All's Well That Ends Well
Triumph. My favourite word, it always has been, it always will be. It’s pretty generic of a teenager to have some sappy story of how they got a tattoo on their arm. There’s the typical, “I got drunk one night, and decided to do it” or the sentimental “This defines me as a person” reason. Well, I have another sappy story as to why my tattoo ended up right here, on my left wrist. Maybe I should go back to where this all began. I wish to forget this day, but I know I never will. Mid-August, we were at the lake we always went to every year as some kind of summer ending fun. My days on the lake were probably the best days I have ever spent. The lake was peaceful, all you could hear were splashes of water from the cliffs, and the occasional chit chat. The water was a clear turquoise and the rays of sun would cut through it to reveal the rocks at the bottom of the lake. It smelt of wintergreen plants paired with a misty musk. All around were forest green trees tastefully complementing the turquoise lake. Me and my cousins liked to follow tradition, every year at Lake Kelowna, we would leap off the cliff and splash into the rejuvenating cold water . I’ve jumped off the cliff many times before and my mom always gave me two tips when jumping. One: keep your body straight, and two: have fun. So there I am, fifteen year-old me, at the top of the cliff. I hear my cousins yell jump, but I never jumped when they’d tell me to. I looked out at the lake, appreciated the cerulean blue water, and then looked over at the forest green trees. I waved at my parents and then I jumped. As soon as I jumped, It was the most liberating feeling, the feeling of gravity taking over. My hair was blown straight up, and my eyes squeezed tight when I felt my heart drop. This time the jump felt different, almost as if my head was being pulled back rather than being completely aligned with the rest of my body. Keep straight, I thought, but the thought hit me too late. I sliced through the water, and I heard a ring. I opened my eyes, all I felt was a stinging pain up the right side of my back. Nothing else. It is so difficult explaining to people that I literally felt nothing else, not one sense in my body except the feeling of a knife stuck in my back. I opened my eyes the second time and I heard a voice. “Ollie”, “Ollie, can you hear me?”. I could see everybody, but still only feel the sting. I glanced at a screen to my left, I saw a body drawn with red spots mapped out on it. A man tapped different parts of my body with a wooden like gavel, and with each tap another red dot was added to the drawing. “She’s damaged most nerves”, said the man. All I remembered was the blue hue of the lake water, I was so confused in that moment, yet so peaceful. “There isn’t much we can do”, said the doctor. I was sure of it, the pain told me it was the end. I even looked at my dad while he cried as if it was the last time he was going to see me. I heard a beep, and my expression turned blank; as if time had frozen. The room went quiet, “Sir, the nerves in the face are beginning to paralyze”. What? Paralyzed? I thought. Not too long after, I glanced at the screen to see “Muscular Paralysis” written above the drawn body.
That’s when this all began. After it hit me that I could probably never walk again, I had a wave of epiphanies. I was going to be the “special needs kid”, “the girl who jumped off the cliff”. I was not ready for the typical - how did it happen, how are you feeling, how is it affecting your daily life questions. Also, of course, I did not want to be the paralyzed kid “in denial” of what happened to her. Most people are grateful for their injuries, they begin organizations, they raise awareness, but what was I going to do?
The frustration that came from craving walking, was unimaginable. There is a huge difference between not being able to do something, and craving something. I took walking for granted, and I was frustrated that I even had to think I took it for granted. “I should be able to walk” I thought. Mentally, it’s a whole different story. See, after the incident my speech was obviously impaired. But, something the doctors didn’t know, was that I wasn’t mentally impaired. See, when they asked me basic questions, I obviously knew the answer but when I wrote it down or tried to say it, I would give off no reaction at all. My nerves were damaged when I hit the water because the force affected my back and that affected everything else. Basically, how I like to think about it is I’m just a “normal” girl put inside an accident. I mean, I wasn’t depressed or anything nor did I have a single urge to end my life, I couldn’t have even if i tried, literally. I did not have the urge to live and contribute, I guess I just existed. The hardest part was my parents, my over-enthusiastic, loving parents.They tried to make it all seem normal, they told me I wasn’t different. Yes, but I wasn’t stupid either, I know they cried and blamed themselves every night for that day at the lake. It was harder for me to see them beating themselves up about it than it was for me to live with paralysis. I guess the only thing that made me uneasy is that people were trying for me. My parents were pushing physio and they sent me to therapy. If only I could have told them, their daughter was still there, but they thought I was gone.
The closest I got was trying to write an “O” on a napkin. Trying to spell out “Ollie is here”. Of course that did not work out. My face couldn’t move either, so there wasn’t a face I could pull to show a sliver of expression. It was a tough feeling to explain, I almost wanted to be non-existent just for the pure happiness of others. I wanted my parents to live their lives, without me as a burden. The only person who really tried was my therapist. I mean, my parents were trying too, but I saw more tears than hope. Dorba, my therapist, talked to me normally, as if i were a person. I always did mental tests with Dorba, she would hold up an animal and she would clearly tell me what the animal was. Obviously, I knew every animal that was illustrated on the cue cards. But, of course, nothing could tell Dorba that. Which is why therapy friggin’ annoyed me. The most frustrating part is how the neurologist couldn’t figure it out. He kept running tests on my brain, and of course brain waves would appear. Being the close-minded person he was, he would keep reassuring my parents that it is very rare for my brain to be working due to the way the nerves were affected. He kept saying how critical my case was, and how the brain waves were a sort of “ripple effect” after the incident. He told them not to get their hopes up on any recovery. So that evening, in the doctor’s office, I sat there being so unimaginably frustrated that this close-minded imbecile was the reason my parents no longer thought I was mentally able. So, naturally, Dorba had to go off of what the neurologist said, and there was little to nothing I could do about it. All I could do was think, that’s what made me feel so weak.
About seven months after the incident, my parents had the ingenious idea of making me attend a youth group. My folks are incredibly religious, so they thought the presence of God would heal all. My first day at the youth group was absolutely stressful, it wasn’t like this was for people like me, these were normal teenagers who had to cope with me. One thing I learnt from being paralyzed, was that nobody is comfortable with you. No matter how hard they try, there is tension; and, oh, how I wished that would’ve gone away. My parents pushed me through the doors, and in front of me were fourteen blank faces. I wanted to cry, for the first time in seven months I remembered the sensation of tears, but no dampness even arose into my eyes. The only thing I could move in my body post cliff-jumping were my eyes, so I used that to my advantage in that situation. I darted my eyes back and forth trying to understand all the looks I was getting. As I looked closer into the church, I noticed how small it was. There were four beige couches, candles lit all around, and the nauseating smell of burlap. I hated the smell of burlap; thankfully after the incident my sense of smell weakened. After collecting myself, my eyes darted back up to the fourteen faces staring at me. Seven girls and seven boys; and I was suppose to casually join this intimate youth group. The leader jumps right up to my parents, and asked them a load of questions about my condition. I was use to this, people disregarding that I knew what they were saying, well, because nobody knew I could comprehend what they were saying. The last thing I heard him say was, “God will heal her”, and my parents sighed out a breath of relaxation. All I could feel was anger, this silly circle of seven girls and boys was suppose to heal me. As if.
Throughout that night I must admit, I did enjoy being away from my parents for a while. But as soon as the stares begun, I hated it. Fourteen teenagers staring at this vulnerable statue, which was me, unfortunately. Later that night, I came to learn that the youth leader’s name was Cory. Cory was trying to make me fit in as much as possible, but he did the complete opposite. I was completely fine with them doing whatever they wanted and have me sit in. But no, of course Cory had to speak for me and try to make me a part of every conversation. It was obvious everyone knew what happened to me after the most awkward moment of that night. It was what they called “Jam Time”, where they would play their favourite songs. Everybody’s face lit up as they started listening to the song, and I just sat there. Looking at a bunch of teenagers dancing, chatting, eating, gossiping and I just sat there. I just sat there. The whole night. In one single spot. How insensitive of Cory I thought, wasn’t he suppose to be this loving, faithful character, understanding and accepting of all, wouldn’t he, in his right mind tell my parents to pick me up? I noticed a girl inching towards me, she came and sat in a chair right next to me. I didn’t notice her before, she had big brown doe eyes, and brown curled hair. She was quite dainty, but she was silent, just like me. “This blows, why am I even here?” she said “Don’t you ever feel like you don’t belong” she sighed. Tell me about it, I thought. But I was so taken back at the fact that she was talking to me as if I was able to respond. She leaned in, “Don’t worry, these stuck-up teens don’t want to talk to you because they need an answer”. “You deserve to be treated as a person” she giggled, “Even if you can’t understand anything i’m saying”.
It was refreshing having just a soul not talk to you in hopes of weakening the awkwardness. This girl had a sadness to her, a hopelessness, even more hopeless than I was and that’s saying something. Later that night, I learnt from Cory that her name was Tracey. The only reason I did not dread going to Youth Group after that was because Tracey was there. Every week she would come to me with more depressing stories of things that have happened to her. Now, a normal person would find this excruciatingly selfish, but this was the first time I had felt “normal”. Something about somebody thinking they had it worse than I did and did not pity me was so refreshing. “All’s well that ends well”, she would always say after every story. I loved when she said that, her stories were so depressing but she would repeat the phrase at the end of each story to sugarcoat her pain. A story she shared that made my heart ache was that as a child she was abused by her mother. Everything she told me made me feel as if i had been blessed, as if i am on cloud nine compared to her. But, I admired Tracey so much; she had this appreciation towards life as if nothing traumatic had ever happened to her. She came off as such a sarcastic character, yet she had so much baggage that it was difficult to understand how she could be so self-deprecating. “You’re not too bad” she would always tell me, she would always tell me I haven’t done anything wrong in my life. I just ended up being at the cliff on one of my not-so-lucky days. It really made me feel like none of it was my fault, it was all going to lead up to the present. Tracey told me one story every week, sometimes if I were lucky, I would hear two. The way she spoke, the way she felt no regret about every moment in life gave me an exasperating feeling. I started enjoying the youth group, I felt as like I was a part of the team, well, because people stopped noticing I was there. But, Tracey made it the most exciting part of the week. My parents started noticing I wouldn’t groan when we went to youth group, so they got the message indirectly. Cory kept telling my parents how there was this crazy girl Tracey in my youth group, always talking to me as if I could respond. I remember how much that would anger me, what he thought was crazy, was the only thing keeping me sane.
A couple of months later, it was fall, my favourite time of the year and Tracey revealed to me what I was always wondering; how she would cope with everything she dealt with. She told me the story of the first time she was abused by her mother. Tracey had come home from school and forgot to take off her shoes before coming into the house. Her mother did not say a word and quickly grabbed a belt, she then started screaming at Tracey, threw the shoes at her and whipped her with the belt. Tracey’s face eyes swelled and her face puffed up, she ran out the house to escape her beast of a mother. That’s when Tracey revealed her escape; walking. Tracey would go out and walk, but look at her feet and then up at the sky. She would repeat this process till she was calm again. I thought that was the most amazing thing. “I’ll take you walking one day”, she said. My heart giggled, this girl was so miraculous, anything was possible to her. She would even tell me that I chose to be in a wheelchair, which seemed obsurred. It did anger me at first, but her explanation enlightened me. “You really can do anything with your mind, I don’t know if you still have your mind intact, but if you do, the world is yours”. It was a positive reinforcement, “Do not limit yourself to the body, Ollie” she would say. She was crazy, but I loved it, more than anything. I wanted to be like Tracey, I was so excited for our walk together. I wanted to see her cope with her trauma, and hopefully do the same.
A couple of weeks later, Tracey shows up at the front door of my house early morning. My dad rolls me to the door and he opens it. “Cory gave me your address, sorry for not ringing you guys” said Tracey. “No problem!” my dad says, his face lit up at the sight of a friend visiting me. “Ready for a walk?”, she said; “Off you guys go”, said dad as he handed her the wheelchair handles. And so it began, Tracey’s long awaited “coping walk”. She began by rolling me to the pavement on a busy street. “Looking down helps me clear my mind, and looking up give me a positive boost” she said. I obviously couldn’t do either so I just admired the view of the busy street. I never did anything like this, I would just sit at home. I noticed the forest green trees, like those by the lake; ahead of us was misty fog. The pavements were empty, but the streets were full. She slowly walked looking down, paying no attention to anything by her, she was so peaceful, so serene.
A loud honk washes out my senses, and before I know it Tracey was on the ground. I roll around finding her under a car that hit her and stopped. I felt a rush through my sternum, and I felt a tingle through my fingers. I heard Tracey squeal, and nobody was getting out of their cars to help. “I am not limited by my body”, I thought, and before I knew it I had fallen out of my chair to lay by her side. Before even registering my movement, I got up to my knees and jerked myself onto Tracey. With all my power I dragged her out from under the car and fell onto her, panting from exhaustion. A woman behind us came to her senses, and jumped out of her car to call the ambulance.
That night I visited Tracey at the hospital, and listening to the doctors was ridiculous. I was in there with my parents by my side with Tracey in her bed with her eyes serenely closed. The doctors said if I hadn’t jumped on her she would have no chance of recovery. “As if”, I thought, doctors don’t know anything. They said I wouldn’t be able to move, let alone think, and there I was in that hospital room sitting in my wheelchair proudly. Knowing I beat the odds. The doctor looked at my parents and with approval said “She triumphed”, and that is how I decided to get the tattoo on my wrist. I still couldn’t move well, or speak well, but the purpose of life rushed back into my senses.
Tracey woke up with a smile on her face after seeing me leaned over checking up on her, she gave
me a hug and with all my efforts I successfully murmured for the first time in a year; “All’s well that
ends well”.
