Wanderer, Karina Dayieet

PRODUCT OF CIRCUMSTANCE


my favorite part of my family is that they lov me unconditinaly. my mom says I am her baybe girl, and my daddy thinks I am very pretty.

Piecey, choppy swirls and curls of a hand-written note remind me of my past on the days I wish I could forget.

My parents were in young love. They saw their blue and brown eyes as portals into realms of love, and would gaze deeply and lovingly into each others. But they never planned on having children, so they never did. Children were so bothersome, and anyways, they were none too fancy, even as District One residents. They had seen well-to-do families crippled by the burden of extra, unintended kids. My mother vehemently protested the basis of child bearing up into her late thirties, when she relaxed her strict guidelines to life long enough to conceive a child. Two years later, there was another, unloved one who grew up painting in all black, wearing grey, and cutting until the only color she loved poured out of her veins.

But that girl wasn’t me. I was the first and well-loved child. The bright child with eyes gleaming and hair shining so softly, I was considered a demure star since my grand entrance into the world. I was born and accepted into the arms of the blue-eyed, brown-eyed gazers who could already tell my thoughtful nature and kind disposition. My first two years were peaceful, and my mother was enthralled by motherhood. My daddy liked me well enough, and he recognized that unlike aging, fat women who had many children and forgot to tend to wife-duties, my mother flourished under the pressure of my dependency, so that she became independent and more easily excited by the small gifts he brought to her, and the sun-lit breakfasts they shared. Sixteen years into their relationship, my parents rediscovered their youth.

There is, however, such a thing as too much goodness. My mother began to recognize my strong will and bold tendencies. She became fretful that our intertwined lives would change greatly, unless she could distract me from my habitual temper tantrums, a product of the “terrible two’s” early onset in my just-barely one year old body. Thinking quick, she allowed herself to be impregnated once more, supposing a second child would be easy and breezy as I had been as a small baby. Perhaps I, the elder, would learn from the younger sibling to once again take nap times and coo like any considerate infant.

To this day, I am unsure whether the disturbing circumstances of her inception led to my sisters… disposition. Either she was too much of a disturbance to our peaceful lives, that she became disturbed by lack of love and affection, or she was disturbed to begin with, leading to her many disturbances of our carefully constructed family life. Either way it’s sliced and diced, my sister was the second coming of the anti-christ. Compared to mine, her strong will outshined me since day one. Where I was sunlight, she was fire. We both shone in our different ways, but not all glows are equal. Neither is the love supplied to children by their parents.

I grew up happily enough, with the minimal anxiety caused by my sister’s antics. I had to protect her, but my parents told me not to even try. Can you imagine that? I’d always been my sister’s favorite, because we considered ourselves broken reflections of the same basic concept. We both strived to live as self-contained, tranquil darlings while near our parents, but enjoyed playing on the streets with urchins. Our parents were busy supporting the two money-eating, grubby kids they’d brought into this world. Luckily, they were inspired enough by our “radiance” as my mom once called it, that their designs were semi-successful, but the hectic schedule of two relatively new designers on the scene is much harder when the two are entering their forties with two kids to boot.

None of us realized how bad Astrid was, though. Where I was a creature of day, her light was especially radiant at night. While I slept in our room heavily, she dressed herself in my rags and ran about the town. When she was nine, she began to get in trouble with the neighbors, I always handled them. She was damaging more than her own skins though, there wasn’t much I could do when she came home with scratches on her face to two exhausted, angry parents. She got in fist-fights too often for me to use the excuse she didn’t feel well, and sneak dinner into our room. I was frozen by her new aspects, her fire shone brilliantly as a contrast to my sudden wintry personality. I spoke stilted lies to our parents, but quickly learned the tricks of the trade until I was graceful and fluent in the art of lying. I protected Astrid from our parents, and trusted her to take care of herself. It was my duty, as her sister.

Young then, I didn’t recognize misery, but misconstrued her risks as violent expression of her passion, her “oomph.” By the time we’d each aged two more years, I was caught in my own web of lies, constantly blurting untruths to everyone around me. Trying to comprehend how our parents could ignore Astrid’s pain and my daily betrayals so effectively. A side-effect of aging? I didn’t think so,

I met countless boys, started to sneak out at the same time as Astrid. I considered myself adult enough to do this, because my parents certainly weren’t the responsible figures for me to look up to now. I’d evolved past their skill levels, so why shouldn’t my bedtime evolve past theirs too? They were creaky, old bones now. Never caring to notice. Not noticing enough to care. Whatever.

Astrid showed me things at night, wonders of our District that impressed the boys I wanted to fall for me. She played her games with fists and kicks, I preferred mental assault. When that became boring, I tended to fall in love over and over again. My only defense against heart-ache and depression was that I had hope that love was not what my family had between us. We were only partial to each other. if I could fall in true love, or find someone who could feel for me, then it would redeem my childhood woes. Right, about that..

I tried on nine boys before I found one who loved me. Then I dumped him, moved on to a different area of District One’s nightlife, found another. Dumped him too. It was an unconscious move on my part, but guilt drove me to flee once the deed had been fulfilled and I was reassured love was possible. It was hard work, naturally I was a lady, and as such, I disregarded the comments my sister made about how many more hunks I’d land if I weren’t such a prude.

But physicality sapped me of my vivacity. I grew impatient with boys who wanted my lips, and then more once I’d reached the cusp of adulthood, fourteen years. Boys left me bitter, for every lover there was another luster waiting in line. More than one. Astrid made fun of my antics, she made fun of me more and more and I slipped up on keeping her safe, so she had too much trouble from our parents for her to tease me like that all the time. I hated her for it, god I hated her.

But then I found another boy called Kade. He was shy, so I adopted an out-going smile and trilling laugh filled with feminine vibrato. The tremors in me eased as I discovered he was a real gem, a product of his jewel-making mother more masterful than the pieces that provided Kade with freedom from monetary worry. I sensed my lips liked his more than they’d ever liked anothers. It scared me to be falling, falling like a bright star. Don’t stars die when they fall? I couldn’t take it, I didn’t want us to change from each other, but I loved the every thought of him that passed through my mind. I resumed lying for Astrid so that she’d leave me be with Kade. We went swimming and shared secret places with one another. But I never shared actual secrets. To do so would be to vomit up the guilt I felt when I thought I’d never intended to fall in love with Kade, only to use him. I never intended to love anybody. Manipulation was an art that required my lips to detach from my head that held intentions too cruel to put into words.

The view from on top of the world was so nice, I never even saw my little sister, so small, ending her own undying torments. It was like watching a train-wreck from the top of the world’s tallest tower. You don’t see the dead bodies lying everywhere, and you never even hear the words people say, just the harmonized chorus of many voices asking for something. Kade and I were too wrapped up, but I sensed a bit of Astrid’s troubles, enough that I became dangerous and chaotic. I started to weave tales that made no sense, tried to push Kade away. He never left my side though. I knew I was in love, but all he had of me was an insubstantial shadow and all I could ever have of him was everything. But I didn’t want to take everything from him, no, no, no. I just wanted his unconditional love, but I didn’t trust him enough to love me. My parents loved me, but they never loved Astrid. The things they said and did never matched up. My mouth spoke words I didn’t feel, I was dead inside, drunk inside, a sham of the highest order. Kade could do the same to me, and I feared this possible outcome. He could whisper ”impossible” to me every time I asked why he hadn’t left me yet, me with the dead, starry eyes, and I could never put my faith in that.

We reached the climax of my story. I grew fretful and jumpy, lied when I didn’t strictly have to, and Astrid was becoming more and more morbid. She discussed little of her mind with me, but from what I heard her mouth say – and what her hands did – I believe my little sister could never have out-lived me. I was sixteen years old by now, I’d been with the same boy for over a year, but I couldn’t be happy. Wander-lust filled my heart, and in my head I knew that I would leave him. It was all a matter of how to go about such a sticky business.

Astrid took the back door out of life. She cut her veins till they ran with blood, she never told anyone. An infection ate her life-force, and after being gone for three days, we discovered my feverish little sister was a Jane Doe sitting at the local morgue with rotting, festered wounds and bad intentions.

I just fled.

I’ve never looked back, I’ve never spoken about my wild lies or deep passion for Kade, nor my little sister. I shun the moonlit dances and trips we took in District One, and prefer the gentle dawn to dusk any day. The past four years, I’ve spent in varying degrees of agony. Always searching for another simple love, to keep a habit up, but never realizing I’d let the only man I ever wanted out of my grasp. But for my own betrayals to Astrid in her time of need and pain, I sentenced myself to loneliness for two years. By the time that was up, I no longer missed Kade. By the time my heart was open to love again, a year later, he had disappeared. By the time I wanted him with all my heart and soul, to catch me, his falling star, I’d grown tough enough that I was very capable of leaving behind my love-taking habit in exchange for a wander into the wild, where I hoped to find love around every tree trunk, my one and only.