Post-Traumatic Squat Disorder
As you look across the dinner table, everything is going as it usually does during a Friday night supper; Big Macintosh has an entire plate of ribs, green beans, and the leftovers from yesterday all to himself, you're snacking away on a yogurt parfait with minced apples fresh off the farm, and Granny Smith's berating Apple Bloom for not eating her vegetables again.
"You gonna eat that, sis?" Big Mac asks, pointing at the plate of cold ribs on your plate.
"All yours." You reply, staring out at the horizon of the farm. Sweet Apple Acres is technically still in Canterlot, despite it being almost an hour drive to Canterlot High every day. If it's a clear day with no fog, you can just barely make out the skyscrapers of downtown Canterlot from the window of your humble little home.
And somewhere in Canterlot, you know there's a poor guy walking around those streets with a broken heart...
You clench your spoon, and take an aggressively large bite out of your food, trying to think of something else. You know when you rejected him, you didn't really word it as well as you wanted, but in your own defense, he came up onto you so suddenly. How were you supposed to know he liked you? You were completely blindsided!
"Still thinkin' about him?" Big Macintosh blurts out, with food still in his mouth.
"Well...not really......but...sort of...just a bit." You cringe at how bad of a liar you are. Your friends and family always praise you for being an honest and down to earth human being, but you swear, it sometimes feels like a curse.
"Anon really is a nice guy and all..." You continue. "But......he's not someone I could see myself with..."
"It's the fourth time this week you've mentioned this young man to us." Granny Smith remarks. "Maybe he's not as bad as you think..."
"Even if he isn't, I've already agreed to go with someone else, so there's nothin' I can do about it!" You snap. "Besides...Anon ain't exactly the image of the kinda person my pa would've wanted me with..."
The whole table goes silent. It's been years since any of you have ever mentioned your parents. It's just been a taboo to talk about them in the house. You look to your left, and you notice both Big Macintosh, and Granny Smith staring at you in shock. The food in Big Mac's wide open mouth simply falls back down onto his plate. The only one unaffected by your mentioning of your father was Applebloom, and that's because she was way too small to remember anything when it happened...
"Your father would'a wanted you to do whatever makes you happy." Granny Smith replies, with closed eyes, before resuming to her food.
Finally, the the table goes back to normal, as if nothing's happened at all. You eat your last spoonful of yogurt slowly, trying to mop up every bit of food on the spoon as you look towards the Canterlot cityscape one more time, watching as the sun sets, it's deep orange rays leaking from between the skyscrapers as it sinks deeper and deeper below the sky, giving way to the night.
******
You can hear the faint sounds of birds singing, as a thin ray of light squeezes through the small gap in your curtains, and shines on your face, telling you that it's time to get up. A yawn here, a stretching of your neck there, and you slowly rise from your bed, feeling unnaturally refreshed.
Usually on Saturday mornings, you wake up at around 11 AM with your brain feeling fuzzy and sluggish, and it takes at least two hours for that feeling to go away. But here you are, sitting on your bed when it's not even 9 yet and you feel perfectly fine. Looks like your dad was right when he says working out makes you sleep better.
Everyone has a daily morning ritual after waking up; yours begins with the toilet. You get up from your bed, and head towards the bathroom on the other side of the hallway. Finding your favorite porcelain throne, you immediately plop down, letting go of your lunch from yesterday as you plan on how to spend your weekend. After feeling like you've finished delivering your payload however, you realize there's no more toilet paper left on the rack.
"Ughhh..." You groan. Your dad has this awful habit of never restocking when he finishes a roll. But just your luck, there's a fresh roll on the sink nearby.
You prepare to get up from your toilet, but some primordial force keeps you from moving. You try again, this time with more force, and you involuntarily cry out in pain as your legs, specifically your quads feel as if someone has just injected hot molten iron into them.
"Anon?" You hear your mom call out from upstairs. "Is everything alright?"
"Don't worry, I'm fine!" You lie. "I...I...just stubbed my toe, that's all!"
You feel your quads, and your eyes widen with disbelief over how tight they feel right now. Forget molten iron; this is god damn adamantium you're dealing with. You try to get up again, but the second you need your quads to put in just one joule of work, the pain all comes back, more intense than ever.
"Fuck...!" You curse under your breath as you stare at the roll of toilet paper on the other side of the bathroom. "How the hell am I gonna get that?"
It's times like these when you wish you lived in the Star Wars universe; you could just extend your hand, and the Force would bring you your prize. But no; in this universe, everything sucks. You try a third time, using your arms to push off the toilet seat, but you only make about two inches of progress; your legs are just nonfunctional right now, and you end up back where you started.
"Come on..." You groan, trying to massage the soreness of your quads away. "You can do this."
You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and count to three...on three, you're going to give this one more try.
"One..." You say softly, your eyes frantically pacing around behind your eyelids.
"Two..." You can almost hear your legs begging you not to try and get up again. But what else are you supposed to do? Stay on the toilet all day long? Screw that.
"Three!"
******
It was already enough of a hassle trying to get that one roll of toilet paper on the other side of the bathroom; trying to actually get out of the bathroom? You basically dragged yourself across the floor. For some time, you seriously considered just crying for help, but you know your parents would never let you hear the end of it if it happened. You slam the door behind yourself in triumph, and smell the fresh scent of mom's cooking, waiting for you downstairs.
"Omelettes." You whisper to yourself in excitement. Suddenly, the constant throbbing of your legs are gone, and you feel reinvigorated. But that same feeling of happiness immediately disappears when you see what's before you.
Stairs. Thirty six steps of stairs.
It was hard enough just moving your legs once to get up from the toilet, but now you need to do it thirty six times? Screw it; you weren't that hungry anyways...
Except you actually are hungry. Really hungry. However, you know your limits; if you're going down those stairs, you're not going to make it. Not by a long shot. But you can't just stay upstairs forever, you need food. You cross your heart, and hold onto the railings with both hands as you take your first step. Just like before, your leg starts to protest with pain, with every single inch forward brings more and more. You're gripping the railing so hard, your knuckles are turning white, and this is only the first step.
"Time for the left leg..." You say to yourself. The process begins all over again.
Your whole body tenses up once again, but this time it feels even worse; your left leg feels so sore that if it got any tighter, it would collapse into a black hole. The pain quickly becomes too much, and you begin feeling the terrifying sensation of losing your balance.
"Oh crap..." You say, feeling it getting worse. "Oh crap!"
******
You feel the sharp sting of the antiseptic your mom applies to your knee. Thankfully, there were no broken bones, but you got some pretty nasty carpet burns as you tumbled down the stairs.
"Why didn't you just call me or your father?" She asks. She almost seems amused over all of this.
"I...I thought I could've made it." You groan, gritting your teeth as the hydrogen peroxide really starts to soak into your scrapes.
"Let me see your other leg, Anon." Your mom says as she finishes patching up your leg. "My biggest concern was just how you didn't ask for help when you clearly needed it...that's how people get hurt. Think about that bench press incident you had earlier, Anon."
"Mom...please don't bring that up." You groan, feeling the painful antiseptic do its work. "I...I just want to forget that ever happened."
"Why?" Your mother asks. "It was a learning experience for you; you learned something important that day, and you came out smarter and better than you were before, Anon."
"Yeah, but I probably looked like the biggest idiot ever when it happened." You protest. "Why...why can't I just get things right the first time, like you, or dad?"
Your mom looks back, against the living room wall. Ever since she married your dad, the two added a bulletin board right next to the T.V. where they nail all their marathon and 5k tags. As of today, the two of them have ran about 87 5k's, 23 half marathons, and 6 full marathons total. There's so many running tags on that bulletin board, that you don't even know what color the bare board is.
"Did you know that when I first met your father in middle school, he was the slowest kid in our gym class?" Your mom asks, taking her eyes off the bulletin board. "Every time, he would always be the one who'd finish dead last, and that didn't change until freshman year of high school."
"Dad?" Your jaws drop in disbelief. "No way."
"I'm not lying." Your mom shakes her head. "He was the only boy in his class who couldn't run a mile without running out of breath. Everyone made fun of him; even the gym teacher once."
"So, how did he turn into..." You gesticulate with your hands. "You know, the guy he is today?"
She finishes up your final bandage and an all-knowing smile cracks across her face.
"A lot of hard work."
"It doesn't happen overnight, Anon." Your mom explains. "It took him months, even years of following a regiment every day to get to where he was."
"However, I can see you really do want to change, and make yourself a better person." Your mom puts a hand on your shoulder smiling. "Your father and I are both immensely proud of you for that first step; stay strong, keep working, and I know you'll make it, just like your father."
******
Before you even knew it, the weekend was over. You're back to roaming the hallways of Canterlot High again, going from class to class. Your legs though better, are still extremely sore, and you still consider stairs as safety hazards for yourself, which you tried really hard to explain to Ms. Harshwinny. Too bad you're still getting detention for being ten minutes late to class.
"I had to go down three flights of stairs." You complain to Twilight Sparkle after class. "That's like climbing down the Alps for me!"
"Yeah...it's a little unfair if you ask me." She replies. "By the way, how do you feel about that precalculus quiz?"
"I didn't really study, so I'm not sure." You say.
"I think I might have messed up my algebra on the question where you had to take the limit of x goes to infinity on the square-root of x plus five over-"
"You probably did fine." You pat Twilight on the back. "I'm sure you got a perfect score on that quiz just like on the past five we've had so far. Anyways, here's Ms. Harshwinny's room. Time to see what she wants me to do for the next half hour."
"Alright, bye Anon. See you in class." She waves goodbye before disappearing from your view. You now turn to see Ms. Harshwinny, looking very stern and displeased. Actually scratch that; she always looks like that.
"Good afternoon, Anonymous." She says, her arms crossed around her chest. "I hope your legs are feeling a little better..."
"Thanks, Ms. Harshwinny." You reply monotonously.
"I was planning on having you sweep up the classroom for the janitors, but considering the state you're in, I thought I'd have you grade quizzes from my other class instead." She says "Here's the answer sheet, and grading template. You may leave when they're all finished."
She steps aside, revealing before you two folders filled with so much paper that they're about to burst.
'Are you kidding me?!' You think in your mind. 'That's going to take at least two hours! Detention is only supposed to last thirty minutes!'
"...Is there something wrong?" Ms. Harshwinny asks, her scowling frown getting deeper and deeper as each second passes by.
"No, Ms. Harshwinny." You say as you hold back the urge of tackling her to the ground.
"I'll be in the teacher's lounge if you have any questions with grading the open response problems." Ms. Harshwinny says. The door closes behind her, leaving you alone in the classroom with nothing but a red pen, and at least eighty quizzes that you need to grade all by yourself.
"What a woman..." You mutter, as you grab the pen, and start on the first quiz.
******
"Yup you get an A, Twilight." You think aloud as you finish grading her quiz. "...Again."
Although Ms. Harshwinny universally despises every student in Canterlot High, you're probably the one she dislikes the most. You don't even know what you did to make that woman hate you so much. Sure you're sometimes on your phone when she's talking, but you're far from the only one who does that, and she only calls you out when you do that.
But if there was one thing that made your day though, and it was Diamond Tiara's quiz; she didn't answer a single question, and instead just wrote on the back saying how her mom is the superintendent of the Canterlot district, and if Ms. Harshwinny fails her, she'll lose her job.
"An A for you, Diamond." You snicker, giving her quiz a 100 as you draw a big smiley face right next to her grade. You take your words back; maybe there really are students out who Ms. Harshwinny hates more than you, as hard as it is to believe.
As for the rest of the students whose parents aren't superintendents, you try your hardest to give as much partial credit as you can; everyone's GPA is going to be devastated after this nightmare of a class, so why not soften the blow for the other students?
The process goes on, and on; minutes become hours, until you finally grade the last quiz. Taking a huge sigh of relief, you stack up all the graded quizzes, and stumble out of the classroom, your brain feeling like a char-broiled steak patty after the countless papers you had to grade. You check your phone, and realize it went on even longer than you thought; that detention lasted almost three hours.
Normally when you get out of school, you typically begin your homework, and do whatever you needs to be done, but after spending an entire afternoon grading papers? Your brain's done thinking for the day. You pull out your phone, and begin texting your mom to pick you up. You're definitely going to be doing nothing but going on a Breaking Bad binge after you get home.
As you begin texting her however, you feel a strange, nagging feeling in the back of your head; the same feeling you get when you know you've lost something, but have no idea what you even lost. You ignore the feeling, and send your message to your mom. The school closes at 6:30, and it's already 5. Outside, you can see all the members of track team on the horizon, nearly done with their run and heading back to the school.
"What a workout." You huff. You hear the varsity kids not only run like 5 miles a day, but they do it uphill, and they still have practice even if it's raining or snowing. It's really admirable how tough they are. It makes you wonder how long you'd last under that kind of abuse...
That nagging feeling in the back of your head begins to surface again, but this time, you immediately know what it is now. You immediately pull out your phone, and begin texting your mom again:
Mom, can you also grab a pair of shorts an a shirt from my closet? I wanna go the gym right now.
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Can anyone say regret?
This'll end wonderfully, hehehe, another well done chapter, good show!
e3effa51eee72fd900e3-2fb779bd12ec72d4612275342f2c9187.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/cec5fbaf72f8d06a43be4ab5ffdd630d.jpg I know that feel.