A misdiagnosis

I always wonder what would my high school life be like if I haven’t been misdiagnosed as asthma and forced to give all my cats away. It was not until a health check years later that my family found out that I have been misdiagnosed. It was never asthma but a small issue with my respiratory system.

For my parents, they fantasized that cat hair is in my trachea, in my lungs, in my other organs. They were obsessed with the idea that my cats’ made me sick. Yet, this obsession blinded them from the hidden, however more severe issue-my depressive disorder. 

Though fantasized by my parents, fictitious cat hair in me did slowly became a inner pain clogged in my lungs. Yet I managed to cough the pain out of me. In my hand, the imaginary enemy , cat hair, finally revealed itself. Through the mechanical movements of felting, pining the needle as if I was injecting my pain , I turned the once enemy into protection. I am free, as I embraced myself wearing the masks made of painful memories, as I shook hands with this new identity of me.