Storyteller

If a misogynist and a princess were to produce a child, would this be a recipe for success or a recipe for failure? With the blood of these two extremists running through my veins, apparently this combination isn’t as bad as it may sound. However, Van Gogh was an extremist, and so was Syliva Plath – Van Gogh cut off his ear...and Plath stuck her head in an oven. Perhaps It’s no wonder that some might interpret the word extreme as a prerequisite for insanity. It’s almost like the exact opposite of a euphemism.

“Thinking too much should be interpreted as a gift” was what I said yesterday. Perhaps the word I was looking for was “curse,” rather. With this in mind, why does a person who is extremely analytical fail miserably when hurdling through life? Being guileless leaves room for this endless creation of euphemisms. Being sensitive leaves room for your imagination to run wild.

If for every individual on earth, there is one story which encapsulates their entire personality, then mine is a story which involves fish. There’s a game children play in the markets in Taiwan, a fishing game where tiny baby fish are placed in small pools of water and fished out by children – for a prize. As a five year old, I refused to take part in this game, no matter how much adult persuasion was involved. “You used to say this game was cruel and thoughtless” my aunty told me as we wandered through the labyrinths of the market, “While the other children were laughing and playing, you were too busy contemplating upon how the baby fish might feel.”

I’ve heard that the words “second” and “chance” apparently do not belong in the same sentence. So is this what my life has come down to, to this day – the loss of a chance to be a carefree spirit? I simply want to be compassionate, thoughtful and giving – except I find myself pivoting from overly analytical to overly sensitive. I simply want to fall, and know that someone will be there to catch me, carry me, and then fall down with him – except where is my knight in shining armour? I simply wanted to play and laugh, and win the soft toy prize – except I was faced with the cyclical nature of cause and effect for the first time. Now am I am left in a state of reverie. If I just listened to the adults and enjoyed that fishing game, perhaps I would have turned into the exact opposite of how I am today, an extremist of another kind. Unfortunately right now, I am left at being extremely sensitive, and as childish as it may seem, I will continue equating this as a gift rather than a curse, in the hopes that my second chance is still yet to come.