Kiana’s Story
There are times where people say things to others without knowing the effect behind their words. A lot of people are bullied in one form or the other. At times it may just come across as teasing, but there are people whom the teasing is not funny to them but deadly. Words are precious, once you say something you can never take back it or the consequences or meaning it has. It is just like time, you can never get back time that has been lost. There is no reverse nor undo button. People make fun of things that they don’t know about. A person’s misfortune has a story behind it.
From when I was a little girl I have been bullied for all kind of things. I have been bullied by family, friends and even strangers. And I get it. You can’t control the actions or words of others. If you truly know me, you know that I don’t like taking pictures. Not because I’m ugly or because I’m insecure, maybe. One, I don’t take pictures a lot or post them often on my social medias. Two, if I do take a picture it would be with the upper half of my body.
From when I was about 4 years old I had some severe knee pains. There were nights that I wasn’t able to sleep. I would be up all night crying and seeking comfort from my mother. At that time I was too young to be on pain meds. As I grew older the pains got worse. At school I wasn’t allowed to play. My mother forbid me from running around and playing like a normal kid. She would tell my older sisters to watch me at school to see if I was running around. If they told her I was running around I would get a beating from her. At that time I was angry because of this but what my mother was really doing was trying to limit exertion of my knees in order to prevent me from having pain. If I had pain she would ask me “were you running around today?” She didn’t really get it, I could be sitting down the entire day and I would still have pain in my knees.
Fast forward to my teenage years. The pain got increasingly overbearing. I would take the strongest pain meds for it only to have relief for an hour or two. My knee condition worsened. I would feel pain in one knee for three days the least. A day or two after, I would feel pain in the next knee for the same period of time. I went to so many doctors seeking help but they couldn’t help. Each and every single one of them blamed it on puberty. Then something changed.
When I have these regular pains I noticed that my knees began to swell. Sometimes it would only be the knees that are swollen. At times it would be my ankles or it would be my knees all the way down to my feet. I began to do research wanting to know what the problem is but couldn’t really diagnose myself as seeing I’m not a doctor and I wouldn’t really what the actual prognosis is. I was still going to different doctors to see if they know what was wrong. Every time hoping that they have an answer even if it was something bad. That way I would know what the problem is and how to go about treating it. Like always the doctor blamed it on puberty. Puberty for a girl ends around the age of 13, 14 there about. That is common knowledge so I would be furious when they would say that my knee pains and inflammation is due to puberty. I felt that they were taking me for a fool just because they themselves don’t really know what they were doing or know the cause for this.
There was this specialist, an orthopedic, the best in the Caribbean who came to Belize to attend to the soldiers in BDF. My family arranged for me to go and see him. I saw him in Orange Walk, days before he departed. He did his assessment, asked questions and later on did an x-ray on both knees to see if there was an underlying problem, something that could be chronic like cancer or so. He came to the conclusion that nothing was wrong with my knees and that the pain and inflammation was due to the shape of my knees and how it is positioned. I decided to accept his diagnosis and follow some guidelines that he believed would help me. That was four years ago. Up to this day I still have pains, I still have inflammation of both knees and I still don’t know what is the reason for this is.
Pain killers don’t work, analgesic heat rub doesn’t work. RICE (rest, ice, compress, elevate) method doesn’t work. My condition has worsened severely over the years. I know that it’s something serious but I don’t know what it actually is. There are times when I hear my knees making cracking noise, like it comes out of place and I would need to pop it back into place, there are times when I sit or bend and I can’t get up, there are times when I’m walking and my knees give out on me and I would have to limp dragging my foot.
People don’t know about my knee problems but they would tease me because of how I look when I pose in certain pictures. There was this time where I posted a picture on Facebook and my classmates made fun of me. I just laughed it off or smiled because I didn’t want to look bad in front of them. My face was showing a different emotion than what I felt. I’m not going to say that I’m insecure but there are times where these comments get to me and it is when I close my eyes that these monsters called emotions come into play.
I’m sharing this story hoping that it helps others. Inspire others to take a stand when bullying occurs, hoping that that these bully stop, because your words are very powerful and what you say can impact someone’s life drastically in a good way or bad way. There are more than what meets the eyes. There is a story behind everything. Think before you talk. Stop and think about how what you would say affect you if it was someone telling you that. Your teasing and joke may be someone’s despair. You don’t know how strong or insecure a person might be. Your one word could be the stone that was left to shatter the crack of that mental wall in that person’s head.
To you who are reading this and is going through something similar or has been through something similar, you are BEAUTIFUL, you are STRONG, you are LOVED. There is nothing that I can say that will calm that storm in you or can change the way you feel or see yourself because I too still have these struggles. Let’s not break each other down but instead build each other up. Remember, everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. Be kind!
#OneLove #StopBullying #WordsArePowerful
