Power.

When you can love something that does not love you, that is power.

That she had firmly believed her entire life. Cindy smiled to herself. She enjoyed thinking herself as Cinderella. That way she could assure herself that she would find her happily ever after one day in the future.

“Cindy! Can you come down please?”

It was fine with her. They could not buy a slave in this era, so they gave birth to one. Quite right. After all, as her father frequently engraved in her mind with subtle hints: You are only a daughter. Their only daughter, but merely a daughter. Disposable, useless and unworthy.

She wondered sometimes if they did love her, as their flesh and blood. But she would then feel guilty of doubting them. They had planted the seed in her core when she was tender, probably why she was helpless to their wills. She could not resent them without her conscience pricking her. She could not feel their love, yet knew too that she had no rights to demand them. Her mother had stated the plain fact that Cindy was merely an accident, a freak by-product of her parents’ pleasure.

That was fine. Cindy lied to herself again, ‘I’m a powerful girl’.

“Darling, would you please clean up? The maid is on leave again.”

Of course it was said sweetly, with a smile plus the usual manners. And of course it meant her. Could you see any other useless object with allegedly unlimited free time standing in their face? No, they would be so nice when they asked her of favours. Sometimes Cindy wished they would be more obvious with their maltreating. All these ‘kindness’ made them all the more sinister to her.

It was like a slave could easily hate the master who had whipped and starved him. But how should a slave feel towards a master that would give practically everything to him, except what the slave truly wanted most, like freedom and love?

As she felt her hands getting rough from all the chores, her mind churned. This was, pointless to say, “a girl’s duty”. There seemed to be many girl-duties that totally exclude her darling little brother. And it was redundant to protest anyway, she would just get chided for being lazy. Plus, her dad had laid the ultimatum recently.

“You’re only a daughter. We have the rights not to send you to further studies, you know. Girls are not meant to inherit any properties. So do not bother to think that we would leave a single penny to you.”

That was an obvious threat if she ever saw one. She was shocked. To think her dad, who she always had a little more affections for, would speak with such merciless words. She never did considered the possibility of getting anything from them, she had always intended to earn her own money by hook or by crook to prove to them that she could survive just fine without their aid.

But not going to college? That was a really low blow. Cindy felt her life light flicker and extinguish for a period of time before from the charcoal some spark lit again. She needed to stay on their good side, that was for sure. Even if she did manage to get a scholarship, she would still need a little help with the other expenses like rental for accommodations. The rest she probably could gather with a measly part time job, or two.

Her mother was certainly in the dark. Her mother: a woman who came from nowhere and made some pretty nice bundle of fortune with her husband. Her mother, whose pride would never allow her children to not have the best education that money could offer. Her mother, who enjoyed tossing remarks casually at lesser relatives which university she was planning to send her children.

Her darling mother who wondered why she had to give birth to such a useless daughter that only knew to rebel. She who asked Cindy how could she possible had such a daughter of a bundle of flaws, and nothing to praise of. Her mother who never wanted her.

And the silliest thing that stabbed Cindy worst was that her father actually used Cody as an excuse. He said they only had sufficient funds to send one child to college. Cindy would not have minded if Cody stood on stronger grounds academically. Cody had never bothered to obtain good grades, and had plainly stated his main interest was in basketball, the game of his life.

She always wondered if she should envy her friends who were lavished with parental love, or should she count her blessing for having parents who granted her material needs? She knew many acquaintances who had to give up the notion of further studies for they know for a fact their parents could not afford it. But look at herself now, she could had chosen anywhere, anywhere at all, even overseas. Yet because she was only a daughter…

Cindy mused on.

She often prayed for a terminal illness, just to test if her parents love her. Then she would also often asked God to bless her parents, to use up her lifespan to increase theirs. But that was a selfish notion for she wished not to live. There were times she wished she knew what she could do to make her parents proud. She did not know how to satisfy them. Just for once, she wanted to hear a simple line, “I’m glad we had you.”

But deep in her heart, she knew that one day would never come.

She did manage to enter the college she had desired. But by then, she had lost her desire to be someone great in this world. There were many things she could had enjoyed. Or to phrase it more accurately, she should had enjoyed. She experienced much, and she enjoyed them, but even as she was appreciating it all, she would feel something empty in her tugging all the joy out of her. So she was always laughing, but she never felt happy.

She had friends now, friends that she could not have owned in her past due to the short leash her parents allowed her in her social circles. But once in college, she made quite a few friends. And amusingly, this depressed girl would go around comforting the suicidal friends.

Cindy wrote diaries she burnt, because the diaries were filled with the agony she could not let anyone know. Plus her brother had the hobby of searching for her diary to read for the amusement of the family. The diaries were often filled with hatred and anger and sorrow and many other intense emotions.

To side track anyone who seek her diaries, she wrote a journal. She filled the counterfeit with most of those things she had comforted others with. She marvelled at all the things that spurred out of her lips when she had the flow going. She wondered how she could give advices that touched people so much that their lives were affected, when she could never really take any of her own advices.

“September 20th,

Jacob was moaning on and on about how stupid life is. That we are all living a lie throughout our entire lives. He said the world is filled with too many people that whether one more died, or one more lived would never matter.

I contradicted him. I said a person can easily affect the world. We are each of us an individual that add count to the population in this world. One million had started with one, one hundred billion too need to start with one. Without one, there could not be two.

When he could not comprehend I had to think of examples to prove why a person can change our whole Earth. I took Hitler as example, he was just one man. But because one man dared to have wild dreams, the world had to suffer.

Jacob then protested saying I was using a great man for example.

So I asked him, if he was to become a terrorist, what would happen. He could not reply. I told him, if he was a terrorist, then people of our area would live in fear of being threaten by a terrorist. He agreed. Point A checked. Then to Point B, but if he was not a terrorist what would then happen? He got annoyed and said nothing would happen.

His eyes widened when I told him he was wrong.

If he was not a terrorist, then everyone would have one terrorist less to fear. If each of us decided we were useless and just committed suicide, then Man’s population would probably be halved. Our every decision affects the universe that revolves around us. Even if we are in fact, a “nobody”, there are still some other nobodies out there who would care for us. Our parents, our friends, our lovers, and etc… he then interrupted to ask what if he was a nobody who nobody cares. I laughed and told him he would die in vain.”

Cindy reread the last line. Indeed, she would die in vain if she just committed suicide at the moment. She would need to earn lots of money, have lots of lovers, own many properties and gain her parents’ love. Then at the peak of her glory, she would end it all, knowing that she had had the most.

She had to smile. That was one prospect she was looking forward to.