“Where the Light Enters” by Rumaisa Mustaqeem, 19

I don't remember deciding to faint. Not clearly, anyway. But I remember the way my body folded—slowly, carefully—onto the classroom floor. I remember the gasps. The teacher is rushing. My heartbeat pounding behind my eyelids that, oddly enough, didn't want to stay shut.

I was nineteen and still bedwetting.

Not every night. But often enough to make shame my shadow. Sometimes even during the day. A laugh, a sneeze, a skipped bathroom break—and suddenly I was a child in a teenager's body, soaked in fear and wet clothes. My bladder was a cruel secret. It made me quiet, paranoid, always scanning for judgment. At school, I sat at the back near the door. I never drank too much water. I never made friends. Friends came with risks—like sleepovers, hugs, or just being seen too closely.

I wasn't unfriendly. I was scared.

People called me "distant," "aloof," even "snobbish." But really, I was trying to survive a war inside myself. A war where my own body betrayed me, and my parents didn't believe me.

"You're too old for this," my mother would whisper after changing the sheets. "You need to stop."

I wanted to. God, I wanted to.

My two older brothers were everything I wasn't—loud, athletic, and adored. My parents loved me, too, I think, but in a quieter way. More distractedly. My mother cooked and cleaned, my father prayed and worked. But no one noticed the way I clutched my thighs in class. No one saw how I walked stiffly to the bathroom, hoping no one smelled anything. No one noticed how every laugh I heard felt like a weapon aimed at me.

So, I learned to pray.

I didn't even always ask to be healed. I asked for strength. For peace. For invisibility. And sometimes, I asked not to wake up at all.

But that day at school, the panic crept in faster than I could pray it away.

I had noticed two girls glancing at me, whispering. I was wearing fresh clothes. Nothing had gone wrong. But shame has a long memory, and my mind went wild. What if they knew? What if someone saw the plastic sheet in my backpack? What if the smell hadn't gone?

I couldn't breathe.

And suddenly, I fell.

It wasn't graceful. It wasn't loud. It was just… quiet. Like slipping underwater. The teacher shouted my name. Feet shuffled around me. I kept my eyes shut. I thought maybe, if I didn't move, they'd care.

But then I heard him.

A boy from my class leaned over and whispered to the guy next to him, just loud enough for me to hear:

"She's not out—her eyelids are twitching."

I felt my heart tear open with those words. Not because I'd been exposed, but because I hadn't fooled them. I wasn't unconscious. I was desperate. And someone saw right through me, not with compassion, but as entertainment.

That one sentence stayed with me for years. Echoed through every moment, I felt unseen or mocked. It was the first time I realized that even when I tried to be fragile, the world still didn't see me as human.

My parents rushed to school. My mother cried. My father looked stunned. They took me to the hospital. The doctors said I was fine. Healthy.

So my mother asked me, in that cold, fluorescent room, "Why didn't you tell us something was wrong?"

I wanted to scream. I had. I had told them for years—in damp sheets, in downcast eyes, in prayers whispered into pillows.

But I just said, "I didn't want to worry you."

After that, something changed. Not immediately. But a crack formed in the wall I'd built around myself.

I went online. I searched "bedwetting at 19." I cried reading strangers' comments that sounded like my thoughts. I found a support group. I found a name: nocturnal enuresis. I found out that emotional trauma can affect the bladder. I found out that I wasn't dirty or broken. Just... untreated.

Eventually, I saw a doctor. Then a therapist. The first sessions were awkward. I barely spoke. But I kept going.

Healing didn't come all at once. It came in tiny, almost invisible pieces. A dry night. A morning without panic. A friend I finally let visit. A day I laughed without fear.

And slowly, I started telling the truth.

I told my brothers. Zain cried. Haris hugged me and apologized for every dumb joke he ever made. I told my mother. She sat quietly and held my hand.

I started writing. Just blog posts at first. Anonymous. But then I signed my name. And one day, I stood in a room of girls—some shy, some hurting—and said out loud: "I used to think hiding would protect me. But all it did was bury me." There were tears in the room. Some were mine.

Now, I carry that line with me—not the one from the boy who said my eyelids moved, but the one I spoke when I finally stopped being afraid of my voice.

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you." —Rumi

That quote sat above my desk the year I started healing. For a long time, I hated the word "wound." I thought it meant weakness. But now I know that wounds don't just hurt. They open. And when you stop hiding them, light can get in.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, it can shine back out.