#unrelenting and overwhelming and he's doing his best to tread water and be present

[heartsflocked]

i’m only trying to do what is best for us | fuyumi character study

      Her life is a tale of ice---of slipping, of cracking.

        Her home, her family, it’s all built on a foundation of ice; smooth and placid to the appearance, but unsteady and fragile. She doesn’t even notice the surface cracking under their feet at first---she’s so young, how could she, how could anyone expect her to? She has a father, cold despite all his fire, rarely home, never attentive, but a hero, something to be proud of. She has a mother, soft and gentle like freshly fallen snow, supportive and solid and present like a pillar. She has a twin, a second half, a partner in mischief, a boy as soft-spoken and quietly kind as she is. These days will be forgotten, little but foggy impressions and photos in an album, but things are fine, things can be good.

    If there is more she needs, she doesn’t know it. If the ice shifts beneath their feet from time to time, she doesn’t notice.

          Eventually, she has a younger brother. He’s much smaller and much louder, and neither she nor her twin know what to make of him at first. But her mother looks at him with the same softness and fondness that she offers them, and she lets them hold him if she’s there to help, and one day these memories will be hazy was well, but things are fine, things are often good.

    The foundation shifts. She is frost, her twin is flame. Her mother is still loving and gentle and in the moment, her younger brother is louder and brighter and stronger, and though still small he is no longer strange. Her father doesn’t change.

                        For her.

            For her twin, he becomes more present, more attentive. More forceful, more focused. Once inseparable, her other half is stolen away for much of the day by their father, making him stronger, making him a hero. She’s old enough to see now that her father makes her mother sad, and her twin often ends the day tired, sometimes ends the day slightly bruised and upset, and this is when the memories stop fading---at the start of the decline, when their footing and stability first start losing purchase. Things are still fine... mostly. Things are still good... from time to time.

          Eventually, she has a youngest brother. He is colorful and vivid, a slight and captivating combination of all of them. She’s older now, knows what to make of babies now, and she finds time to practically dote on him. He’s darling, she says. He’s squishy, her twin says. Her father seems interested in the youngest of them and her mother seems worried.

    The ice beneath them shifts again. Her younger brother is passed over, much as she was. Not for being ice---for being nothing at all, in the eyes of her father. Where she and her younger brother are ignored, her twin is still pushed and trained and ‘made stronger’. She’s still young, she still wants to believe that, but she’s old enough to see now that her father makes her mother scared, and even for all his time spent with her twin he still keeps his eyes on the youngest, waiting.

        There’s a splintering at her feet and she doesn’t even know it, the ground’s been unsteady for years but it’s all she’s ever known. Things get worse with her father, with her twin. She doesn’t notice her mother starting to slip away. She hardly notices herself starting to slip into her mother’s place. All she can do is try to keep steady.

            When her youngest brother is both fire and ice. When her father makes her mother hysterical. When her twin grows bitter and furious, when her younger brother grows resentful and weary, when her youngest brother becomes nothing to them at all---kept far away by her father’s influence. All she can do is try to keep steady.

    She doesn’t notice the foundation cracking at her feet---not until it shatters. She’s plunged into the ice water that was always just below their feet and forced to try to tread water in the bitter, soaking cold as her mother shatters, too, and her youngest brother suffers for it. They all suffer for it.

                Her youngest brother becomes scarred and her younger brother becomes unforgiving and her twin becomes hateful and her father---her father cannot see that the unrelenting temper he uses to scorch their family down to ashes is thawing the wrecked ice where they once stood, making it harder to salvage, he’s only making things worse, can’t he see that he’s making it worse?

        With her mother gone, there is no warmth left and the cold makes everything harder but she tries, she tries so desperately and with fierce determination to find the most stable cracks in the leftover slabs and sheets of their once-foundation to dig her frost-bitten fingers into and try her hardest to hold everything together. Things are not okay, and things are not good. All she can do is all she’s ever done. All she can do is try to keep things steady.

          And she does try. But her mother couldn’t protect her youngest brother and she can do even less---her twin tries to help, he tries, but where she deflects he confronts, and each fight with their father drives him farther away. She digs her fingers in and she clings and she pulls with all of her might, but in an explosion of flame and fury, things fracture again---

                        ---her twin slips through her fingers, slips out of reach just like her mother had, slips out of her sight and out of her life and she’s left with only half of her heart, an aching hole where her other half had once been.

          Her younger brother slips, too, but he holds as tightly as she does---he wants to stay---he wants to help---but if it’s tearing her apart what will it do to him? If it destroyed her twin and turned him cruel, what will it do to him? If her younger brother stays, like she does---if he sacrifices himself like she does---if he gives and gives and tries to fix what can’t be fixed the way she does, will it be worth it for them all to be miserable?

      Maybe, maybe, maybe, her twin is happier free, wherever he is. Maybe, maybe, maybe, her younger brother will be, too. In the midst of her straining and clinging and attempt to hold things together---she lets go of him.

            Someone should fly far from this place. Someone should be happy. She tells him to go. He goes.

        It’s just her, and her father, and her youngest brother, and she’s still trying to tread water, still trying to keep things steady, but there’s little she can do but worry and hope and try, little she can do but she does all she can anyways, and it’s never enough. She just wants, just once, for it to be enough. She will keep the youngest of them as safe as she can---shield him all she can---aid him all she can---it may be little but it’s there and she can’t, won’t give this effort up.

            And when he gets the chance to go---she doesn’t let go; she pushes. He doesn’t look back, leaves all but at a run, and she thinks, maybe, maybe, maybe, this will be enough. Maybe this will be his freedom, his happiness. It’s just her, and her father, and her frozen, stiff limbs exhausted from trying to keep her afloat in this icy water, but not as exhausted as her mind, as her heart. She still holds onto what she can, steadies what she can, but heaven help her, she’s tired.

    And then---and then her father, her father who demolished the ice that once supported them, her father who spent years all but forcing them under with a hand on this family’s head---suddenly he draws back, stops pushing, throws her a life vest.

        Desperate hope and relief claw up her throat, thick and overwhelming in how they choke her, and her mother says she should take it---she wants to take it, she wants to if her mother says to. She doesn’t want to have to struggle anymore. She doesn’t want to have to try so hard. She wants just once for something to be enough, for the fractured pieces of this family to come back together, she wants to be okay again, wants them all to be okay again.

            But her life is a tale of ice---of slipping, of cracking.

      This facade, too, cracks and she’s reminded that with a father like this, things aren’t okay, with brothers hurt like this, things aren’t good with this man around. This hope, desperate and child-like, slips from her, too, slides across the ice and far from her grip like many hopes in the past.

          She does what she’s always done. She lets go where she needs to. She tries to keep things steady. But someday---someday she will find a way, a way that will be enough.