Animosity

My friends all know I dislike mahjong.

I've never made effort to hide the fact that the game was never interesting to me. I've only learnt and played it a few times because my close friends were all playing it everyday after school and I had nothing better to do.

I have since forgot all but the basics of the game.

Anyway, something just happened which reminds me precisely I hate this darn game.

My uncles and aunties were over at my house playing mahjong, like they do almost every Friday. 

And every Friday there's bound to be arguments. 

Only today, it was so heated that I watched as brothers of more than 40 years shouted and accused each other of violations I do not even understand. Be it talking too much, feeding or even cheating, I couldn't really care.

But to even speak of respect and whether or not one deserves it, all while taunting each other to 'bring it', is just downright embarrassing, even to the point of disappointing. 

He who is not my father I don't give a shit, but you? You, who reprimanded me about the importance of sibling relationships whenever I argued with my sister, were there just now ridiculing your own brother and inviting him to a fist fight outside our flat at 3am in the morning.

All this over a stupid fucking game. 


I hated you so much.

You were a tyrant. 

Beatings and kicking were the least of my problem. 

You accuse me of being a disgrace to Chinese because I scored poorly. Yet you were the one who enforced your stupid China values and communism shit on me. So much that I suffocated and hated the fucking language. A language which I used to get prizes for excellent performance in. 

You sneered at your own son's disinterest in football and chose to see it as a sign of weakness. As if participation in the sport was the only testament of my manhood. 

You shot down any attempts of explaining our actions whenever we committed a mistake. You responded the slightest disrespect with physical attacks. Yet you fail to see how it affects us, only wondering why we do not stand up for ourselves. 

You're an egoistical man.


I hated you.



Now I'm all grown up and matured. I'm older and so are you.

Which I why I want to make amends.

As much as I refused to accept it, the fact that the day where you will no longer be with us draws nearer and nearer cannot be ignored.

I source information from my friends about soccer so that at least we have something to talk about when you watch your matches.

I try as much as possible to shrug off your disdain of my time spent of the computer and prefer to not show my anger whenever you speak of me behind my back.

I give you part of my salary even though you're retired and having no need of money except to use it in mahjong.

I make the effort to talk to you more often and greet you with more enthusiasm to at least show that I still acknowledge you as my father.

I had hoped that by doing so, you wouldn't be so angry all the time.

Yet what happened today disgusted me, and made me wonder if what I was doing was worth it at all.


When I was younger I kept telling myself that I would be a better father than you ever was, that I will not be so egoistical and have such a hot temper all the time.


Despite my best efforts, I could not help but realize that while we differ greatly in our interests, I had seemingly inherited most of the character traits from you.


Perhaps this is why we can't get along.



I have the need to prove to others that I'm not useless, that I can be good at something. I am easily offended when people accuse me of being incompetent. 

I almost always refuse to accept that I lose to others by my own incompetence, believing that they were merely in luck. 


Worst of all, anger shoots through me like a bloodrush whenever I get serious about a game that I'm losing. 

It mirrors how you shoot everyone at the mahjong table down, remarking about how amateurish others seemed to be.


And it is this memory, that I use to calm down whenever I find myself spitting expletives out of my mouth. 


I try so hard to be unlike you. 


Yet after everything, we're almost the same. 


Almost.

Which is why I am going to make the first move, and take a step back.

I don't want our father-son relationship to end on a bad note.


In fact, I want you to be happy.


But you have to make the effort too, and it's not going to be easy.




So, Papa, 

please.