It was the first time I ever saw Ma smile. Actually smile. The smile that spread from your lips up to your nose and eyes and finally to your ears, causing it to tingle. She smiles so beautifully that a portrait of her smiling face would have been much more valuable to me than the Monalisa. But as quickly as her smile came, it left. I wanted to pull at her face so the smile could come back, or say something funny so that her lips would curve upwards again. But I knew that none of these things would bring that smile back. Only Dan. If Dan's lifeless picture could bring such an earthy smile to Ma's face, how much more the full fleshed lively Dan, with air flowing in and out of his body, with bated breath from running across the fields, with a smoky breath from taking a wrap of "the angels". How much more will all these breaths of Dan spread a million smiles across Ma's face? I was past being jealous of my elder brother who had all the love I had ever craved from Ma and more. I was past praying to God to take Dan far away from home so that for once, Ma could dote on me. I was past striving to maintain As in class in order to get Ma to pat me on the head and call me a star. I was past all these things because regardless of the past, present and future inadequacies of Dan, he would always have the warm, tender love of Ma. The love that made her stay up all night in wait for Dan whenever he failed to return home before 12am. The love that made Ma stop going to the Methodist church because Dan said they were all hypocrites for condemning pre marital sex. The love that made Ma hit Dad with a club when he whipped Dan for crashing his car. The love that made Ma pour hot water on my arms when I flung a chair at Dan for stealing my savings. Someone once said " to love someone is to misunderstand that person in your own way". I had never thought love to be a form of madness until I realised through each incident the lengths Ma was willing to go through for the sake of Dan. I felt ashamed for having once desired to be loved by Ma. I loathed myself for longing for insanity. Because that was what Ma's outward display of love for Dan looked like. For the 21 years of my life, I have continually found myself involuntarily sinking in a subconsciousness, a hollowness, an emptiness. The feeling is indescribable to me. It does not nudge at my heart so greatly that I can call it bitterness, nor does it wreck my mind so fiercely that I can identify it as anger. I also cannot necessarily blame my family for this, after all we are individuals living singular lives of our own. I can also not blame fate, because some people have successfully turned their fate to favour them. I so desperately want to blame something, someone, just so I can feel innocent and completely undeserving of the sadness I find myself in everyday. Maybe it is Dan. Maybe he is more than family, maybe he is bad blood that needs to be purified. Or destroyed.
What are stories? What is the truth? What is the essence of the truth being uncovered? Stories are fragments of what we once were and will most likely never be. The truth is an entity that does not exist in the present and cannot change your circumstance. So then, why do we chase stories? Why do we pursue after those truths that cannot and will not add even an ounce of relief to our lives? Why then do we act all righteous, chasing the meaningless things and holding not just ourselves down in the midst of it, but unsuspecting people around us? Do we want to hide our pain in these stories that no longer exist? Or do we long for the peace that will never come from the banal truth? I am what I am today, not because of a story, but because I am new everyday and allow new things to seep into my being and make me fresh for the world.