Under My Own Steam

In the very last sentence that we exchanged, my dad hurled that “d”-word, finally. Those words penetrated my eardrum and echoed in my mind while I racked my brains, trying to figure out what to make out of the hostile situation. I smirked, with a bit of nonchalance. All that I suspected about how he felt about me since my great rebellion five years ago was confirmed true.

“Disappoint”, he said of my latest complicity to him. Truthfully, it was a meaningless word for which I had developed an emotional immunity. For I had broken too many hearts; I had crushed too many expectations. 

His glances – emanating disdain – during that past few months, which he reserved exclusively for the unschooled kid, foreshadowed the drama last night. Just what did I do? I did not kill or steal. Nor I get addicted to gaming, do drugs, or patronized bars in downtown. All I did was to postpone my college education to engage in some personal pursuits. Was this such an unaccepted decision? Apparently so for an educationist who lectures chemistry in a local university. 

He hates to be home, he said in that fateful no-holds-barred conversation, because of my constant presence at home. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it invites comparison between his under accomplished son and the neighbour’s son who was of the same age and currently in university and thus had way more social mobility, and that his self-worth is somehow tied to my advancement on the social ladder. Or perhaps is it a reminder of his frail authority and his utter failure and inability to assert his demands and orders on me.

Disappoint? Did I disappoint him? I think not. His expectations on me disappointed him. He should not have any of those. In a huff, I wanted to tell him that.

Five years ago in the same car, we engaged in a similar hostile episode. I was a Form 4/Grade 10 student, apparently struggling academically. Bad grades wasn’t the issue; topping the academic chart a year ago and emerging with red marks on the transcript the following year was. I was the fallen angel, but I did not feel an iota of guilt. I had completely lost the faith in the education system. I resisted against his demands of my academic performance. Since then, everything seemed to be couched in reference to the “inveterate disappointment” that he claimed I was. This is the very same man who warned me against spending time on a competition which I “will not win”; a competition which I eventually got a national recognition of sort. This is also the man who thought I was kidding when I was recruited to play the piano at some of the finest hotels in my city and at a billionaire’s party, who thinks it is fucking silly and meaningless to summon the courage to play the violin on a busy street in the central business district.

I feel like an island. An emptiness stemmed from my lack of support system. Thanks to that, I feel more like an individual, away from the collectivism that he so fondly champion for, albeit subtly. I don’t need support, for I had my own beliefs and faith to buoy me through adversity. I certainly do not need people to tell me what I can and cannot do.

I really wanted to tell him those. But prudence warned me against intruding the state of torpor in the car, for I could exarcebated an already muggy situation. The dreaded realization that my current survival is on his hands, held me back. I am incapable, financially, of getting a home of my own, feeding myself, getting myself items that I have always wanted. I am in no position to negotiate and take an active role in this argument. I had violated a social contract – my survival is ensured, but I had not, and will never succumb to his authority. 

Slowly, and surely, I will secede myself from him and his money. Already, I am paying my extremely expensive violin and jazz piano classes on my own. I have stopped asking for a new violin despite the embarassment of having the cheapest violin among my orchestra friends. I have stopped asking for a new computer and a saxophone. Someday, very very soon, I will not need a single penny of his.

I will equip myself with skills and knowledge for utilization on the day I become fully independent. I am going to accomplish great things that I’ve always wanted. I will search for the vindication of all my decisions that he ridiculed. I will prove him wrong about the things which he thinks I am incapable of. I will sidestep all obstacles. And I will climb, conscientiously, altitudes after altitudes on the ladder, to the pinnacle of all the things that I do. I really will.

Without Mast and Oars

I feel like I was drifting on a wooden raft in the vast open sea. In the specter of not accomplishing anything at all within this twinkling lifetime of mine and not being able to enjoy the gratification striking through the items on my things-to-do-before-I-die list one after another, I suffered an inexplicable inner spasm and apprehension, tinged with despair.

My preoccupation occurred as I contemplated my intended relocation to another city in a year’s time as I am resolutely convinced that the present city that I called home is unable to provide me with the necessary personal growth I needed to hike to the pinnacle. Unless, of course, if there was a political change in the city government yesterday, which I don’t recall seeing it on the news today. Another reason to despair. 

I realized I had all the while – blithely – ignored the intricacies and challenges that I have to undergo to attain everything that I had dream of. I had visualized the end, but never the means. I saw the peak of the mountain, but I have never traverse the beast-infested thick dense jungle footing the mountain. 

Why did I even – expectantly and clumsily, not to mention hastily – think I could make it to the peak? Perhaps because it was much easier, it feels much better. My fears were not that of dreaming big, but my inability to see the means to my end, that I am currently at the brink of being overwhelmed by the necessity to re-evaluate and faulty assumptions of what I am capable of, which I have vehemently refused to do. Because somewhere in a remote corner within my bosom, I still believe dreams are possible. Just a little. 

But right now, here I am, without mast and oars, on a small wooden raft in the vast open sea, with one iota of faith keeping me from plunging into the torrents of blue waters. Unsure, uncertain, crestfallen; staring at the same old horizon not unlike the monotonous fabric of life’s tapestry, still searching, still thinking.