The Metamorphosis
***
My father’s MS is a parasitic monster eating away at him from the inside. Insidiously gnawing on nerves and fatty tissue. I see the way he flexes the muscles in his fingers as if to check that they still work. He runs his hands along his legs, trying to rub feeling back into them. My father runs marathons. He wakes before dawn and tries to beat his records. And sometimes he laments that he couldn't beat someone that he’d seen in a previous race that year. “I was keeping pace with her for a bit,” he says. “But then she sped up and I lost her.” Some woman, a woman older than him had bested his time. But that’s not the part that hurts. That’s not the part that worries me. It’s the fact that one day he might not be able to beat his best time ever again. It’s the thought that his best years are behind him and the only thing left for him is his downfall. No more preparing for races. No more late nights spent running on the treadmill, the sound of his heavy footfalls echoing throughout the house. To think of my father withering and rotting in bed makes me nauseous. I feel my stomach cave in on itself and my head starts to hurt. I hold back scorching tears. I want to weep so violently that I can barely stand. Even a cane would be too much. Because it means death and weakness. It serves as a preface for the beginning of the end.
***
My people are painted with blank stares and dark eyes. I smell it in my clothes and on my wrists. My mother seeps in loneliness and my father is an island. We disappear in ourselves. We leave each other on the outside looking in, like a burglar peeking in through the wide-eyed windows of our quiet cherry tomato red house. Bleeding hearts adorn our backyard. Crunchy lilies, tulips that never bloomed, and an assortment of wildflowers that I never bothered to learn the name of. There’s an old tire swing there that I don't use anymore, too many spiders. The curtains change with the seasons and the coming of holidays. Blankets are draped across the tops of the couches and my mother keeps a basket of socks by the door, just in case guests have cold feet. The house breathes at night, a drowsy sigh, a peaceful exhale. I lay in front of the fireplace and fell asleep on the hard mahogany floor. I can hear a humming. A vibration echoing through the house. I feel it as I press my ear to the walls, checking for a heartbeat. My mother's snores leak through the cracked open door. My father shifts around in the sheets as I creep up the stairs. We live in the spaces around each other. We pass each other without a second glance. We say quiet “I love you’s”. We love without speaking. Or at least, I hope we do.
***
The day that my brother moved out of our old house in Fairbanks, it was an oddly quiet day. I can’t remember him packing up his belongings. I can’t remember cardboard boxes or packing peanuts. It was almost as if he had erected his camp one day and just as quickly vanished without a trace. I remember walking into his room, something that no younger sibling is ever allowed to do ( when their sibling is home at least). I trail my fingers along the tops of his wooden furniture. Where would his Galilean thermometer be? At the right-hand corner of the dresser. It’s kept company with an assortment of coins and paper clips. Guitar picks, a cute elephant piggy bank, and an alarm clock with its crimson numbers that glare in the dark. His room is a cold somber shade of blue. Blue carpet and blue sheets, the room glows a hazy bluish hue. I remember feeling like someone had taken a spoon and scooped out all my insides. I felt deflated, exsanguinated even. He means nothing to me. We're nine years apart and my whole childhood felt like I was living with a foreigner . We have our father's eyes. Our mother's big nose. Rivers of brown skin and the same quiet nature. He doesn't call my mother to tell her Happy Birthday. He barely remembers how old I am. He means less to me than the spiders I find in the corner of my room sometimes. Or the dirt nestled into the bottoms of my shoes. But for some reason being in his empty room felt like I was laying in an empty coffin. It was the death of our relationship. Mom could no longer force him to take me to the bookstore and try to facilitate a bond between us. No more awkward encounters late at night in the kitchen while we both look for food to devour. When I think about it I’m always baffled by how similar we are. We both go quiet when we get upset and we throw up a wall to keep people away. We find comfort in our solitude. We avoid confrontation. And most of all we don’t know how to exist as people with a sibling. We never knew how to speak to one another. We never knew how to exist in the same space as one another. How could the person I shared a womb with turn out to be a stranger?
***
Happiness is the taste of a cherry slushie from Target after a shitty day at school. After an especially long day, a slushie was my only saving grace. There's just something about the taste of high fructose corn syrup and red dye number 40 that makes me grin. My mom would always say “You spend too much money at Target,” and because of this, sometimes I would try to hide it on my way in the house. But on those days that were especially unpleasant, I would throw caution out the window and gulp it down in big sips right in front of her, despite her judgemental glances. Happiness is foreign to me. But I love that my life is filled with small and simple joys. Like the way the sun lights up the road before me on my way home from school, a glowing river of golden concrete. Those long conversations I had with my best friend in my car after school. The way the vegetables in the produce section at the grocery store get sprayed with a gentle mist of water, that one’s my favorite especially. I find happiness by walking hand in hand with my youth. I cling to it tightly because I know that without it I would lose everything. To live is to see the world as a child does and never cease to be amazed by what it has to offer. Life would rip me apart if I chose to live any other way.
The nights of my life that mean the most to me are the nights I spend escaping out into the dark. The time I spend outside with my friends learning how to skateboard with my friends . I watch the plumes of smoke escape me and feel the board rumble below me. I remember the drives I take out to Beluga point, where the darkness is almost palpable and I feel invincible racing off into the sleeping city. I like the way the stars adorn the head of the mountains and the satellites glide across the space above. I like the hazy blue glow of the world at night. And how breathtakingly raw and oh so honest everything seems to become. Every word feels like absolute truth. Every interaction is deliberate. Under a dark sky there is nothing for me to be self-conscious about. It’s just me and the sweet smell of the world. The voice of my friends whooping and hollering in the distance. The sound of my laugh bounces around in the air around my head. It echoes and disappears, the same way the light of day does. I feel like a piece of fruit hurtling towards earth. Broken and burst open. Every new feeling and thought is a strange revelation about what it means to exist. I’m carving out a me-shaped space for myself in a world that I’m constantly drowning in. I’m teaching myself to swim. One word and one breath at a time.
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JANÉE WILSON is a sophomore pursuing a Baccalaureate degree of English. Janée has always had a love for reading and writing. It is her favorite form of self expression and a helpful emotional outlet for her.