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| Image from the author |
Mom, I love you.
I love you, and I hope you know that I do. I think I do my best to show you how much I love you, but I can never tell if anything I do is ever good enough. I excel, I pray, I strive, and I do. I move in ways you made me learn, and I portray myself just like what you dream of me to be. It’s a tiring act, and I hope it’s enough. But when the passive look crosses your face, I think that it isn’t, and if it isn’t, then I guess I can be better for you.
Mom, I love you. Even though I don’t know if you love me, too.
Of course, you do—or at least, I think of course you do. You’re my mom, and I’m your daughter, and that must mean you love me the way I love you. Parents love their children, don’t they? Even in the wild, animals protect their young, provide for them, love them, and it’s not so dissimilar for us people. Parents love their children endlessly, and unconditionally, so I think you must love me. too.
You do, though, don’t you? You must love me, too.
Mom, I love you. Even if you break me with your words, I think that can be called love, too.
Sometimes you say things, and I know you only mean them in the best of ways. A mother always looks out for her children—for her daughter most of all, and so when you say things that hurt, I think that’s you looking out for me. When you tell me the burdens of being my mother, when you tell me the weight of my existence to yours, I think that’s you trying to show me how much I mean to you.
The grief of your lost youth clings to me and my childhood, but I don’t think you mean to hurt me the way your words really do. You tell me you mean well with those words, and though they’re laced with the poison of your tiredness, I still choose to believe you.
It doesn’t lessen the pain of your words. If anything, knowing that you mean well with such words makes it more painful to hear, because how could cruel things be meant for anything better? It hurts so bad, but I can never fault you for how it hurts.
Mom, I love you. Even if you can think of me so little, I think there is the potential for love there, too.
It’s the hardships of being a woman in this world. I cannot be a certain way, because you cannot be a certain way, because women cannot be a certain way when it comes to living in this world. You were taught how women were supposed to behave, and you passed that down to me even if it meant shackling me down and drowning me because that’s all you were ever taught to be. A mother and a daughter—two women in different places, but women all the same.
And so when I act against the way you’ve taught me, I bear the brunt of your disappointment and belittlement. When I’m not the prim and proper lady you molded me to be, I carry the guilt of an old femininity lost. When I am not the younger, spitting image of your perfected womanhood, I swallow the shame that comes from your cold stares.
I bear it all because while you can’t see that being different is okay, it’s enough for me to carry all the understanding between us. Even if I so wish to open your eyes, I can only carry the understanding for both of us. I have enough understanding for the both of us, so even if you think of me so little because of how I am, I know that’s just your love for me coming through. You only mean to make me be the best version of myself, and what’s best in your view would be for me to just be like you.
You’re just trying your best, and that’s enough for me to be the one shouldering all this hurt. I don’t want you to hurt any more than you already do. Knowing that you won't is enough for me.
Mom, I love you. Please tell me you love me, too.
I might never speak these words to you, and the million other words attached in tattered strings. I don’t want to because I know the searing heat that spreads through veins and shatters the heart that comes with words like these, and I don’t want you to feel the cloying heat that comes with failing. Your parenting was never a failure to me, but I know you won’t see it that way with my words, and so I’ll never speak them to the open air in our home.
The silence between us, the understanding and the misunderstanding both, can be enough space for us to drop all of which that are unspoken with the hope of the other catching it and unraveling it. I’ll wrap these words with the gentlest of tones, I’ll make it so that you never feel the cracks of my being done by your hands, and I’ll be the daughter you’re proud that you made. Mom, let me keep these words to myself, and I promise I’ll tell you I love you all the same.
Mom, I love you. Please hold my hand. I love you. Please hold my heart. I love you. Please, hold me. I love you.
I hope you love me, too. I know, to some degree, you must love me, too. But I hope you do love me, too.
Mom, I love you.
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