The Colour of Your Voice
Page 6
She remembered what an angel once told her on a dark bridge, long ago.
“You cannot jump until you become a painter.”
She had become a painter. Now if she wanted, she could go back to that bridge and jump. But she always wanted to think that, if he was alive, he would find every other reason in the book so she would not jump down.
“You cannot jump until you have your first exhibition.”
“You cannot jump until you win an international award.”
“You cannot jump until you give birth to your first daughter.”
Violet smiled. Prudently, she engraved each word in the notebook.
“Day 2000: I'm still alive”
Postscript
[If you enjoyed this book and found some benefit in reading this, I’d like to hear from you and hope that you could take some time to post a review on Amazon. Your feedback and support will help this author to greatly improve his writing craft for future projects and make this book even better.]
I came across a story in a newspaper somewhere about the romance between a drug smuggler who got caught and a young woman who would visit him whenever she was allowed to. I think she had said something along the lines of: “You people never bothered to learn whatever backstory he might have had, but only what you made him do. I don't mind what you say, it doesn't change my opinion of him.” I thought of how their relationship might have evolved and then wanted to jot it down because that’s what writers do. Incidentally, I was reading an article about a man explaining what it was like to have synaesthesia, then the idea just came to me.
To you, this might just be another fictional story of tragic love, of dealing with mental illness, and of unjust social expectation. But to many people in Vietnam, where depression is often seen as a sign of weakness and women are still treated as sexual objects, this might be their reality. Many Vietnamese, including women, are still holding rather conservative viewpoints regarding gender roles. Women are expected to be obedient, and men are expected to provide. I think many will agree with me that women in Vietnam are expected to walk on a knife’s edge between maintaining traditional standards of beauty and etiquette and a strong work ethic and sacrifice.
Men are lamentable, if you look at it from another angle. The deep-rooted belief systems led us to thinking that men are useless without a meaningful career, and a ‘meaningful career’ would usually be a very narrow selection of different doctors and businessmen disciplines. Oh, how we boost our egos with the partners we can buy, with the money in our account, with a shiny title on our business card. There’s no turning back. We have to be successful, and we have to be happy doing so. They will tell us that depression is a sign of weakness, and weak people die off, and that’s natural selection. But we just fail to realise that we're just another pitiful prey in the system, a system that’s designed for us to play our pre-assigned roles.
The question is: are all of this… okay? Is it better for men and women to be bound to ideologies that have existed for hundreds of years? Maybe that’s something we should think about.
About the Author
Daniel Newwyn is an aspiring writer, a professional eSports gamer, and a translator. He is the author of books across many genres, namely The Colour of Your Voice, The Last Woman on Earth, and Madness. His works in Romance, Sci-fi, Thriller, and Humour have won a number of online awards on Wattpad, and is listed among the promising Undiscovered Writers of the platform. Since then, he has accumulated over 15000 followers on Facebook and Wattpad. Daniel has a budding career in Hearthstone eSports, where he finished Top 4 in Hearthstone Wild Open 2018. As of current, he is the chief content producer of insightful contents such as Rankstar Wild Report. Daniel earned his Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Sydney, and is on his way to complete his PhD in Psychology.
You can find him on various platforms following the links below:
Email: danielngo1412@outlook.com
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