HELENA LARKSWORTH :: D3 :: DONE

I am broken, and you can’t fix me. There’s no way, nothing possible. You can try every trick in the world, and I will remain this way, disintegrating a little more with each passing second. My name is Helena and I am dying.

I think the moment in which we grow from a child into an adult is the moment in which we realise that infinite is just a concept, a mathematical equation that cannot be proven. We are not infinite. Humans are very much finite, each breath taken one less than you were born with, each foot fall one step closer to death. But some finites are bigger than others, and mine is not very big at all.

My name is Helena and I am dying. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is the sticker at the top of my case file. I like the fact that it was named after the man who discovered it. A sort of ‘Well done, what a great medical feat, now you’re going to kill thousands of children slowly.’ I’m a rarity, the type that makes slimy medical professors’ eyes sparkle- the girl with Duchenne. See, the disease is X-chromosome linked, so most girls have a back up if one happens to be carrying Duchenne’s- they can pass it on to their kids, but they won’t display symptoms. But what the Doctors believe (currently, although this hypothesis changes quite frequently) is that the dystrophic gene of my other X-chromosome, the one that was meant to protect me, is faulty. This probably doesn’t mean a lot to you, because you were not the one to be gifted with not one, but two faulty genes. In a simpler form, as I’ve said before- my name is Helena and I am dying. The muscles in my body do not know how to regenerate properly, and they are wasting away, getting smaller by the day. I have known since I was ten years, two hundred and sixteen days old that I was dying. I guess my childhood was never infinite. There is no such thing as a child who knows they are dying.

In some ways, I like my illness. I’d prefer to be dying of Duchene’s, something with a timespan and certainties, rather than the affliction that the rest of you suffer from- the illness that is life. I will die quickly. The muscle that is my heart will no longer be strong enough to function, and it will give out. But you? Your suffering will be prolonged. She will slowly close her fingers around your neck and you will suffocate in a hundred thousand different ways. Piteous looks mean nothing to me, because I feel sorry for you, too- we are all dying.

“Why is your hair so curly, and mine isn’t, Leena?”

I cannot remember my sister’s voice at six, but I can remember her words. And I can remember her hair, like corn-coloured candyfloss. In some sort of cruel taunt, I was always jealous of the colour of her hair. Mine’s a boring mouse. Now, there are other things in her genes that I am jealous of, but hair colour is not one of them. The only other set of twins I knew aside from us were identical, but us, we didn’t even look similar when we were both supposedly healthy. We shared the same upside-down green eyes, sure, but my slender nose doesn’t match her button, and her lips are much puffier than mine. Now, she’s tan, because she can get down the stairs and outside easily, and can actually do things there. My skin is transparent, and if you watch carefully, I swear you can see the muscle waste away.

“Urgh, you’re so skinny!” she complains, grabbing slight rolls of fat on her hips. It’s another of death’s cruel taunts- the fact that my slender body is supposedly all the rage in the Capitol, the shape that all the boys are looking for. Personally, I’d be far more attracted to the obvious life in my sister’s sides that the ribs peeping through my sides that construct letters in spindly handwriting. Personally, I would want to reproduce by someone who is guaranteed to be dead by the time she’s twenty-five.

Once, she wasn’t even better at running than me. I was taller than her, too- the tallest girl in our class in the first year of school. But my body thought that keeping me alive was more important than growing upwards, and so as my muscles slacked off, it put all of it’s energy into that. Sometimes, I don’t even know why it bothers. But when I was seven, I started falling over a lot, not being able to keep my balance. I’d walk on my tiptoes, too. At first, Dad thought that it was just part of my obsessions with dancers, but when he realised I physically couldn’t touch my heels to the ground, he figured something was wrong.

It took a while for them to diagnose me, but they found it in the end. And since I was almost eleven, I’ve been dying. I was dying before that, of course, but it wasn’t official then. My walking had become worse and worse, and now I struggle with my frame. I’m holding onto my feet for as long as I can, but soon a wheelchair will be in order. I’m dreading that day, because I do like being in control of my body. It’s one of those little things that keeps me human.

We never had a mum. It was always just me, my sister, Dad and Nan- Dad’s mum, whose husband died at about the same time mum left, not too long after we were born. Dad always said that she had other things to do, but I recon that she took one look at me and she knew that I was going to rip her heart out and then burn through her chest like acid. I don’t think that because I’m up myself, but when you’re around someone for a long time, it hurts when you start to loose them. I know that because I’m loosing myself.

For now, I’m still at school. It gives me something to do, something for my mind to hold onto rather than just my impending death. I hobble through the corridors on my frame, getting looks. I’m the weird girl, the one who you have to be nice too, but can’t get too close too, as if my contagion is catching. Well, perhaps it is, because we all seem to be suffering from the same thing.

Once I was a dancer. Once, I had the potential to be great, like my Nan once was. My movements were liquid and you could pool them in my eyes. Lithe, like hair in water, I would flow. Now, I shuffle, gait ungainly, motions spastic. There was a time when I was in control of my body, but bit-by-bit I have lost that. I know how to execute the movements- even after I was labelled, my Nan did not give up on my dancers education. She still teaches me now, although I cannot stand unaided. I know how to execute the movements but I cannot do them. My mind tries but my body objects, a physical improbability. Scientifically speaking, nothing is impossible. I still teach dance, to the younger children that beg my Nan for lessons, and I look a little strange. I tell them what to do, but I cannot show them. Dancers are supposed to have movement of every muscle, and yet I am an exception- I am an exception to a lot of rules.