Kaelyn de Villiers
High School Junior
August/ September 2024
“Everything is fixable,” she uttered. Upon realising her mistake, she tried again. “Almost everything is fixable.” My mom didn’t need to continue. I knew what she meant. She had the most delicate way of delivering such a crushing realisation–death will always be permanent.
Interwoven with the fabric of my identity is my perspective as a writer. Each facet of my personality intertwines, much like the multi-coloured skeins of yarn scattered across my bedroom floor. Each fixation and form of self-expression is rooted in my past, with each event shaping who I have become. When I envision an unorthodox childhood, I don’t picture my own. The perfectly manicured floral scent wafting through each plaza, angsana trees scattered like ants, and thick clouds of haze cloaking the evening sun paint an entirely different image.
I was raised on the east coast of Singapore, a dwarfish island nestled in between the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Its location along the highly-taxable Malaysian Strait cemented the country’s identity as a nexus of trade and commerce, attracting expats from each corner of the globe. In the case of my family, we sought asylum from the unstable political and socio-economic climate of South Africa.
Though I can’t recall the initial instance in which I learnt to string sentences together, or began to enrich myself with the knowledge enclosed within paragraphs, I hold within me the memory of the domino of events which forever altered my then-narrow view of the world. I do, however, recall my unwillingness to read each ‘sorry for your loss’ card, the slow resignation from normality akin to that of a hermit crab sensing peril, and the quiet reluctance towards formerly-enamoring hobbies. I didn’t know how to pick up books anymore, and truthfully, I stopped trying. It wasn’t the same without him there.
My brother passed quietly, painlessly, in the middle of the night. Or so I’m told. I won’t live to gain the satisfaction of ever knowing why–an inconclusive autopsy, with his cause of death being from a virus beyond the current scope of medical knowledge. I still maintain that no child, nonetheless a nine-year-old, should have to experience the unparalleled grief that struck my family. As the stability of my familial structure came crashing down upon me, I jumped at every opportunity to replenish the control that had been stripped from me so suddenly.
“Almost everything can be fixed,” she muttered. How do you go about mending the rift between who you are and who you could have been?
As I sat, solemn amidst the low hum of the Singaporean evening traffic, the city around me continued along its usual cycle–steady, indifferent, and ceaseless. The pages of my notebook quietly rustled from the occasional breeze, each turn of the paper a soft, fluttering sound. To my left, my sister sat beside me, her eyes glued to the glowing screen of my phone, her occasional laughter filling the silence. She was engrossed in a game, with each rhythmic tap of her finger akin to the tick of a clock; a reminder that life was still moving forward.
I stayed rooted on the metallic bench, my back stiff and straight, as if the rigidity of my posture could somehow anchor me amidst the chaos within. The bench was cold against my skin, the steel biting even through my clothes. The world around me was composed entirely of muted hues, the pale concrete reflecting the last light of the sun as it dipped below the skyline. To my right, a row of meticulously manicured hedges lined the pathway, their leaves catching the faintest glimmers of orange and pink, as if trying to hold onto the last warmth of the day.
My sister’s carefree demeanour stood in stark contrast to the frantic tapping of my right foot against the polished concrete, a nervous habit I couldn’t quite shake. It was an outlet for the restless energy that buzzed within me, a subtle yet relentless reminder of my own inability to sit still with my thoughts. She was oblivious to my turmoil, lost in the simplicity of her own world. Almost four years younger than me, her ability to be so present, so unaffected, was an echo of the innocence I felt I had lost. I envied her.
Only now, years later, do I have the hindsight to realise I turned to schoolwork for stability in order to escape a reality I couldn’t face. My love for reading and writing divulged into the unyielding pursuit of academic perfection. I no longer read for leisure, no longer wrote to express my vivid daydreams or relentless inner monologue. As each ounce of fleeting creativity vanished I gravitated towards the predictable–the science, the maths, the straight-forward clear-answer disciplines. After all, you cannot quantify uncertainty within reality the way you can within an experiment. I traded my pencils for beakers, my lined paper for terminals, my fiction for medical journals. My mind, once a filter which transformed the mundane into the magical, now saw the world as it was: raw and unembellished.
Each neatly filled line was a desperate attempt to quell the anxiety I felt within me. I scribbled, frantically yet methodically. The evening sky had shifted into a muted grey, with each shadow growing longer, gliding like the ink along my notebook pages. I didn’t want to stop; I couldn’t bear to lift my gaze and confront the emptiness around me.
As headlights broke through the gloom, my mom’s car rolled to a stop in front of us. Deep-seated dread. I lingered upon each moment, attempting to draw out the last ounce of controlled tranquillity. I slid into the back seat, enduring the painful silence I tried so hard to avoid. There is no place like home. Except home was entirely unpredictable.
“How was your day?” My mother asked as she glanced into my eyes through the rearview mirror.
“It was fine,” I replied, sheepishly. My bright eyes now hazy, mirroring the gloom upon my visage.
The ride home was silent.
My brother’s passing reshaped me into someone else entirely–a girl who traded her creativity for control, her words for equations. I had become a tall child.
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