Nala Cyriac
Mr. Cohen
ENG3U
November 25th 2024
Chapter 2
For as long as I can remember, my mother has always treated me like the boy Alex. So I guess that's who I am, but not really. I mean, it’s not who I have ever really felt like. I think I’ve always been a girl (mentally at least, even if my body and I aren’t on the same page) but that’s not how my mother sees it.
Among the extracts I remember from her old diaries, this, I remember vividly: Liam, Jack, William. These names, in a row, separated on the ancient, faded lines of her book. Boys, Alex thinks in his best impression of that somber, condescending nod you see in movies. He’s soooo smart.
I guess when she found out, she picked the most basic gender-neutral name she could think of. Alex.
How creative.
She must have raised me as a boy as some kind of wish fulfilment.
Now we’re thinking, “Ooh! Hurry! You better cage that up, your narcissism is showing. Can’t have the whole world think you’re forcing this on me, now would you?”
Whelp… the secrets’ out. Hooray?
To be honest, it’s confusing. I don’t know how to feel.
We are outside, under the oak, the wind whistles gently against my back as autumn pushes leaves from their branches and gently guides them to the ground. The fall of something beautiful: is that what my mother thinks is happening to me? The death of her beautiful son. If anything, I think I'm more like one of those caterpillars that you can’t tell what kind of butterfly they will become until they undergo metamorphosis. And this house, Alex thinks, must be my chrysalis.
Does that mean I have to break free in order to be my true self?
Damn, I better get on that.
That’s stupid, thinks Alex; where would you even go? Thing is, he’s right. I don’t know where exactly I would go but I suppose anywhere is better than here.
Disregarding the warnings, my mind races to formulate a plan. My room is on the second story, and a fall from that height would be fatal. Splat. I cannot end up looking like a pancake after a failed runaway attempt, that would be humiliating. Luckily, my mom has spin class on Wednesdays from four until five: right after school, perfect! I can leave through the front door or main story window then.
She says fitness keeps her young. Yeah, because that’s worked out so well.
I recall her grey roots with a scoff.
I roll my eyes.
Now he’s asking questions. “How would you take your things? Where would you go?” The way Alex says this makes my blood boil. It’s like he thinks I’m devoid of logic. This is stupid, just stay home. You can put up with her self-obsessed crap like everyone else with narcissistic parents does.
No. I refuse to remain in this disingenuous persona that she has created for me. It is time to be the true me: the real Alex.
And to do that, I have to leave.
I can feel the other half of me shrink away, muttering about this nonsensical plan. I let him go. After all, it’s not him who has been suppressed for all these years.
Reflection
In my adaptation of Alex is Well by Alyssa Brugman, I wanted to highlight the two opposing sides of Alex’s personality and how this might affect her decision making. I did this by establishing communication between them early on and when faced with the decision to run away, the inner dialogue between them indicates the differences in their characterization and how they view one another. When Alex says, “It’s like he thinks I’m devoid of logic” it reveals the sensitive side of her that reads into their conversations and picks out potential judgment. Additionally, it establishes the other side as the logical side, trying to keep her safe, even if it doesn’t prioritize her emotional needs.
The other aspect that I wanted to emphasise in my writing was the disconnect that Alex feels to the male identity constructed by her mother. Through noting the extended duration of her mother’s obsession with boys, it shows the reasons why she may have chosen to raise Alex as male and why she would have such a hard time accepting her female identity. In the metaphor about falling autumn leaves, it shows how Alex thinks her mother might view the situation as “the fall of something beautiful” compared to her own thoughts on the matter. “I think I'm more like one of those caterpillars that you can’t tell what kind of butterfly they will become until they undergo metamorphosis.” This is not only a metaphor for being intersex, but it also shows that assumptions may not always be accurate. While Alex’s narration can be unreliable at times due to its nature rooted in stream of consciousness, having her recall her mother’s journal entries subtly provides the reader with perspective on her mother’s unethical rationale. Including this subversive use of the unreliable narrator is something that Brugman would have been familiar with considering that she specialised in the unreliable narrator at Canberra University and thus would have been able to exploit this tool to provide information to the reader.
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