being alive
Yael-Louise Dekel
My childhood was a painted picture of sun-dipped sky and rolling green fields that blurred into the horizon. It tasted of sharp berries and smelt of sour linen. My family lived in a cabin in the countryside but I lived in my mother’s arms. They were so delicate but strong, her red hair falling around me like a curtain; partitioning me from the world.
Childhood was simple. The borders of my village were the furthest my troubles went and monsters only lived in the pages of books. Every day was a waking dream of stumbling races and muddy knees. And every day followed the other unprecedented, a blank clean slate untainted by the past.
My village was archaic, dying cabins housing dying farmers with dying traditions. There weren’t many children but me and the other boys; boys of butchers and peddlers and sellers, formed our own tribe. There was Jack with a mop of brown hair and a missing tooth. Or Pedro with his pondering eyes and nails clogged with dirt.
They called us wild. I suppose we were. Tree and terrains formed our playgrounds and fights broke out as easily as sudden laughter. After all, the only sufficient knowledge a boy needs to have is that dogs bite hard, ringing bells means supper and that dusk bleeds into dawn.
Liberated from the constraints of society, we would bound into the woods, deeper and deeper until we found a lake which, with a ripping yell, we would leap into all at once.
My most vivid memories from boyhood centre around that lake; that water sparkling crisply, the sounds of our shrieks breaking into the outcry from birds. The shock of cold water against sweating skin would wake every pore in my body and my bare feet would hit the sinking muddy bottom.
As we submerged, time would suspend, movements slowing as bubbles rose around us.
I am drowning. I am living. I am living. I am drowning.
For an eternity or a second (both felt the same), we would suspend, squatted, and then be propelled back out into gasping air.
We should have known that it wouldn’t last forever. Yet, even under the best circumstances, there’s something so tragic about growing up; to have your perspective on the people and life around you change. To always struggle to reach a mirror only to one day find yourself tall enough to see your reflection.
And find, a different person staring back out at you.
Yael-Louise Dekel is an aspiring British novelist. She's an ongoing contributor to the online magazine, 'Whisperings of Anna' and is in the process of developing a fiction manuscript for publication.