Almost a year ago, in September, the strange closing of my bedroom door woke me up in the middle of the night and I immediately got up to go check what’s on the other side of my room. I put on the light but before I reached for my doorknob, someone beat me to it; and with my half-closed eyes I saw a dark hand reaching for the switch and managing to switch off the lights. By now, all the soberness that had escaped in the first part of what turned into a horrible night revisited again. Although, in between moments, I would fall into a trance to reminisce about what I just experienced, the stranger on the other side didn’t give me the opportunity to let my mind decide it this all a dream or not. He managed to open the door and come in, while I’m still trying to be in the moment, I suddenly felt a very cold and heavy thing on my head and I touched it only to feel that it’s a gun…
Let me hold that position as I reach back in time a few hours earlier to the incident. I went to bed fairly early, as I do on Sundays and it had been quite a good one. No sign that I was going to be held at gunpoint at the dawn of the next morning; not that there normally is. I actually prefer it this way. (I mean, who wants to know that they are about die in the next few hours). Anyway, the stranger pushed me back inside, closed the door and sat me on my bed. Only then I realized, I know this stranger; I know this stranger so well, in fact, I’ve spoken to them quite a few times to be confused by what I’m seeing. While this is all happening, no words are coming from my mouth, I can’t even think properly. This stranger starts asking me to participate and not even make any noise, because he will blow my brains out. Tears started rolling down my eyes as my mind finally joins the party. I’m about to die!!
Since my mind is trying to catch up, I’m imagining gunshots in my head, what’s going to happen next, and what exactly is happening. Great! So I’m not dreaming… that much I’ve gathered from the tears that freeze my warm cheeks. In between my wild imagination and a pending reality, this person is telling me the reason he’s here and what he plans to do during his visit. I’m about to die. I’ve gathered that his plan is to kill one of my family members, so he drags me outside my room to the other one, at this moment, he’s tied my hands so I struggle to find balance. While all of this is happening, I come to the sad realization that I haven’t started living, yet my life is about to end. Trust me, the last thing on my mind is the 20 page assignment that was due the Wednesday, all I could think about is death. Whenever my tears give me break to see through, I looked up hoping to see some staircase rolling out for me to climb on. From this day I knew I should sop watching so much TV.
Since this story is about me, I’m not going to go into detail about why the person wanted to go on a kill, but I want to talk about how this experience changed me. There is something about a near-death experience like this that changes your whole view of life and forces you to mend your priorities. I was just a girl looking to get my degree and finally start living. With a gun held to my head, I thought to myself “if this person doesn’t shoot, I’m going to scream at those who didn’t protect me while they were well aware of what happening, then I’m going to go to school and tell my lecturer to not expect my assignment because I’m not doing it. Well, I’m here and you’re reading this, so that means he didn’t pull the trigger, so as I promised myself, I did both of those things, except, my senses came back and I submitted my assignment a week later. (You see; it helps to have a case number, especially when you plan to push all your tests because you’re not ready).
There’s so much damage that this incident caused my family and I. Everyday is a day to recover and try not to think it will happen again. I’ve since got a lock for my room and its only recently that I stopped locking, because I cant live my life with the fear that someone else will come into my room and only this time, they’ll be bold enough to kill the whole family. To this day, I wake up everyday around 2am and then fall asleep when I feel safer. I know I’m going to die one day, but this experience has shown me that this is not how I want to die, without having lived and explored all that life could offer. I’m on a quest to create new experiences, make mistakes, learn from them and do as much inking my body can have capacity for (don’t mind this, I just want to make my sister mad).
