always so strong and familiar, because she was right and I was fucking exhausted, and because I couldn’t swallow them all back any longer I let a tear fall.
“I can’t . . . “ my voice came out hoarse from the effort of holding back actual sobs and I cleared my throat. “I won’t give up my course. I have to prove that I . . .” I trailed off and another sodding tear made its way down my cheek. As my parents would say, (and did say, frequently, before they had decided to stop speaking to me that is) I’d made my bed and now I had to lie in it. It had been my decision to drop out of medical school, my decision to apply to switch to a music degree. It didn’t matter that I’d been accepted to one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, it didn’t matter how hard I’d had to work to get in. All my family saw was the lost opportunity of me having a profession, a guaranteed income for life - just like my brother had. Music was supposed to have been an extra-curricular thing to help me get into university, not the actual thing I studied there.
They thought I was throwing my life away. We haven’t struggled and saved all these years to support you just so you can bloody well write songs! Dad had shouted, as if writing songs was akin to shooting heroine into my eyeballs. Overnight the allowance they had provided to cover my rent and for basics was gone. I had no grant, as I didn’t qualify for one with my parents’ financial status, and although I’d taken student loans that wasn’t enough to fund a life in London, not if I didn’t want to be saddled with crippling debt. And now I’d recently discovered that my body was giving up on me as well. So my only option was to work day and night. I couldn’t stop now. I’d come this far, there was no going back.
“Let me cover the rent for a bit, hun,” Kira said, but I shook my head.
“No, you can’t afford that, Kira.”
Kira was a medical student. That was how we’d met – we’d been in the same year together. After the second year we’d both been fresh out of halls and needing somewhere cheap to stay near campus. Her best friend, Libby, was a single mother and needed her own space, and Kira was living with too many other students and needed peace to revise. So we’d found a place together. It was another year before I threw in the towel on medicine. I hated every minute of the dry lectures and science-based learning – all I did was think about music and when I could get away to play and compose. The last straw had been when I’d passed out in the dissection room – the bodies weren’t even uncovered and I’d still lost consciousness. I had to accept at that point that medicine was not the career for me. And also not writing music, not making that my main focus had been slowly killing my soul.
“It’s fine, I’m just being a wet flannel this morning because my feet hurt and I’m tired.”
Kira sighed again and moved to the other side of the counter so she was facing me. “Urvels, I hate to nag, but you didn’t take your pack last night and I don’t know if you had any spares in your bag.”
I bit my lip. “I forgot.”
“Urvi – “
“Please, no lectures. Not now. I forgot. It won’t happen again.”
“Your diabetic control hasn’t been – ”
“I know, okay?” I said, pushing away from the counter and from her, snatching up my goddamn sugar-free tea and nearly burning my hand. “I’m trying. It’s hard when there’s no time.”
“Maybe if we let your folks know that you’re sick,” she whispered, and I closed my eyes. It was the first time Kira had mentioned contacting my parents and I knew this was a sign of how worried she was. She had been arguably angrier with them than I was when they’d washed their hands of me.
I hadn’t spoken to my parents or brother for eighteen months (not through lack of trying on my part), and then a year ago I was diagnosed with type-one diabetes. Yes it was a shock, yes I was handling it badly - but that didn’t mean I had to go running back to my family.