The Thing about Falling ✓

Twenty Three • The Truth

Owen

My head hurts.

Here I am, laying still in bed with my eyes fixed against the plain, murky white of the ceiling. I don't know if  my headache started from thinking who the hell Athena was with, or maybe it was the aftermath of me not knowing what exactly to do after getting past my first midterm season. It could be both. I don't know for sure and honestly, all this thinking makes my head start to throb right down in the middle of my forehead. I laid an ungloved hand on my forehead and gently massaged it in small, clockwise circles.

I was still against my gray, crumpled sheets, fixating mentally what I should do in these kinds of situations. Clearly, things are quite different in my case with the whole never-had-a-relationship-before-Athena and the disability thing. I was fine with the wheelchair (excluding the weird looks people give me. I despise that more than physics) and the whole lifetime sitting down thing. It was this normal teenage thing when you suspect someone is trying to steal your girl that bothers me the most now.

I sighed in exasperation and before I knew it, I suddenly felt a little tense. Knowing what's coming next, I internally rolled my eyes and grunted annoyingly. I hate when this happens.

I sat up in bed, leaning my back against the pasty yellow dorm walls and watched my lower half, especially my legs, jitter.

Spasms.

Again.

To be honest, I do have muscle spasms on my legs every now and then but they were simply just quick, subtle trembles that happen. Of course, when I first got them a few weeks after the accident, it was really bad. I felt as if I lost control of what used to be my main territory and something else took over.  I remembered waking up in the middle of the night back at home, screaming for my mum to make the unusual jitters stop because they hurt. After that first time when I was eight, I screamed for my mum again for a few more times until I learned to keep it in. I was used to pain by that time. Slowly, the intensity softened and they're just uncomfortable now. Sometimes, they even give me stomach aches.

Like the one I have now.

Ugh.

Of all the fucking times to have these longer spasm episodes, it just happens to come around now. When I'm in the middle of a normal teenage crisis? Give me a break.

I blankly watched my legs jitter and then go limp again until they start to jitter once more. The intervals are inconsistent. My head was looking down on my lower half and my annoying hair kept going all over my eyes again. I felt my hands crawl against the sheets and I gripped them but not tightly. It was a coping mechanism I developed throughout the years since my mum needed to rest after tending to her paralyzed kid who has oh so many needs and all.

I'm trying my hardest to be independent. This is one of the things I have yet to go through on my own. Mum isn't here and so is the rest of my family. Athena's probably frolicking in gardens full of daisies and whatnot with whoever she yanked away to oblivion, laughing away to some bad joke she just heard.

Damn it hurts to not have her here.

I inhaled deeply and controlled the pacing of my breath. They were starting to feel more tense this time. Closing my eyes as I exhaled, I slumped down over my legs and grunted.

"Please go back to being noodles." I said to them.

It was dumb of me to start a conversation, pleading to my lower limbs to do something they obviously excel in most of the time: being still. They honestly acted their best during those times. I mostly didn't look down on them to contemplate on their worthlessness or anything these days but with my legs jittering uncontrollably? That is something that would make quite a conversation starter.