‘I can’t feel my legs.’
I screamed in my head, but my throat closed up in panic. I was stuck.
It was about 1 am and I had just, rather unceremoniously, sat down on the toilet to pee. Only this time, for the first time in the 22 years of my life, I couldn’t get back up.
The incident was the first of its kind, but the ordeal was old and familiar. I had grown used to a frighteningly high level of muscle fatigue but I had never considered being stuck in a situation like this, quite literally with my pants down.
In my struggle to get back up, I fell over, and everything stopped.
In the dead of the night, with tears streaming down my face, I was numb on the damp bathroom floor. I couldn’t help feeling my helpless, humiliated worst. Thankfully, I had my cell phone on me. I called up my brother repeatedly and he came and broke the door down.
I was safe.
Then there was the time I was travelling alone last year and had a full panic attack as I entered the airport because I was fatigued to my maximum. As the airline ground staff helped me process my ticket and luggage, it felt as if everyone’s eyes in that tiny Pune terminal were fixated on the young girl in the wheelchair. Confused, pitying stares.
But while all the drama unfolded outside, I was catching up on what my friends were doing on their Instagram stories.