Metamorphosis into a Parkinsect

In Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself turned into an insect; it is a wonderful evocation of the anxiety of change and disease.

What is Parkinson’s turning me into? Am I forming a hard exoskeleton as I become more rigid in my movement or is my shuffling walk an insect-like scuttling? Like Samsa, I am being separated from my former self by an unstoppable, progressive process and it is this receding into the past of my hopes and expectations of a now false future that is the true loss of my metamorphosis. It’s this loss that allows the space for fear of the future and it is fear that is the main driving force of my insectness as I scurry from place to place, fearful of the shadows of prognosis. But these shadows are portends of nothing real, just one fearful perception of a non-existent future.

So my metamorphosis is fear manifest, which is distorting my expectations of a future; but my future as a person and a disease is currently unwritten and I am holding the pen, even if my Parkinson’s chooses the size of the piece of paper.