Nature is a definite thing. But nurture is just as powerful. It can really mess with you.”
-Henry Cavill
The duality of nature versus nurture
When you see the title and the synopsis of The Role We Play, it doesn’t take a genius to know what topic I was planning on exploring. This story was something I wanted to write for a long time because of my brother. Well, me, too, really, but mostly him. Let me explain.
Our mother is a woman who has been fighting the Addition Demon for so long that we have lost score over the wins and losses. Now, while I’ve been blessed with a dad that cared about me, my brother wasn’t so lucky. His father was not only absent but a complete deadbeat. Trust me when I say this: my brother was dealt a crappy hand. We both knew this but, nonetheless, he flourished into a fine young man with a beautiful baby girl. But, like all children’s in our position, a lot of “What If” began to form into conversations.
One of our frequent conversations always revolved around the same question”: “What if we were actually separated while in the foster care system?” Quick context, when we were put into the system, my mom had one condition that we were not to be separated. But…what if…what if they disregarded my mother’s request?
Between you and I, I think I would have turned out to be a horrible person without my brother as my anchor. Vice versa for my brother. Honestly, I probably would have walked a complete path. A much darker one. Though, you may say I got lucky; I prefer to call it being blessed. But I took that rather scenario and combined it with what my mom was – and still is – going through to create a character that’s dialed up to an eleven. That was the easy part. But writing the story, on the other hand, was a little difficult for me. Mainly because I didn’t know where to start.
See, I wanted to do something different for each story. Even if I was to repeat a theme or motif, I try to do it in a completely refreshing way. But I was hitting a wall and it was lasting longer than I wanted it to. Almost two weeks, even after I completed the character’s outline and timeline. It was a real puzzle for me and real pain for me to solve. Of course, I solved it by diving into his psyche.
To play off them, I wanted the main character to realize that he was “nurtured” while another character argued he was “born” to be one i.e. nature. This left a gap for me to plot a setting where the main character can have time to reflect on such a topic. Then…it just…clicked. Everything can take place in a prison. And with that, I only had to figure out how to implement flashbacks cohesively.
This story has been labeled as the darkest short story by Leon (my brother). He said that he wanted me to lighten up on the dark themes but I told him “not a chance in Hell”. Moreover, he recognizes that this story was an allegory for us – or me. It was something that he couldn’t help but notice and told me that I have nothing to worry about.
You can buy the book on Amazon. The link is here.
You can also learn about it on Goodreads. The link for it is here.
