I'm 31. My dad passed away three weeks ago. I'm writing this at 2 AM because I can't sleep, and because I need to tell someone. My dad was not an emotional man. He was a truck driver. He left home at 4 AM and came back late. He never hugged me at my graduation. He just shook my hand and said, "Good job." I remember being angry about that for years. When I moved to another city for work, we talked maybe once a month. Short calls. "Eat properly. Don't skip meals." That was it. I used to think, doesn't he have anything else to say to me? Last month, he got sick. It was quick. I reached the hospital too late. I only got to see him for ten minutes before he went. After the funeral, I was cleaning his room. In the drawer next to his bed, I found his old phone. The kind with buttons. I charged it, just to see. It had 214 saved voicemails. All of them were mine. Every missed call I ever left him. Every "Papa, call me back." Every "Happy b...
I harbour a deep, simmering resentment towards a very specific financial inequality in my daily life. The shampoo I buy for myself at the local pharmacy costs around £3.50. To me, £3.50 is already a decent bit of money. It feels like a modest, respectable indulgence. Then I looked at the price tag on the shampoo for my Jack Russell Terrier. £6.50. And it didn’t stop there. Upon closer inspection, I realized my family doesn't just use one bottle for the dog—they use two. One for actual washing, and another purely for "fragrance." Does anyone on Earth split their own hair-washing routine into a "cleansing phase" and a "scent-enhancement phase"? I certainly don't. Why on earth does my head get a single, budget-tier bottle while the dog enjoys a two-tier luxury system? While my human scalp is being scrubbed with £3.50 worth of foam, over £11 of capital is being invested directly into the dog’s fur. To make matters worse, the fragrance bottle is "...