I read slowly, from the very beginning. I couldn't careless about what Toby had been through. You had always protested for my analytical reading with seriousness and reflection on everything I read. We discussed. Well, mostly you listened, instead of making comments because for my reading materials, you were either unfamiliar with or not interested in at all. You listened only because you cared about me? or perhaps because you simply had not got me (laid)? I was not sure. Or maybe you loved me so dearly that you wanted to protect me from any unhappy thoughts.
"How could a world be so cruel as to force the little, vulnerable ones to the corner like that?"
I admitted that I was a vanilla that lived a sheltered life all those years, in a greenhouse where the temperature was controlled and any disease or harm were under close inspection and segregation. That's exactly why I had a hard time making out how the world, the earthlings could be so fierce and brutal as to feed on people's misery. Toby walked out the house after her parents' miserable deaths. Out of poverty, she's forced the sell her only asset, her youthful body.
On the other side of the receiver, you became grave, impatient, facing my melancholic reflexion and dramatic response to the fiction I read.
"Could you please quit reading those junkies?"
"They are not junkies, they are so-called masterpieces, the nitty-gritty of the reflection and observation of the great minds. It's the essence of realism and it's what the world, society really is. Just because i have not (yet) come across difficult life like that, it doesn't mean that I should be blind, or turn a cold shoulder and be naïve about the existence of human cruelty."
"There's no absolute. It is not like it's either black or white. It's not like relationship, either we are dating or we are not. It's complicated. There's no absolute binaries. What the realism authors depict may be true but those misery might be the focus and magnified so as to have people's attention, for readers like you."
"So misery and absolute misery does exist and corner the poor. You don't deny..."
"I implore you...no no, I FORBID you to read those shit, once and for all...They are not doing you any good, but you are becoming so biased and clouded with all those negative thoughts."
"You are not helping at all. Not helping at all... That's just part of me. That negative part of me, you either take it or leave it..."Our conversation abruptly ended. And there was a week you didn't call. You came to my dorm, a week later, before the curfew. You were intoxicated. It was your plan, I suspected. You knew it's impossible that I left you there. So I hailed a taxi and took you back to your place.
I tucked you in, but you wouldn't let go. It was a déjà vu. You always held my hand so tight that it hurt; you squeezed me affectionally with all your strength when you embraced me, as if you were afraid of losing me once you let loose. Then you demanded that I quit this and that, you dictated with threats. You started to lose your temper out of jealousy.
"I wished you were only mine. Sometimes I fear that I couldn't control myself anymore when I am around you." You accused me and criticized what I dressed that made you wanna gauge out others' eyes so that you could assert your right of possession. You were even surprised at the thought of scarring my pale skinny legs so as to prevent me from wearing those revealing miniskirts.
That's when I decided to leave you even though I loved you so dearly. I can't let anyone own me. That kind of ownership, masochistic and dogmatic tones, obsession with me, and mental attachment were simply unbearable.
Were I to relive the time with you, I wish I'd let you know that I love you for who you are, but I simply can't take what you are.
--For YK, my beloved sister.