About Me — Harshini
And, if I were to tell you one thing about me, it is that, I’m scared, in fact, terrified, but I’m going to do it anyway.
I don’t remember much of that day but I do vividly remember seeing my pinky finger holding on to the rest of my right hand with its dearest of remaining strands of flesh. My blood was warm and I don’t remember pain but fear, oh, that I remember fear way too well.
I was on my way to school when it happened. I was sitting next to the window of the auto-rickshaw and I think it was a fast moving steel plate that slashed my pinky but I hardly noticed how it happened. I probably had my heads up in the clouds, making up stories again. But, I do remember that I was sitting next to a math teacher who also goes to my school. She taught grade 11–12, I believe. I know that because I was way too scared to tell her that I cut my finger off and I ‘might’ need a little help here.
So I did, what I still do, hid my hand between my thighs, bunched up the fabric of my skirt, hoping this would ‘medically’ put my pinky finger back in its place. I mean, that’s what they say about cuts, right? At least that’s what my mom does in the kitchen.
I was in first grade when it happened.
Yes, I was taken to the hospital, right after I got down from the auto-rickshaw when we reached the school and fainted right infront of everyone. But, my pinky, she couldn’t be saved that day and truth be told, I don’t really miss her that much, I didn’t get to know her much to begin with.
I still remember my doctor telling the kid me that there were hungry crows nearby who thanked me for feeding them. I was happy and I laughed when I heard that, my parents, well, not so much.
My dad, till this day, tears up a little when he says that I was a tiny kid back then and when mom and him rushed to the hospital after the school called them, he says that I hid my bandaged hand and kept saying sorry. That I was brave and strong, even for a little kid. I still remember that.
Today, I’m 25 and I use my four-finger right hand to scare kids and tell creepy stories to people. Say, If I knew 100 people in my life right now, there are 100 versions of stories on how I lost my finger floating around. It will be fun when one day all those 100 people meet to discuss how it really happened.
Who knows? You might be the 101th person.
Whatever that happened that day, was and still is, a blueprint to who I grew up to be. All the versions of me owe it to that little kid who lost her finger that day.
Right now, I work in B2B marketing, I very much entertain myself and the people around with stories made up in the head quarters up in the clouds.
I still am scared of Math teachers. I never knew why. I still do hide things that hurt me, even when my body doesn’t actually process the hurt. I’m still my dad ‘brave little girl’ and he still doesn’t stop talking about my brave little adventures. Adventures. Plural. He doesn’t know and maybe never will that I was never brave, it never was courage but, it is fear that drives me.
Fear of losing, fear of failure, fear of being let down, fear of being a let down.
And, if I were to tell you one thing about me, it is that, I’m scared, in fact, terrified, but I’m going to do it anyway.
Love,
H.
