just realized.
"No." I replied and stifled a cough.
"Okay then." She said with a huff.
"Remember, you haven't cleaned my room and toilet yet." I grunted in reply.
Typically, chores don't disappear because you're sick and bedridden.
I didn't plan on staying ill for long though, there was a full week of school activity coming and I planned to be away from here for as long as possible.
Most students prefer home to school, but I never. Always wanted to be away from home as much as possible, away from my parents, away from their restrictions.
They complain about my independence then make me completely dependent on them, they are my restrictions, my shackles, my burdens, my blood.
I laid still until their car pulled out of the compound and the gate locked.
Then I attempted to step out of the bed.
I feigned the illness to be worse than it actually was so I could be left at home. A few more hours of peace would work better than any medicine.
I strolled to the kitchen, there was food prepared but I wasn't feeling particularly hungry. In the sitting room and settling down on the sofa, I began to wonder.
The thoughts of how it would be to go. Die off and be away from here.
I wasn't particularly religious, yet I still wondered about the thought of hell.
Is it real? If this illness struck me down now, would I be cast down to it?
I remembered a lost quote...
Surely, if I die I can't go to hell, for I'm already in it.
It's a lost quote in the fact that I couldn't remember who said it or where I heard it from, but I knew it was a quote from somewhere. Maybe from me?
I hated the negative thoughts that bubbled up in such moments of weakness, the darkness that came up to swallow the light, a darkness that made me forget there was anything but darkness in the first place.
I picked up my phone and looked at my contacts, happy of the huge amount of bonus airtime I had stored up.
It was Sunday morning, almost 11 am, it was unlikely that there were people who would be able to answer my calls, yet I had to try, I needed to hear another voice but mine.
I tried almost eight times before someone picked.
"Hello?" she asked, surely shocked at someone calling her by such an odd time.
"Hey Belz, How're you?" I said, trying to get an easygoing atmosphere going.
"I'm fine, what about you?"
"I'm alright, just chilling." I lied, not wanting to dampen the atmosphere.
"You sure? You don't sound too good."
A chip in my facade.
"Yeah.. I'm a little sick, but it's nothing. Just wanted to hear your voice." I said, trying to carry the conversation on.
"You sure? You sound really down." She continued on sounding incredibly concerned.
"Yeah, I'm sure, it's nothing serious. Don't worry."
At this point, I was too tired to continue the call so I bade her goodbye and cut it.
Me and the darkness again.
I needed to bathe, went to put on the heater then settled on my bed and went to sleep.
I woke up to a banging headache and my phone ringing. I watched it ring till the call was dropped, it was 1pm, they should be near.
Sure enough, the gate was opened and the car drove into the compound.
Peace and quiet was over.
I was feeling slightly better though, yet I knew the feeling wouldn't last.
She burst into my room.
"You still haven't had your bath!?" More like a declaration than a question.
"I was sleeping." I answered back.
"Go and bathe, let's go to the pharmacy." She replied then briskly walked to her room.
"You still haven't cleaned the room!" She screamed from there.
I made no comment and undressed to bathe. Steeling my mind against the prickly sensation of the water drops on my skin from the showerhead. The water was hot so it was bearable, perhaps even enjoyable.
The trip to the pharmacy was not.
"I don't know why you do this, you can walk to the pharmacy yourself, now I have to carry you, waste fuel, burn energy and money, because you're too nonchalant to care about your health. You act like a big idiot, a big tall idiot. See your hair, I've told you how many times to comb or cut it, are you an agbero, looking like all those touts on the streets. Why must you make me shout, what did I do to deserve this, I'm just so unfortunate."
I listened to her rant, smiling in my head at the last line, surely I was the unfortunate one.
I claim to not be religious but every day, I managed to mutter the same prayer;
If I do have kids, I wouldn't treat them like I'm treated.
We finally reached the pharmacy. The owner, a family friend, had been our go to Pharmacist for almost seven years.
I recounted my symptoms and he nodded his head and said the diagnosis.
I already knew what I had, a normal case of malaria and cough. Still I waited for the price of the medicine. Then the storm that would follow.
"You see how much I paid!!" My mother began as soon as I closed the door.
"Something you'd have treated earlier with less drugs. You people just think that money grows on trees, never thinking of the future..."
Mentally I blocked her out, keeping my eyes out the window.
I looked at children playing ball on the street, they were with their friends playing and the joy was genuine.
I envied them, my parents talked about how much they suffered and they worked to be able to eat but still I envied them.
"..are you even hearing me?"
"Yes ma." I replied although not hearing a single word she said.
She blew her horn and the children scattered from the streets for her to pass.
As we passed, I looked at one, our eyes looked and I could see the genuine joy in his face at the goal he scored before leaving the road for our car to pass.
He didn't look like someone that was suffering.
The drugs shifted on my lap and I looked down at it.
The mutterings of my mother, the face of that unknown boy and the heaviness of my heart made me realize one thing.
The drugs may make me feel better, but deep down, I'll always be sick.
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