Malala Yousafzai

My body carried through a crowded street.

Strangers hunched over me, yelling things I didn't understand, my father rushing toward the stretcher to take my hand.

As the images repeated in the same sequence over and over, I raged against them, trying to beat them away.

This isn't true, I told myself.

The real Malala is the one trapped in this nightmare, not the girl on the stretcher.

Just wake up, and it will stop.

Wake up.

I had tried to force my eyes open to see something other than this carousel of horrors.

Inside, I screamed.

Outside, my lips stayed closed, motionless.

I was awake and buried, alive in the coffin of my body.

The Bong incident, you know, just turned out to be an experience not that I had imagined.

I had heard cool things about it.

And of course, you know, like it's different for everybody.

But I think in my case, there was this unaddressed trauma.

The memory, the visuals, everything, I think, had been there.

My brain had tried to suppress them because, you know, it's just a moment of fear that you do not want to see again.

And when the bong incident happened, my body froze, and I was reliving the Taliban attack.

You know, I could see the gunmen.

I thought, this is happening all over again.