Afflicted Aphrodite
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My spirit looked at its shell and felt empathy. “Fight it all, Tiga. Fight it all and win.” My spirit cried. How? She whispered. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” my abstract dreams started spiralling together, “hallowed be thy name.” Faster and faster, like a vortex, “Thy kingdom com; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” colliding with each other, creating a tornado of memories. “Give us this day our daily bread,” I thought of God blessing my family with Mateo’s return, “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Come back and fight with me! I willed my spirit. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” My spirit came crashing down into my body, allowing me to drink in the precious oxygen my body longed for and awake with a start. I allowed the torment to continue replaying the distorted images of Mateo’s tear-streaked face, my mother refusing to look at me as she walked out, and my dad reduced to begging on his knees for her to stay and work things out, together, with him. I watched the images spin faster and faster, colliding with each other and morphing into a vortex before crashing back down with full power into my mind. I awoke in cold sweat, screaming for my mother as loud as my lungs would allow me, and violently shaking. But the slumped, defeated silhouette that appeared at my door wasn’t my mother. It was my dad, and the harsh reality dawned upon me again. Mum was gone, and I had never felt more alone in my entire life. Dad leaned against my white bedroom door-frame and regarded me, clueless but pitifully. It seemed he didn’t even know how to cope with himself, let alone with his screaming, heart-broken, leukaemia stricken daughter who was on the verge of having another mental breakdown. I knew he was trying his best, but my affliction didn’t permit me to see that he was the only person in the world who could feel my pain.
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About the Book
"I kept seeing her most prized possession sitting in the backseat of the car: her favorite child, my baby brother, Mateo. The non-problematic child. The healthy child. The eleven-year-old boy who protested against her cruel decision to abandon his gravely ill sister. The child she refused to lose to cancer." March 2012. A single doctor’s statement of three words morphs a family’s merriment into turmoil and distress. An ordinary teenage girl is forced into a battle against cancer for the second time in her life. But for the first time, she is evasively forced by her mother into fighting the battle alone. Along with the pressures of growing up and trying to be a normal teenage girl, drop-dead-gorgeous Tegan Giovanno determinedly tries to face her life-threatening illness without the aid of her nurturing mother, in the process becoming an ordinary teenager coping with extraordinary things...
About the Author
Norma has always had a sensitive approach towards cancer—in particular, teenage cancer—but it was only when her aunty had had an involuntary experience with cancer that she was compelled to write her first book, Afflicted Aphrodite. Norma currently lives in London and is in her final year of secondary school, in the final stages of completing her GCSEs. Aside from writing, she has a keen interest in a lot of things, including, but not limited to, Sociology, History, Art, Performing Arts, Languages and fund-raising for children’s charities.