Diacope Anadiplosis//D8//Fin

17 * District Eight * Female

~The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours~

Having a big family can be either a blessing or a curse. While most of the time the love of my parents and the constant companionship of my brothers and sisters is something I am thankful for, I can't help but feel I stand out. Papa Shrug and Papa Lito love me, but I feel a disconnect with my family. There was a time when I wasn't Diacope Anadiplosis. I had a father and a mother that looked like me A family that was like me: dark skin, curly hair, and big smiles. I don't remember them. I was never old enough to know them but I do know I had a name before this one- before Diacope. I had a family before Anadiplosis, albeit for a short while. Sometimes I wonder how differently my life would have been in that phantom home. I'm not complaining about my family, they're good to me. I have my own room, I have food and clothes. I have supportive parents and playful siblings. They are are good to me, but I am not like them. A lot of my siblings are either biologically Shrug's or Lito's. They have the same light brown hair and pale skin as my fathers. I don't look like either one of my dads. People joke and say we have the same eyes but that's all it is- a joke. People think it is funny to pick at all the parts of me that are so obviously not Anadiplosis. I take up more space than my sisters. My hips are broad, my hair is big but I like it that way. I'm not slender like my brothers or my cousins. I am dark. I have dark skin. I have dark eyes. I have dark hair. I am not like them, but I am still one of them. While I have days that I do not feel one with my family I am still part of them. While I wonder what my memory family is like, I still embrace the one I ended up with. While I don't remember the name my biological mother gave me I carry her features. I like to think that as I grow up I look more and more like the mother I never got to meet. That every year I get a little closer to seeing her when I look into a mirror. I imagine that my birth mother has the same wide nose and big eyes. I know she probably didn't have the same scar through the side of her bottom lip, I had earned that as a child fighting with a thorny bush. I wonder if she had the same crooked teeth that kept my lips firmly pressed together to hide their disastrous state. I think we have the same stubby eyelashes and the same thin eyebrows. I don't imagine having a lot of features from my birth father, after all I have two already watching over me. Papa Shrug always says I have Lito's smile and I can't help but believe him.

I live in a very diverse family. A family of tricksters, of every kind of personality. There are smart ones and some not so smart ones. Like Lala... Lala is not so smart. But he is sweet. There is an admirable quality in every family member, but maybe I've just been taught to see the good in everyone. We're a big family and we stick together. I don't have a lot of friends outside my own family although it would be nice to meet people who didn't witness the Famous Diacopa Meltdown when I was four years old. Honestly, no one will lay that story to rest. I don't even remember what happened and the events change slightly every time its told. I'll be seventy years old and people will say "Oh Diacope murdered a man when she was four let me tell you about it."

I am not going to talk about it here. If you want it ask a Anadiplosis they'd be more than happy to tell you.


While I am friends with my cousins and siblings I know I annoy them. On paper words flow so effortlessly. I can think through every sentence perfectly and it just comes out right. With my lips, the words stumble over one another. The hard sounds of Ts sticking in my mouth forcing me to repeat the noise over and over until it is flung out. It takes me awhile to get my words out and while most of my family, like my dads, are patient not everyone is. I'm not dumb. My thoughts are as deep and profound as anyone else's, it's just the delivery out into the world where the message gets jumbled. I have gotten better over the years. Papa Shrug helps me calm down. Slowing down your speech until every word comes out perfectly, and then eventually you speed up until you're talking like everyone else. Of course, I still slip up quite a bit. If only this family didn't have such long crazy names! I know people at school named John and Sue and I'm named Diacope. People in town accepted the fact that the Anadiplosis family was a pack of oddly named children but they could usually point them out. On my first day of school I had walked in announced my name proudly- Diacope Anadiplosis. I didn't stutter on the difficult sounds, it had rung out as clear as a bell. I had been so proud until a little boy had shouted "How can you be one of them? You don't look like them."

Young Diacope had stood there staring at him for a moment until the teacher shushed him and started class for the day. I an the words over in my head all day until Papa Lito came to pick me up. I had asked him why I wasn't like Lala or Poly or any of them, why did I have to look so different? Papa Lito wiped away my tears and told me that I was special, that he and Papa Shrug and chosen me to be apart of their family because they needed me in it. That I completed their family and without me they wouldn't be whole.


Looking back on it he may have laid it on kind of thick but it did the job. I was confident of my place in my family for most of my childhood.

Perhaps the reason I am so skeptical of things is that I had to be coddled so much as a child. I was told I was special, that my stutter made me even more special, that I was just a beacon of specialness. In truth I had simply been adopted, as a lot of children are, and that I just had a dumb stutter. I wasn't a genius I was just different. There is a big difference between special and different. People do not come around to hear me trip over my words. If anything people avoid talking to me for the same reason I thought I was special.

I'm not angry I'm not special, in fact it's almost relieving to have that burden lifted off my shoulders. People don't speak to me at gatherings so I don't have to suffer small talk. It's all worked out rather nicely.


I mean I do like talking to people just not... overly. I overdose on conversation very quickly and it leaves me lethargic and tired until I can crawl into my room again. Curling up in my quilts and peering into one of the few books I've gotten for various birthdays. I have to read the same ones over and over but I don't mind. A lot of my family can't stand routine or repetition but there is something calming about performing an action you've done before. I know I can't mess it up too bad if I've done it before.

I'm going to write more about my room because it is heaven among my loud family. I'm lucky that my Dads haven't made me share it. It's a tiny square room, more like a large closet than a bedroom. There's enough room for my little bed in the corner and a tiny shelf I got for my birthday when I was 14 under the window. Yes! My window! With some extra fabric that seems to always be around District Eight, I stitched some curtains and pinned them to the wall above my window. I'd seen curtains of rich velvet through the justice building windows and I wanted my room to look just like that. So I have my bed, my shelf, and my window and it is my kingdom. Queen Diacope with her very own room where she can relax and read away from the banter and boisterousness of the Anadiaplosis family.


I may not resemble my family of tall, white, brown haired wits but I am one of them. They love my big hair and so do I. They love my dark skin and so do I. They love my stutter and so do I.

They love me, and I love them too.