As a child I lived a carefree life full of colours, fruits, all various kinds of drinks or foods I could want for. I had, of course, some foods I wasnβt particularly fond of, but all in all I could in theory eat what I wanted. That changed dramatically one freezing winter’s night deep in the Finnish forests. I was 10, my family touring and I tagged along being my usual weird, but happy-go-lucky self. We stayed with a very nice family and I went to school there as the rest of my family played concerts and rehearsed etc. It was a jolly good time filled with ice-hockey, snowball fights and trying to learn Finnish.
Little did I know that the winter adventure would take a sudden and horrible turn for the worse. It was a particularly cold and dark night. It pushed close to minus 30 degrees and the wind was getting stronger. Inside we had a warm fire going, we were making dinner and the talk went easy and freely. I was in charge of the fruit salad and was eagerly chopping away grapes, bananas, kiwis, oranges and last, but not least, apples.
I remember it started with some mild itching on my skin. What a weird thing. There were no bugs, I didnβt have any issues with eczema or similar, and got more and more curious as the itching got worse. It wasnβt until I scratched my eyes that the real problem started. Suddenly my eyelids started swelling, my eyes felt as if they were on fire and a horrible itch spread around my eyes. I was having an allergic reaction to something! I was thrown outside in the snow to cool down the swelling and relieve the itching. It worked somewhat, and my sight came back, though it still itched a lot.
After some time, most of my symptoms had resided, and I was able to join the rest for dinner again. Everything went smooth until the fruit salad came along. I started eating, and my throat started to itch something fiercely, and it started to close up. I panicked, and again I had to go out in the snow and try to cool down. It was far to the nearest hospital and I would have a serious problem should my throat close all the way. The swelling eased up eventually and the danger had passed. But something inside of me had changed. Something I had been able to eat once was now trying to off me.
A few weeks later, we discovered the culprit: apples. The sweet, sour, crunchy and tasty fruit – that grew plentiful around my childhood home – had decided to appoint me its enemy and to kill me.
Something inside of me died that year. I had to always stay vigilant to what I ate and drank in case it would contain apples of some kind. Every drink, foods, soaps could possibly try to snuff me out of my existence.
I grew solemn, dark, and my life seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, and so did my wardrobe. As if a way to show my grief and gloom, my wardrobe started to change. Gone were the days of colourful shirts, pants and socks. Black and dark grey was suddenly the chosen hue I dressed in. Still, to this day, I canβt tell my clothes from one another. I open my closet and a wall of blackness meets meβ¦
