Short Story about a Daughter – The Last Conversation
© Anand Vishnu Prakash, YourStoryClub.com
Dear Worrisome-Parent-With-A-Hopelessly-Creative-Child,
The last conversation we ever had was something that went like this.
You: What are you doing?
Me: Writing.
You: Why can’t you grab your subject books and study? It ought to help you better, at least better than the unproductive results of tale spinning.
Me: But I really have to finish this before tomorrow.
You: You can write even after two years, the story will wait…..but your degree won’t. It’s a timely commitment and you can study only now.
Me:
You:
Me:
You:
Me: *Walks away silently and later cries secretly*
There are so many things that I wish you knew, so many things I wish I had said that day, but I let the loudest silence fill in and widen the space between us. However, I pen down my feelings better than talking about them.
Well, first of all, creativity is not a switch. I can’t turn it on and off anytime I like or anytime you tell me to. It just doesn’t work like that, sorry. So, you see, my writing career is just a timely commitment as my degree.
Not writing makes me depressed. And trust me, I don’t like being depressed. I don’t enjoy feeling lost, lonely and unimportant. I just feel so sad and angry all the time and my confidence falls short. I try to break away from it, and try to make other things meaningful, but I can’t. I’m only alive and happy when I’m writing. I live a hundred lives and die a thousand deaths when I’m writing. Fiction gives me the second chance that life denies to.
I write because it makes me happy. I remember telling that to you once and you gave me a very hurting reply. You said ‘If killing makes you happy, would you do it?’
I’m a quite harmless person, trust me. I do sin, but I’m not the devil. And just because I’m not the devil doesn’t mean I’m an angel. I’m just a messed up person, trying to grow up and find a place in this world. Yes, I occasionally screw up but I constantly try to move forward.
The only thing that keeps my heart beating is the fact that I’m making an effort to live up to my purpose. I call it the beat of passion. It’s what keeps me going. It doesn’t matter if you don’t approve of it, it doesn’t matter if I’m not exceptionally good at it and it doesn’t matter if I’m under-appreciated. As long as my heart beats for it, I know I will keep doing it. Let me quote Augustus here. I will not deny myself the simple pleasure of doing happy things. That’s that.
And haven’t you noticed? My grades are pretty normal. Despite everything, I’ve managed to strike a perfect balance between wanting the best of both worlds. I haven’t failed as a student, so I seriously don’t understand why you think writing is going to ruin my life. If at all it did anything, it only gave me courage and helped me improve my task managing skills.
If you say a student in the final year of an engineering degree who takes almost 12 technical tests a day (and manages to pass them all), attends a major networking courses three evenings a week (to pass CCNA and CCNP is a battle in itself), attends as many national conferences as possible, takes up classical dance classes in the weekend and still manages to write just because it makes her happy, is not going to be successful eventually, then I honestly don’t understand your definition of success.
I’m not trying to sound self obsessed here. And if you assume I do, all that I can do is sigh deeply, roll my eyes, walk away and write another article about how annoying it is when you make such irrelevant assumptions about me. I’m not even complaining about the fact that you don’t appreciate me. I just wish you had trusted my abilities. When you don’t trust my winning capacity, it offends to my intelligence. But I’m so over it now. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t trust the gift God has given me.
I trust me.
And that’s all that matters in the end, I guess.
Love,
Girl-Who-Knows-She’s-Going-To-Make-It-Big
__END__
