“Smile for the camera so I can have proof that you were happy once.”

These are the exact words I would say to 7 year old me if I ever get the chance to meet her.

Because my life has been a perfect realistic description of Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

And it did.

I spent months in physiotherapy. I want to be completely honest about what it actually is because people hear “physiotherapy” and imagine a nice massage and a good talk with a therapist. That’s not what it is.

It is an unnecessarily cold room with posters of the human spine on the wall. Posters I would lock eyes with when I’m desperately looking for a distraction. It is a physiotherapist with kind eyes that didn’t particularly match their rough hands. It was lying on an examination table while someone pressed into parts of me that were no longer functioning as they should. It was them nodding approvingly anytime I flinched because the pain was the point. It showed that parts of me were still alive.

It was the car running into me at full speed then leaving me to bleed on the tarred road. It was seeing my body bent at an odd angle. An angle that wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing. An angle that was wrong.

 Very wrong.

 And still knowing it was mine. 

It was lying under a machine that scanned me while I begged God out loud to just let me walk again. It was my mum bursting into tears because it was all too much to bear.

It was me screaming in pain while learning how to walk again. It was the physiotherapist telling me plainly, without cruelty, that I needed to try to walk or I’d never go to school again. Not might. Never.

It was my mum telling me in tears that she would take the pain from me if she could. That she would carry it if only the world let her. And that she would trade places with me in an instant.

It was the fear in my doctor’s eyes when I told him I couldn’t feel anything anymore. And with trembling hands, he told my mother my nerves were damaged. I knew what that meant for me. If I didn’t feel pain soon, I would never walk again.

And so, they set out to make me feel again. Not gently or carefully. There was no time in the world for that. 

They would press their thumbs and fists into the meat of my legs. They would hit the soles of my feet with so much force but I wouldn’t even flinch. They would pinch my skin so much that it would leave me bruised.

Then they would ask, do you feel that?

Once again, I would say no.

And then, they would go on to a different part of my body. 

Over and over again.

Hoping.

Waiting.

With their eyes filled with apology.

They bruised me to remind my body of what it’s supposed to do. They deliberately hurt me to keep me alive. Because a body that didn’t hurt was a body that was dying.

When they were done, I would do it to myself. Poking, pinching, squeezing my skin— desperate to feel any form of pain.

 I would tell my mum with tears in my eyes that I was sorry. 

I was sorry I couldn’t function normally. I was sorry she had to watch this. I was sorry my body wouldn’t cooperate. And she would just hold my hand silently because what could she say to her daughter that was apologizing for a body she didn’t break?

Physiotherapy was me closing my eyes to sleep but waking up to see that I still couldn’t move.

I learnt what pain should feel like. Should. Like there’s any correct amount for pain. But I could tell you the precise weight and exact shape of it.

I learnt how to walk again without an arm support. Then without crutches. Then without anyone watching.

Then I went home.

One year, six months post trauma, there was another accident. I found myself wheeled into the same cold room with the same stupid poster of the human spine that never quite looked like mine. 

And the fear I felt that day, is a type of fear I do not have a name for.

I have become a regular visitor now. From traumatic accidents to traumatic illnesses and I can’t help but cry anytime I remember how my own body is giving up on me.

Like I said at the beginning, my life has become a perfect realistic description of Murphy’s Law.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

So, 7 year old Faye?

Please smile for the camera so I can have proof that you were happy once.