love was my mom making sure that I had everything, while she had nothing

fruitcrates
2 min readJun 23, 2024

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Lady Bird (2017)

“Don’t be my mother again. Live happily in your next life.”

If I could meet her, I would tell her to do things and enjoy every drink and food she wants, travel to the places that her feet want to step on, and be full of joy as she lives her own life as a woman. Make memories with the friends that she’s been wanting to see and have a cup of tea with. And hopely, she would never meet a man that would cause her to give up her dreams.

At some point, I know very much that my mother loves me in a secret and silent way that she could do. My heart was aching when she endured the hunger making a sound in her stomach as she watched me eating while she had nothing.

It’s her first time being a woman, and a mother. She’s still figuring things out as she raise me as her daughter. It must been so hard for her to carry me on her own, to find ways to sustain my necessities, and just simply to be a mother. Despite my deepest understanding, I concede that her love is sometimes unknown and very bitter; nevertheless that’s how she showed me love, and showered me with wretched care.

I sometimes forget that it’s their first time living too.

I felt guilty for building up a resentment when I saw the exhaustion in her eyes, and her worn-out palms for working to give my needs. I am thankful for receiving my needs, yet I hope she can also hand me some attention and love. Behind the lines that I have built between us, all I wanted is to be seen by her.

“No daughter wants to hate her own mother.”

You can’t blame a daughter’s rage who received her mother’s frustrations. But I know that it’s her first time, too. Understanding her doesn’t mean I forgive her for the things that she did to me because I also don’t deserve carrying this pain within me.

In merely silent way I could say it, I uttered, “Thank you, Ma. I love you.”

I hope she will never meet my father.

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