I know it's felt like forever since I've been away (haha), but life has put me on a full-blown marathon the past few weeks. Final exams, final projects, final everything. The final stretch of my final year. I just wrapped it all up last Friday, and that day is one I will never forget.
I had been preparing like crazy for this exam. Since it was the last one, they needed to ensure it wasn't a cakewalk. The questions? Lethal. The anxiety? Overwhelming. And if all of that was not enough, death itself thought it would have a little dance with me. Okay, perhaps that sounds melodramatic, but I genuinely can't even remember the last time I've ever felt that completely ill.
My sister just came back. She'd been away in Lagos for months, came back with stories and that particular energy she always gains when she's been away for too long. I should have been studying. Good God, I should have memorized every last formula, every theory, every reserve plea I could think of into my head because Friday was the day. The final exam.
But instead I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed, watching her unpack, listening to her ramble on about Lagos traffic and how the city tastes differently now. "You look tired," she says, and I brush her off because one is always tired during finals. Everybody's always tired during finals.
My headache started small. A whisper behind my left eye, the kind you try to brush off until you can't. I pull out my laptop, poised to start reading.
"Are you okay?" My sister again, in my doorway with the look. The look. The one that signals to me she knows something I don't want her to know.
"Simply tired." But even as I speak, the whisper gets louder, becomes a scream. The sort of pain that makes you see why people once believed illness was a punishment from wrathful gods.
I don't remember deciding to sleep. I just remember closing the laptop, crawling into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin as if they were shields that would deflect whatever was coming. My sister's voice filtering up from downstairs, talking to my parents about something I can't quite listen in on. The feeling of normal life continuing while mine starts to shatter.
The fever comes in waves. Or did I roll through the fever in waves? I never understand which way that works. Sometimes I'm shaking so hard my teeth chatter, then I'm tossing off blankets, skin burning like I've been touched by something holy and terrible.
I must have been making a noise because my mother appears. She always does, doesn't she? Even at twenty-two, still coming when I'm shattered. Her hand on my forehead, cool and firm, and that swift catch of breath that tells me the fever is worse than I'd thought.
"We need to get your temperature down."
The medicine tastes like childhood. The way all those other times she's pulled me back from whatever edge I'd stepped out on. I swallow it down and try to convince myself it'll work, try to convince myself morning will find me human. Morning arrives and I'm still burning. And it's Friday. Exam day. The last day.
My alarm goes off at 6 AM and I want to laugh because what is the point? I can barely sit up, barely think above the fog of fever and exhaustion. This is my victory lap, last dance, and I'm being held prisoner by this backstabbing body of mine.
"You don't have to go." My dad, standing in the door again now. The whole family gathered around my sickness like it's something amazing, something to behold.
But I have to go. Four years of it, four years of all-nighters and early mornings and the constant stress of becoming something. I can't just walk away now because my body decided to turn against me.
So I go. Of course I go.
The paper sits before me and I stare at it as though it were penned in a language I used to know, but somehow forgotten. Top-down applied questions. The most challenging questions they could devise, saved for last like some kind of evil dessert. My hands tremble as I raise my pen, and for a moment I am not sure if it is the fever or sheer fear. I write anything I can. Half-remembered formulas, conjectures that perhaps are true or perhaps are fever delusions. The examiner kept sending me worried looks. I must look as bad as I do. Maybe worse. I finish early since I was barely able to hold on.
Outside, celebration fills the air. There's champagne. They're taking photos, autographing each other's shirts, promising to stay friends that we all know we won't be keeping. Four years ending not with a bang but a whimper and a class photo I'm not in because I'm already goodbye-ing.
Was I heartbroken? Of course I was. This was to be my moment, my triumphant arrival after all the dances in darkness, storms, and fires of my college life. Now I'm ill and exhausted and not sure if I've possibly wasted four years of hard work because my body decided to revolt at the worst possible time. But heartbreak would be madness to equate with thankfulness. Because a week from yesterday, here I am; alive, recovering, and writing this post.
Results aren't in yet. But sitting here now, being human once again, being myself once again, I know it doesn't matter as much as I thought it would. The dance goes on. It always does.
And sure, I'm fully back on Hive once more.