The Millionaire Bartender | Chapter 2 — The Cleansing

2 | The Cleansing

The water was cold, but not piercing. It was tolerable. Maya felt her body getting lighter. Her mind and spirit too. She felt things being washed away. She wanted to always feel this way — blissful.

Saying goodbye to her old self, Maya stepped out of the water, feeling cleansed. A new girl emerged, reborn. Her dropping out of school felt like a memory from a distant past. It was a new beginning for her. What mattered now was the present moment.

Back home, Maya sat down with her parents. She told them of her plan.

“I am not going to go back to school. I am not going to spend another minute doing what I never enjoyed. Hours upon hours of memorising textbooks and formulas. Most of which you will forget right after you put your pen down on your last examination. You spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on almost 20 years of education. After you graduate with a degree, you compete with hundreds of other fresh graduates for a handful of jobs.

Of course, another test awaits you when you go in for an interview at a company you never heard of before applying. Delivering a well-rehearsed speech on why you admire the company and how your vision for the future is attuned with the company’s. You nail the interview, get the job, and become a working adult.

First day of work, you embark on your morning commute where you squeeze like sardines with other commuters in the local buses and trains. At work, you are brought to your desk. A plain white desk, with walls to your front and sides. Alas! The much sought-after cubicle of the 9–5. You spend the next 20–30 years in that cubicle, working hard. Putting all your energy into the company till late at night at the expense of quality time with your family because you have targets to meet. You need to bring profits for the company. The boss’s sports car is outdated, and he wants to buy the latest model. Do not forget that you still have your student loans to pay back. Yes, you spend the next 10 years or so paying back the loans.

The loans do not end there. You decide that it will be a great idea to get a new loan from the bank because you need a house to live in, as you want to marry your significant other and neither of you have enough savings for a home. It is the same story for driving your own vehicle as well.

Hence, your entire life is spent paying back loans. You are never free. There will always be this weight on your shoulders. In your 60s or 70s, if you are lucky, you get to retire. A cosy home in a quiet town by the waterfront. Guess what, fishermen live that way their entire lives.”

“So, you are telling us that you want to be a fisherwoman?” Maya’s mum interrupted.

“No mum, I want to be free. Free from this madness society has deemed the norm,” Maya replied.

“That is how the world works. Dreaming is not going to put food on your table or a roof over your head. That job in the cubicle that you are ridiculing, it guarantees those two!”

“Yes, but at what cost? Your sanity? Your freedom for mind and body?”

“Dreamers don’t change the world Maya. Dreamers follow their heart and when they are old, they wish they had been more realistic, gotten an education and a job instead. Dreamers live with regret.”

“No mum, every great achiever ever, who changed the world for the better, started with a dream. A dream that they pursued with their heart and manifested it. And we are all enjoying the fruits of their labour. Regret is for the one who wished that he had pursued his dream when he had the chance to. For the one who wished that he spent more time with his family instead of those late nights in the office. There should be a balance. Regret is for the one who is lying on his deathbed, wishing he had written that book, or gone for that singing audition, or started that business that he really wanted to. Remove the strings from your wrists, pick up the quill with your name on it, and start writing.”

“Those nights that your father and I spent at the office, working so hard, was for this family! Where do you think the food that filled your hungry stomach, shelter over our heads, the car that ferried us around comes from? It is because of the money we make from working hard like any normal man or woman would, to provide for their family!”

“Yes mum, money can buy all these things. I am truly grateful for all the food and shelter I have had my whole life. But you being obsessed with your work, has caused us both to become strangers.”

The heated argument continued for a few more minutes. Maya went to her room to calm down, but she really wanted to let her mum know how she felt. She returned to the dining room and unleashed her fury, bottled up for many years. “You are a stranger to me! We have lived in the same house for almost two decades and I don’t know you. I don’t have any connection with you. Can’t you tell? I don’t even speak to you, unless I have no choice. I wouldn’t know when you are going to get angry and snap, or even slap me. I wouldn’t know when your fragile ego is going to get bruised. All the money in the world, but you don’t have a family.”

Maya slammed shut her room door and jumped on her bed. There was only a slight regret in her as she laid on her bed. She wondered if she went too far by telling her mum that she sees her as a stranger and that there was no connection between them. Maya felt that her feelings was justified. Her mum was never around. She was present financially, but not physically or emotionally. Not when she was going through the rollercoaster stage of puberty and being a teenager. Not when she needed help with her schoolwork. Not when she needed someone to talk to. Things that mattered the most, things that no money in the world could buy. Maya wondered if her mum knew it all along, that she was more like a stranger.

“Maybe she had a faint suspicion. Now she knows for sure,” Maya thought.

Even though her dad was incredibly involved in his work too, he had always shown genuine affection and concern over his daughter.

Minutes passed and Maya was calmer. Her anger had almost fully subsided. She started feeling bad for what had happened and decided to apologise to her mum before she went to sleep. She walked over to her parent’s room and saw her dad reading a book in bed.

“Where’s mum?” Maya asked, surprised not to see her there.

“She went out for a walk,” her dad replied.

“But it’s almost 12. She never goes out this late.” Maya sounded worried.

“I’m glad you noticed. I hope you are proud of yourself,” the dad sounded disappointed. “Don’t worry about her, she’ll be fine.”

Maya returned to her room. She felt that her mum and her needed some space from each other.

The two did not speak for many weeks since the incident. It did not affect Maya. It was not different to how things normally were.

Many weeks after leaving school, Maya was running low on money. Her savings from her school allowance was slowly diminishing. She did not want to ask her parents for money and she obviously was not going to get anymore allowance since dropping out of school.

She started looking through the job ads in the newspaper and on the internet. For most of the job openings, she was underqualified. She did not have many options to choose from. There were jobs for cleaners, drivers, dishwashers, construction workers and other hard labour work. The salary was so little that Maya wondered if she made a mistake in dropping out of school. “Maybe mum was right,” she thought. But it was too late to go back to school now, the new semester has already commenced and the next one will be six months later. She would not be able to go back now even if she wanted to.

Looking through the job ads again, Maya wondered which she will be suited for. She did not want to work outdoors, hence construction was scratched out. She had no driving licence either. Maya was left with two options. To be a cleaner or a dishwasher. Both were indoor jobs. But Maya knew deep inside that she did not want to be spotted by someone she knew, while she was cleaning the floor of a mall or restaurant. If she chose to be a dishwasher, she knew that she will be by herself at a corner of a restaurant’s kitchen, away from public eyes.

She reached for her phone and dialled the number of the restaurant. “Hello, good afternoon, I came across an ad for a dishwasher job…”