once upon a time there was a guy.
i say he’s a guy because i think it takes more than that for a person to be a man.
but he’s definitely not a boy, so yeah, he’s a guy.
.
he grew up as a street-smart guy. the kind who kinda knows everything there is to know about things.
and so life was good. he had a job, some opportunities to develop and grow, end up in great places, and got married to the one he wanted to marry. (although she didn’t).
.
(she didn’t get married to the one she wanted to marry. because he wasn’t the one she wanted. to marry).
but he married her anyway and so yeah, at least he got what he wanted in the end.
.
and then they had children.
lots of them.
and the children grew up.
and so now he has an up-sized family.
he has a wife and children who prays for him. watch his back. clean up his mess. fix his problems. listen to his shit.
while his children are growing older, they can’t fit into small cars anymore, and the food and utility bills are a little straining, but hey, it seems they managed themselves pretty well.
they don’t demand for things, they don’t always ask for money when it’s unnecessary, they don’t even wonder aloud “why can’t i have what my friends have?”
they studied hard, performed at least above the average line, and they don’t really go out and stray. they listened well and they knew that they couldn’t just walk out and be a kid and chill and hang out and spend money and grow through adolescents like any other unhampered young child.
because they know the kind of situation they are in and honestly the family can’t afford that.
because they know how difficult it would be for the family (for their parents) if they just lived selfishly and recklessly.
because these children know what loyalty is.
they know where their priorities lie.
and it’s in the family.
.
that guy, who’s the father of these children soon became older and wearier.
he could have just been an older and wearier but happier man, but he wasn’t.
apparently to him, having a good family who looks after you and looks out for you isn’t enough.
he didn’t feel happy having a financial strain. he didn’t act like he was happy. didn’t even pretend that he was happy. that he has them.
his actions show that the valuable people that makes up a family and a home, his home, his team, his pack, was not worth the financial strain. at all.
he wants to be able to spend less on them and have more comfort for himself.
he wants to be able to have more than enough money but not having to actually work more than what he’s done for it. which is basically, not that much.
he who used to do more a few years back, became someone who wanted to do less and less but still wanting so much more in return.
but since that seemed nearly impossible, he began to shift the blame and burden to his children.
that they should have used less and spent less so that he doesn’t have to pay more.
it’s like tying your feet and binding them tight so that they won’t grow out of their initial size for you to have small feet forever.
of course some people can live with that.
but some people don’t.
can’t.
won’t.
and when things are at the apex of a collision,
no one knows who or what can save this family from the point of breaking down
.
so finally, the blame game became the obligation game.
the children has to become the pawns and do well so that the father can live well and have his own sweet comfort that he has been yearning for since years ago.
he wants to sit back and relax already, even when some of his children haven’t even finished school.
but like it has always been, he always somehow gets what he wanted in the end.
like i said, the children knew where their loyalties and priorities lie.
but their father didn’t.
he has yet to grasp the sense of loyalty, duty and responsibility for him to leave his search for comfort and put his children’s needs above his own.
.
so my question is:
are you the child or the father in this story?
or are you going to be the father in this story in your own distant future and let your children suffer the consequences of your self-centredness?
are you willing to give away the search for your own self comfort in exchange to the happiness and fulfillment in seeing how well you’ve raised your children?
what kind of parent do you want to be? what kind of parent will you be?
and what kind of child are you now?
.
marriage and family requires more than just love and adoration.
and when one of his children saw how cold the room is and how the father is sleeping on the main bed using the thickest blanket surrounded with the most pillows in the entire room filled with a few other children crawling and shivering and pulling and sharing with barely enough pillows on the floor with not even a mattress, somehow that child knew, that the family wasn’t as important as he was to himself.
that the father was just prioritizing what he feels is more important first, above all else, which is : himself.
.
crystalight he♥rts 