A life in grains

5.

When also my right leg got paralyzed, I raged with the doctor because he wasn't able to understand it before, letting me lose in a maze of unnecessary controls and medicines. I needed answers that wasn't arriving but, when he told me what was happening to me, I preferred to have never asked for anything. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS. I didn't have time to frighten, my brain was filled with heavier boulders. The cost of medicines that would help me to feel no pain, a wheelchair that would help me when I wanted to move, a health worker who would help me when I was alone. I passed from the shame of having bought crutches to my mother to the most complete loss of dignity.

They told me that the disease would get worse quickly, but that they couldn't say me a precise time, each case was different. My mother immediately told me that I didn't have to hope in miracles, she thought that it was for my good.

During the day I was going around the house, practicing to become more agile on the wheelchair, but outdoor I was slower because I didn't want to be seen. My life was made of wheels on the parquet and camouflage strategies.

Liam helped me follow the last lessons from home and during the graduation day he pushed my wheelchair in the classroom where the teachers were waiting for me. He didn't continue to study, he stayed with me after the university lessons that I was following from home, he transcribed my math exercises, drinking tea and gorging butter biscuits. He taught me to breathe hard to learn the different smells of the seasons, he gave me a sense for my being there. The world was there for me like a wonderful painting, someone created it so I could admire it. Within this world Liam and I patiently cultivated an ideal love, made of laughts and slow walks in the asphalted streets, until he found work in London.