death and the penguin

my goal has always been the most banal: to make my parents proud.


today i saw the feasibility of me actually making my dad and mom proud of me is close to zero


today my mom asked me what vodka is, and she took a long, erratic way to get to the point and finally asked me, "have you been drinking?"

from this point onwards i knew nothing i tried to say would ever make sense to her, everything i was putting forward would sound sinfully dogmatic, unequivocally wrong and irrelevant to her, just like other poor excuses that plead to be set free. i rarely if ever try to give dubious excuse to my parents, for what i do almost always align pretty neatly with our moral/religion standards. i strove for better grades, i never skipped school, i didn't do nonsense and i obeyed all the school rules. i participated actively in an organisation of foreign students, i continuously make friends with a lot of people and know enough of the limits of each friendship i've been keeping.

i knew this moment would come, a matter serious enough for her to show a streak of disappointment in her voice. it was very obvious there. the voice staggered while finding its way out. it was swaying uncomfortably here and there, each time it almost tumbled down or burst out. it was all mean things that i had expected to come out of her throat, an absolute truth she had been clinging to. she of course believed that logic is inferior, limited and invalid when trying to explain our religion.

moreover i've never been good at spoonfeeding people about what i think through a verbal approach, everything seems out of place/order and i will wonder myself, "what the heck am i talking about?" while sipping at my tea. people who are close to me know well what i think of alcohol, what i use it for, what used to be my perspective and what has changed it

but it's all pointless in the eyes of my mom and dad

not to mention that what i love to do, things i slightly excel at: writing and designing have never meant anything to my parents

i think, when it's clear that your only goal in the world (ie making my parents proud in my case) can never be accomplished, what's the use of carrying on

i might as well die right now

and finally see what truth is lying there, beneath the sheer curtain of perceptible life.

have i been wrong, or have my parents been wrong, or will the atheists win, or will the truth of afterlife branch and shape according to what each individual believes, or is there any other alternative answer to all this?

how could you know, really, if you've never tasted a dip of this curious thing called death.