"The Falsified Life"
By: Alero Ajems
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"I don't have it!"
She stares at you strangely than hurt and walkes away hurriedly.
Sonja is your younger sister, she follows you around all the time, she looks up to you like a role model. The hopes in her eyes when your mum tells her that she is beginning to resemble you too much scares you sometimes, makes you realise you wish no one hopes for your life. But you smile at her and shrug, when she smiles at you and winks, that conspiratory wink that says more than the smile. Makes you realise she finds that a compliment.
At age 23 and already halfway done with your masters in Clinical Psychology and the first and only graduate in the house to do a professional course, you understand why she feels that way. You also understand why you do not feel that way, why recently you have begun to find it difficult to wake up in the mornings to go to the Big hospital you worked in, why you suddenly didn't like listening to patients describe how they think their fear of their new neighbor who they think is rearing rats is the reason they have a fever. You wanted to slap them, you wanted to tell them that their neighbours didn't rear rats, that the fact that they felt they were not good enough for their estate class didn't mean they had rats in their house as pets. But you smile and help them realise that its just an anxiety disorder, and that if they insist you could give them something for the high temperature, but that they were fine. What, with all the balanced diet they followed and good exercises they did and the clean environment they lived in, they couldn't possibly have fever.
You had snapped at Sonja today out of wearied patience over a missing note. But you didn't make the move to beg her, you would call her later and give her a catalogue of the finest meals to diet on and that would solve the anger. It was also something you had begun doing lately, bribery and not apology. It was not something you liked either, but it was something you had begun to accept.
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