She told me that my father was another man,
well I shrugged my shoulder and say “it’s okay”.
But she didn’t know that I am writing my pain away.
I came to a point of thinking about those fatherless
children who lost theirs in wars, in car crashes…
I am still lucky, and better-off, I got one
whom I can call Dad, but he would rather not.
He told me I am not his son, and he would not talk
nor teach me how to drive cars. I sat down on a corner
and started scribbling my pain away. Maybe I can draw…
And draw myself a car, a house, a tree, the blue sky,
and people smiling under the sun. Until I came to a point
of thinking that I could imagine a world, my happy world.
I could draw as many cars as I would like, and as many fathers
who could teach me how to drive and see how proud I am.
But playmates taunted me it is not all true. They laugh.
They scorn. They tell me how crazy I am to believe.
I just left, not minding, distant and alone. “It’s okay”.
I will just write my pain away. I write good stories
about friends who sit beside you and listen to you.
They, who will never doubt how good the story was.
But some books I read say otherwise. There were lessons
which say do this and do that. I believed it was. That
I should never be a pauper begging for affection.
That I should be headstrong. That I should be honest.
And genuine. That good people will go to heaven. I did
believe in truth and desperately seeking it all my life.
But I was mocked and I stand bruised and wounded.
They say I am too much. They say I am brash.
They say I am too frank. They say I intrude.
They call me names. It’s like big boys and big girls
saying that I should go away. They don’t need me.
And then again, I isolate and pick a pen, scribbling…
And I am writing my pain away. And this blank space
is sure and will not reject me like most people did.
No matter how fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
friends and even if the world will turn against me
and continue to restrain their hand in extending love.
I would teach myself loving without taking, understanding
that my heart is rich and I have much more to give.
I could belong like my ink being absorbed by the paper,
without condition. Just pure distill of my thoughts.
I could somehow say that I found a home to myself
after all. With the pain I’ve been through, I am
still here writing my pain away. I am not alone.
Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
