#ami j

I spent the weekend doing a various number of things. A little Magic the Gathering. A little reading. Some campaign building, but mostly, I spent the weekend working on the card game I was creating. Specifically, I was building the layout and artwork. It was exciting enough, but I still need to play test the damn thing. Let me tell you this, it’s not easy building a game, especially when you’re mostly cut off from the any online access. So I usually get as many references I can on the Friday before the weekend at the office. It’s always good to plan ahead. I use to hate planning. I was once a ‘I’ll roll with it kind of dude’ a long ways back. But planning has its perks, I suppose. I get to see how much I can accomplish in the time allotted. Kind of like a game where the objective is to finish as many tasks a possible and win.

The only problem is, I care nothing for winning. Never did. Then I remember those times back in the university days where I’d be playing Winning Eleven (also known as Pro Evolution Soccer to some), always losing and not caring at all. Back then I didn’t really know why that was so, me not giving a damn whether I won or lost, which then forwarded me to another memory of someone (okay, a friend of mine) asking me why I’m not assertive enough. 

That question set me back to the root issue of being alienated during the high school years for having a prolific vocabulary in English and being made as a joke to both friends and family. So I adapted. Learned whatever little Malay I could and adopted a northern accent. That was my mistake. In trying to adapt and avoid the bullshit that people (whether knowing or unknowing), I gave up the part of me that was unique, beautiful and therefore made me the individual. I could stand up from the rest in a single faculty and that would have led me to a destiny less confusing than the path I have taken now. I suppressed, no, not suppressed, murdered that part of myself and with it a destiny unfulfilled. And in those days of my youth, I was only half of what I truly was. I tried to fill the empty half with an assortment of things. A great many did not stick, some were good, but the worse ones remained the longest.

There were no others to blame other than myself. I made a decision, to limit my potential and allow others to dictate my being. I was weak. I still am in some ways, but the strength in me, the will would rise again.  

It wasn’t until years later that I managed to unearth that part of me, but the cost of such a exhumation meant the loss of the creative cogito my mind once had. World building, plot and character development. Skills that have left me entirely, but the language, the words, those were what remained. I remembered Byron, Tennyson, and Poe. I remembered once more the old friends of my childhood; of Peter Rabbit and Seuss. They were my inspiration, my joy. 

And now, as I sat down in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, scribbling words, frantic because the magnificence of the dream I had would make for a wonderful chapter, I then knew what I was. A creator. Of worlds, of plot and life and love and misery and sorrow. I who can bring the exponential rise of joy and thus manifest forth its entropy. Oh, what a wonderful feeling it was. I was, in that moment, happy. No, happy could not best explain it. Jubilant. No. Exhilarated. Charged, maybe? No. I’m sure there’s a word for it. But I was that, in a state where I could feel the many variations of me, consolidating into a single being. I felt whole again. I smiled the true smile once again.

That was years ago and my skills have returned, though I still require further practice. Like all other things. My mind returns to the task at hand, the card game. I see it. The formations of all that I could do with this game, there right in front of me. My mind levitated the cards and made its way to the game play I had set forth. I saw, in those cards, the tales that needed to be told. That was a fun afternoon. And I remember, this is who I am.

Sitting around at my auntie’s house in a kind of, sort of wake for my late uncle and I see so many of my cousin’s children running around and having fun. I mean, my uncle’s passed and that’s sad and I really did like him and all, but to hear the laughter of my little nephews and nieces lightened my heart. Thinking to myself of how much I’d love to have kids. I want that full experience; of having to wake in the middle of the night to feed, change or coo (heck, maybe all three) my child to sleep. I’d be the one to call dibs because that’s how much I really want kids. Being sleep deprived (I’m already there) and requiring several cups of coffee to just keep up with the day to day. And the expenses, forget about it! There goes money down that proverbial drain. I can’t wait. Why would I put myself through that, I thought. The answers actually very simple.

BECAUSE I WANT TO. BECAUSE I CHOOSE TO.

Its a choice I’ve made for a long while now. I want to be there for them. For every waking moment, nightmare, story-time, mishap, sad, happy and everything else in between. To help them not just grow and learn but to give the chance for them to find themselves and be the kind of persons they’d chose to be.  They’re not just my progeny or legacy (because, let’s be honest here, legacies are for insecure dead people) but rather the people they want to be and maybe, it’ll make all the difference. 

Mistakes. Of course I’m going to make mistakes. Heck, sometimes I’ll say the wrong things. That does not mean I walk away from the idea. In this world, this life that I have lived, often enough I have chosen to help people without regard of whether the benefit it would bring. Often enough, I get screwed over or laughed at and people call me a chump, a fool and what not. I still try to do good by others. Admittedly, I fail and lose my cool sometimes. Sometimes I can be a little selfish. But that’s human nature. All I have done to make myself into the person I am (or rather working to be), is so that I can be a good father to my kids one day.

 As I sat, contemplating the world I wished to have, reality sank in and I realize that the romance of being a father is that in itself. A dream that forks between the ideals and the harsh reality that this life has given me. I sighed on that couch, thinking too much about something that hasn’t come to be.