13 Years Old - Rib Pain

Things were fairly calm aside from my foot and chest until i turned thirteen. Halfway through my first year of high school it started to become increasingly painful to sit for the entire school day -to be more specific- my ribs began hurting me too much to do so. This became steadily worse for weeks until eventually I was calling home in the middle of the day, and then eventually missing days at a time because of the pain. On a few different times I even went to the ER because the pain was so intense.

At the same time I was having headaches more and more often and my sleeping patterns were causing me a lot of fatigue during the day. I was becoming worried and fed up with my situation. I was in pain daily and starting to get behind on my grades because of all of the missed school work. Eventually after having already quit the sports I loved, and losing my straight A grades during the first semester, I made the heart wrenching decision to leave public school and continue on at home where I had the freedom to move around and rest whenever the pain became too much. This broke my heart. I loved school. All of my friends were there -four best friends to be exact- and leaving school meant being left out of the loop and left behind. And then there were the rumours. See, my brother had dropped out his first year of high school (ironic, I know), and so whether I heard it up front or not I knew a lot of people were convinced I was making the pain up to get out of school. Rumours also began to circulate that I had dropped out because I began doing drugs. Also completely false. It didn't help that when people asked me why I wasn't in school I didn't have an actual diagnosis to give them. It was more of an "uhhhh....because my ribs hurt...." type of response. Always ending awkwardly with them being insensitive and outright acting as if I was full of 'it' or them just becoming quiet and dropping the conversation entirely. All of this only add insult to injury.

I finished the school year at home but unable to accept that this was to become my routine -my life- at the beginning of grade nine I enrolled back into the school. This would be the same heartbreak all over again. I only lasted a few weeks. I can remember being picked up from school by my mom and us having a conversation that solidified what I already knew -this wasn't working. I remember the sky was grey, dull, -as was my mood. Tears slid down my cheeks as I stared out the window trying to dodge my mom's sympathetic gaze. I knew that I had to accept the fact that whether I wanted it to or not, it just wasn't going to work. So, shortly after beginning my high school experience, I had to come to terms with the fact that this was the end of it. This was all that I was going to get.