#ackerlag writes

now, staring into the diminishing digits of my bank account, i realize that problems truly are forever. i've faced this same demon a month ago, half a year ago, a year ago with the same trepidation and dread i do now.

when i was four, my father quitted his job to start a new business. it was a part of the seas none of us had ever stepped into before, let alone me — i was four — nor my sister who was just born. i remember my mother telling me that we'd be wearing our belts tighter from now on and i remember nodding to her words, not really understanding what was going on. together and armed with a goal, they stopped fighting so much over silly little grown-up things i didn't understand and began moving together to a common goal. it made them strong and resilient even as waves and waves of unexpected things crashed on their shores. by the time i was nine, the boat that was rocked in the storms started moving more stably and daily sunshines as we sailed became something i could appreciate more.

now i am twenty four. i understand myself when i sit under the dim light of my rented place that i have to tighten my belt more. this is just what sailors do — i would tell myself, late at night — we get ready to face the monsters and the horrors of the sea this way. but the days stretch longer and longer and the nights drive me crazy. waves kept coming to shake my ship and i'm all alone in this wooden vessel this time, keeping myself afloat and struggling to not be blown away too far off course when the wind hits particularly hard. my mother, my father, my baby sister — none of them helps me weight down this ship, they're elsewhere, on another ship i call home — though the way the plank creaks beneath my feet and the way it sways throughout the night now feel unfamiliar.

thin blue light washes you out. it makes your eyebags look as heavy as your limbs, exhausted and dragged down by the weight of the 12 hour shift you left behind.

the little table we have is barely a dining table — though you insist to call it so since we always eat on it anyway. today's meal includes stir-fry veggies with rice, since grains and greens are the only thing left in our pantry and in the fridge. the plates are wiped clean without a single cut leftover, only a smear of oil clinging to the surface. and still, my stomach groans, demanding, the pains of growing.

the humble milk tea made with our last drops of milk for the month cooled already. mine is empty, the pink mug with a crackkling line down its sides nestled patiently in my hands, but yours for sure hasn't been touched. your eyes still do not leave the screen, tracing over the words there.

the very words i painstakingly put together, bit by bit like a child's first try with wooden building blocks. one upon another, slotting into a huge mechanism that runs across the hills and propels itself into the blue sky. a reach towards higher, better things — an attempt to catch a world where your smile doesn't have to be tinged with regret. the screen blinks, the light flickering, as you turn the page and again and then again — and i can just tell that you're reaching the part where yoah finally pulled out the sword stuck within the crystals, a feat short of a miracle.

"yoah," your voice sounds raspy, wet around the edges. "yoah is my favorite character." featherlight, in a way that betrays your swirling heart. in the blink of an eye, the person in front of me isn't you, tired, bruised and blue by the endless pushing of the world's most selfish insistence, but you, a peaceful smile still as crescent moons on clear nights, the very person who loved telling me to read and read again, you, whose world expands when you flip a page, you, who used to smell like the fairytale tomes you read to me before bed.

and i can't help but smile back. the innate satisfaction of being seen and perceived by someone i hold dear, the guiding star of my darkest days, much as you tell me i am your brightest lighthouse that brings you home.

"i'm glad. yoah is my favorite too — i wrote them thinking of you."

the front door is brown. and the walls inside are a dry beige. your mother insisted that soft neutral colors look good for interior, but you never saw eye to eye with her about home aesthetics. the coat rack is thankfully black. the coat you use everyday is grey — although at the rate it's going, you won't be surprised if it's more the color of dust and the real grey of the material.

the office is half a city away and you commute everyday at five twenty, coming back just shy after nine. the grey coat is like a protective armor with a lot of history. your brother had a phase in highschool when he thought fashion was the only way of self-expression that was ever valid and bought a whole sewing machine. his first result, the fabrics from god-knows-where, is this battered grey coat. it's downright horrendous, worn and torn at the edges thanks to the amateur handicraft and the everyday use. the red lining on it clashes horribly against the base color — he said once it was a symbolism of one's immense passion rebelling against the system that forces everyone into molds and turns people into copies of robots, robots into copies of people. you've used this coat everyday for two years since you started working at the office.

your current job pays well. well enough to put food on the table. well, that's a lie. your mother puts the food on the table. your father passed away two years ago. your mother still cooks the same dishes she's always cooked, places the food atop of the same cracked ceramic plates she's always had, tells the same anecdotes of her sweet youth and your father's hardships through his life as she's always done. but you're the one who wins the bread to be cooked into toast every morning, even if your mother is the one who has to turn on the toaster and wash the dishes after you've gone off to work, even if your brother mourns and mourns and coops himself up in his room, ladden with grief, and your sister is too young to understand anything. in this sense, your current job pays well — well enough your mother doesn't have to look for another fulltime job, although she does take up knitting to sell some scarves, and well enough someone always has some time to place the dinner plate in front of your brother's door and well enough your sister can still grin a toothy smile everytime you buy her a new toy for christmas and tell her santa thinks she's a good child.

well enough for you to buy another coat.

it's hard to pinpoint why exactly you haven't bought one. on the online shopping platform you use nowadays, everything is cheaper when you know the tricks. soap and shampoo, frying oil, a new vacuum cleaners when the old one broke, canned tuna your sister maybe likes too much to be healthy, the tote bag you got for your best friend's birthday last january, the yarns for your mother. coupons, vouchers, discounts, sales, promotions — everything can be a trick utilized when you're in need or it can all also be a trick used on you, the needy. you've scrolled through dozens of coat options, all grey, without red linings and varying degrees less ugly than your current one. every time, your thumb hovers over the little cart icon and you hit the back button on your scratched phone screen.

there are other important things you could get instead. your shoulders sag with weight and your mind clears.

there are still other bills you need to pay. you go over the numbers when you wake up in the morning and once again when you're about to sleep in the night.

there are two siblings, one who still needs his time to slowly rise out of his cocoon, another one who is barely a budding sprout, a mere seed. there is one mother, smile lines visible and skin starting to dull, too old to be selling her soul to keep strangers warm in the winter.