Vanity

I woke up this morning with a major headache and a parched throat. It’s already foreseen the night before, since I’ve had my share of roughened voice and inability to swallow those delicacies I love the most, so I snuggled up under my blanket and told my maid to fetch for my mother when she’s awake. I could barely lift my head. The next thing I knew was my mother lying beside me, checking up if I had a fever—I did, slightly—while my sister had just finished showering and was putting clothes on. I wanted to go to school, really, there’s a physic class which I hate the most and failed miserably and needed badly before the evaluation next week.

I skipped it. It’s only normal for me to. Mother brought up the topic I hate the most; I pretended I was dozing off so she left me on my own devices. Was it so wrong for me to keep avoiding these problems? I’m facing a big thing in front of me, entrance tests over tests over and over again, I can’t afford any failure these days so why should I let these stuff distract me all the time? Since I already have a good share of distraction anyway, including this laptop, I was doing some math problems a couple of minutes ago. Well, now, I’m not as helpless as I was before; I guess my mother’s chicken soup really rejuvenated me. She put a whole lot of pepper in it, just how I like it, and she accompanied me gorging through the breakfast banquet while she answered phone calls with a voice full of authority and rigidity. I sipped the broth; my mother’s a boss indeed. I was eating while reading through some interesting articles in the newspaper when my mother suddenly snapped about some trivial stuff.

I liked the way how big my mother look, how important she was among the pile of works and bustling agendas around her. She was very timid in nature, perhaps, I mean, she cringed when she saw horrible news on the telly, she hates violent movies and all; she likes the soft romantic stuff. She once had a range of Barbara Cartland’s books, but also in the contrary, at the same time she didn’t mind the darker and more violent books. Books. Historical, tragic, romantic books—not romance, but romantic. I think she likes epics—and wouldn’t mind the violence as long as there was this sense of grandiose in it. But she was also quick on her temper. And have I mentioned how I resemble those qualities?

I was a different individual altogether. But they say the apple won’t fell too far from the tree. And although it was my sister that my mother dotes on most of the time, I was more like her than my sister ever was. So there was this irony to realize that we were so much alike and in the same time so different as if we came from different planets. I guessed I was the more romantic here; my mother was more realistic and practical. Or is it because the age gap? That over the years that dreamy girl had gradually changed and become this principal woman—it never crossed my mind to ever asked my mother the minute details of what she has been through in the past that might have contributed on how she was shaped now. Self-precaution, I guess. I, myself, would never want anyone to pry on my business. I will tell when I want to, and it works the same way on my mother. She told me anyway, the censored version. She left out the infuriating details—perhaps in order to protect my innocence which is in fact was already non existent but my mother shan’t know about it—but she stressed on some parts really carefully. About karma, of how all the bad things will caught up and punished those who are wrong and blessed those who have been wronged. T’was a very brutal judgment, how indifferent my mother was when she delivered this knowledge to me.

You see, I live in a sheltered life created by two poor people with simple dream of having a small house on their own and a happy-cartoonish-50s-like family. Well, so far, it’s pretty much like that—with several turbulence—although it might be a bit dysfunctional in the long run since the father had a bloated ego and a selfish sense of rightness—not to mention the horrible choice of vocabulary spurted out in anger which resembles the choice of words of a lowly common thugs, the mother a constricted view of traditional values and trapped in a cycle of hell, the first daughter was a closeted emo with some issues of distorted moral views, and the second daughter had a tough outlook but a very low self-esteem in the inside. But we function normally anyway. And happy too.

Back to topic—if there was any since the beginning. It comes vividly in my mind, the conversation that night about how karma works and how it was realized among the living. It’s not only a fairy tale; stories such as how those who eat the wealth of fatherless children will be doomed in hell. There was hell on earth, with different version for each person, but it did happen. And my parents are the wronged here, so with those people had been punished accordingly, their faith were very much squared. Is it because of my infatuation with the theme of angel of providence, that these events my mother recited had fueled my imagination wild with expectation that there is providence such as that? And my mother—once the dreamer too maybe—touched by the hands of justice, became rigid and somber, no more the fragrant frilly girl, and brought out to the harsh world there is outside. Will it be the same future awaits me? That one day I too will lose all the frivolousness and become the hard-tempered woman? No more vivid imagination and wild expectations—

Floods, in whose more than crystal clarity, Innumerable virgin graces row.

—that was a line I’ve read somewhere. And the flood will be stopped by a dam someday, and I, the dried old maid.

Oh, hush! I’ve been writing nonsense! But I am vain indeed, or craved for attention perhaps, or just want to write? Who are you to judge me and who am I too care your opinion? I will babble as much as I like and some of you will like me still and some will think me an idle brainless fool. We still breathe the same air anyway, so you’re not better than I am and vice versa. The same way with my mother and I. We read the same books, eat the same food, live under the same roof, but live a very different life—past and the future. We only have the present with us. My mother, I, you, us. The question of self existent and how much we are valued on the eyes of others will forever haunt us—or me? It shouldn’t be a bother, a grown up should meddle on a more important things. Even teenagers with tons of angst should think of a more creative way on ending their lives. I meddle with this trivial stuff, with no way to forward or retreat. I’m stuck in the moment and this moment of clarity was blurred with worries and reality. The time of idleness perhaps has come to an end… Well, too bad, really, I was having a nice dream.