Page 27 - Demo

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Mum,
You believed that anything achievable required a formula. You taught me the most important formula of all — opportunities were the fuel to the blazing flame of success.
Your goal for me was simple: top grades, Harvard Medical School, a lucrative medical career. You told me I would live a good life, being financially independent and respected.
Little did you know how you shackled me down more than you raised me up to the “door of opportunities”.
Every time the shrill cry of an off-key piano note echoed off the walls, you spat criticisms faster than machine gun bullets. You are slacking. You are losing drive. Other kids are catching up. You told me it was only when I became the best, the world would be my oyster. But mum, I don’t want the world to be my oyster, I just want to live my life...
Every time you caught me looking out the window, as my attention drifted away from my drilling work, you hastily drew the curtains close. You stated with conviction how the playing children’s idleness, unnecessary optimism and mischief would impede their future. Yes, rote drilling is mastery, but it is also misery. I didn’t want those “opportunities”. I hated maths. I hated playing the piano. But you never tried to understand who I was, or what I liked.
In reality, I lost more opportunities, trying to seek the opportunities you wanted for me. I never got to explore my interests, and your constant opprobrium plummeted my self-esteem. At 17, I realised I couldn’t live this life. A life that wasn’t mine.
Poetry hauled me out of my depression. It called me to create my own opportunities, to fuel my own flames.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau