The first time I gave up

Posted on by A. Rinum in Blog

The air is so humid that I can barely breathe. Sweat is pouring down my body like a river down a mountain. The electricity has been gone for the past five hours and according to our neighbors, a transformer exploded and it’ll take forever to repair it. We’ve been without electricity before but not for this long. There’s no running water in our house. The only form of water we have is in a small plastic tub in the bathroom and in our cooler in the kitchen and in an hour that’ll run out too.

Mama and all my siblings have drenched themselves in mosquito repellent. I haven’t. Mosquitos and other bugs don’t really bother me. My grandma says it’s because I have bitter blood. I honestly don’t mind.

We live in the upper portion in this house and it’s like we’re being roasted. Everyone is sitting outside on their terrace or garden or in the wrecked park in front of our house and I’m sitting inside, by the table beneath the gas lamp that’s hanging on the wall. That’s the only form of light I have, and it’s slowly dimming.

I have a math exam in a few days and I have to give in my math notebook tomorrow to the teacher so she could check it, but I haven’t done any of the questions because I had to study for my Urdu exam and  I’m not good in Urdu. Being dyslexic and learning another language don’t go together. All the letters seem the same.

In school we’re aren’t allowed to use pencils or ballpoint pens, all we can use are ink pens and it gets annoying when the pen runs out of ink.

I sit on the floor with my legs crossed. The floor is the only thing that isn’t burning like hell. It’s cold and I’m glad my but isn’t on fire.

Mamas calling me outside, saying that it’s better if I wake up before sunrise and complete my homework but we both know I won’t wake up.

If the electricity doesn’t come on we’ll probably sleep outside, on the cots, beneath the stars like we do in our Pind (village).

Give up. For a moment the thought brushes through my mind, but I fight against it. I’ve never given up, so why should I now.

Sweat is trickling down my arms and legs. I can feel my clothes cling to my body.  I fill the notebook with math equations, questions and answers. We aren’t allowed to use calculators and finding the square root of 34 on paper isn’t easy.

I’m almost done and a wave of peace subsides in my stomach, but when I look back at my notes they’re all smudged. The sweat from my arms smeared all my notes.

I blink rapidly trying to hold back my tears but they escape and fall on my register, worsening my notes. I’m mad at our school for making us use ink pens. At this point I don’t care. The temperature is above 37-degrees Celsius and if I stay in here another minute I’ll suffocate.

I curse Zardari for being a shitty president and my dad for sending us to Pakistan… but I give up and go out to the balcony like everyone else around me.

That was the first time I gave up on anything in life. The first time I said “fuck it.”

I don’t remember if I got yelled at by the teacher or if she called my mother. But I remember feeling helpless and hopeless… it’s been more than thirteen years but that memory is stuck in my brain like gum on a shoe.

Published by A. Rinum

I was born in Pakistan, and I moved to the US when I was four years old. From the rural villages of Pakistan to the buildings of New York. Come take a glimpse into my life.

23 thoughts on “The first time I gave up”

  7. Well written, i didn’t know you were dyslexic I know it’s a obstacle of life, I’ve given up on life as well a few times as a teenager I think but it’s good you have the memory to remind you of a hard time in your life for the future of your life , it’s a cute picture on the top of the post

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Oh boy! It was hard. I come from Pakistan where issues like these aren’t focused on. For the teachers and even my parents I was slow and stupid… I never understood what was wrong with me! I still get confused sometimes with grammar and spelling and numbers and even directions. But now I’ve come to terms with it. Use your weakness as your strength and that’s what I did. I started writing…

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      3. Everyone got something thier weak at, it sounds so bad, I didn’t begin to walk the way I do now until around the age of 14 , Writing is good though it’s good to find something you’re good at, it’s why I draw a lot, I still have a lot of issues like a risk of hitting my head or falling. I can’t do things like cook and drive that requires two hands cause I only got one to use.

        Liked by 1 person

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