Un Eterno de Invierno — story
July 11th, 2020: Few things on this planet make me truly happy. I am a measure of happiness. I’ll make sure of that, moving forward. When things come to me, I will smile and let them go. When I get bumped into by a fly, I will say I got hit by a train the next day to all my friends. If I heard birds chirping last night, I’ll say that there were sirens calling from a nearby ocean. I’ll say that the creatures of way deep down surfaced. They ate my collectibles, shattered my only vase, and tore my room to shreds. Few things on this planet make me truly happy.
September 26th, 2020: Thank you for your pity. I think of my father on this day and how as we pulled out of the driveway in a rush, he waved goodbye. I looked over my shoulder, looked back, and he was gone. I remember being so sure, I remember reading the face of my other father (or mother, or friend?)—he looked unhappy as per usual. Nothing I did could change that still expression. So, I tried to make him smile. I told him how much I loved his smile and how special it was to me. I was too used to seeing the poster-child of broodiness. I loved him still, but I would catch this like the plague too.
July 1st, 2021: “Make me special!” I smiled, cheesing for a picture. The photographer was less than enthusiastic. “Make me special!”. I was a kid, I feel. I wanted to jump, fall and be caught right away. There was never a safety net for me to fall back on before, so I wanted to ask for one everyday. I wanted my friends and all the passers by on the street to stop, smile, and hand me a piece of yarn to build my little net.
“You’re smiling weird” the photographer said.
It’s because when I kept collecting yarn, it disintegrated into bits of broken teeth. I had no choice but to let it go. I’d get worse and worse each time. I wanted some real sturdy, industrial revolution era yarn. The stuff from hobby lobby yielded similar, disappointing results.
December 18, 2021: It was funny at this point. Now, there was still no net. Now I couldn’t lie about sirens. There was no point in recruiting a photographer. There wasn’t even a reason to smile weird. I wanted to smile, even weirdly, if I could.
It wasn’t the dad, the other dads, the friends, or the strangers fault. I was here, and this was my duty. I couldn’t wake up at 3 am anymore to find what I wanted. 3 am woke me up and suffocated me so that by christmas, I felt like a shell of a human being. I think by this time, someone must have put me in a lab to poke at—maybe there was no net to build after all, because the materials around me were synthetic lab things.
JUNE, 2022:
When a fly bumped into me today, I didn’t lie. I didn’t exaggerate. I didn’t tell anyone. I just kept on walking. My feet felt lighter, and I’m coming up to a big hill. There’s the peak of that extra-terrestrial sun, the looming darkness behind it disguised as a blue sky. I never thought I’d see it again. I am here, and this mark, whether happy at times or not, is mine. I am here forever, and the sadness which radiated from me these years ago, the pain, the fever, the overwhelming tide of liberation and euphoria—will be here forever too.
