A Letter To: Care

We might not be bound by blood, but your support runs thicker than it.

I remember listening to Billie Eilish’s When I Was Older about last year, and my fingers started to dwell on the keyboard, whether to run my thoughts in a cathartic manner or to think of them on a later day, thinking I’d regret to pursue. Here I am about a year later. It said,

“The open sea was my own blood, where the rogue waves I did not see coming. And when none fought by me, he stayed. I’m here now. I thought I’d tell him all the stories from the seven seas when I was a little older. Unfortunately, so was he.

Time can be a ruthless pirate. I was afraid he would never come by. If he would never witness the day I’ll have outlived all my fears. I was afraid he would not be around because time feasts on the living, and I would have to bury his absence, down beneath the deepest trench where it will be alive and well.

I’m glad time is our ally, for now.”

I’m a tiny bit older now, and I’d like to think we are thick as thieves. Most of the time. Where I’ve lost the sense of care and compassion where I refrain from calling for help, somehow you’ve proven it to be wrong. That there is compassion, and that I was worth the worry. Sickness was human, and care was a warm shelter. The things that make me feel like a person do not feel like a scarcity. Even though you don’t run in my veins, you’ve made me feel like a person.

In a man’s man’s world, you somehow understand my hunger for something great. Something greater than what the world wants me to be. Carefully, you nudge me on the track, the roads of the world that isn’t too kind for someone like me. But you let me lead the way, and I even get your loud cheer from behind for it, as if the sky was the highest place I could place my mark on the world. To, not only understand but also accommodate for the fact I can fix my own things, build my own table, ride my own motorbike, to know my priorities in this place and time, and what I strive for in the world, it all means my existence to me.

I could only hope for time to still be a kind ally because I don’t wish to see you all white-haired soon.

Thank you, Papa.