Mommy Issues

 

“What do you think of my apartment?”

You know how Gru’s mom would say ‘Eh” every time Gru seeks her validation? That was kinda how his reply sounded like. Only longer, to give way for the roll eyes.

The last time I saw my mother was Maundy Thursday, 2023. Like a kid, I was freaking excited to see her and see if all the healing I’ve gone through creates an impact. Sporting my red pixie hair, I wore a pink spaghetti strap for my top and a refreshing yellow gypsy skirt. I rode an Angkas. I enjoyed the short motorcycle ride listening to affirmations.

 Then I saw her, with my brother, at that corner store. I waved my hand and they both looked at me, frozen, without a wave of a hand.

I got down from the motorcycle as they both started walking towards the place I grew up at. I didn’t have the time to fix my skirt and I started walking towards them at a faster pace so I can keep up with them. I held my mom’s right arm as she said: “Ayusin mo nga yang palda mo, kumakaskas na sa kalsada.”

I immediately stopped holding her and fixed myself.

I have this habit of fixing people. I think that was a habit that was instilled on me in between bottle feedings.

Maybe my mom was there too, to sing me the abc’s and the nursery’s, and I loved it to the bones, like it’s how I wish things would always feel – the security and the comfort of a mother’s voice right next to your ear. Maybe at some point she had to stop whispering sweet nothings to my ear so she could go back at surviving, leaving me with expensive glass bottles and a pillow to hold it in place.

Maybe I wanted to feel her warmth in her embrace again, that’s why I followed her every request to be a good girl who always strive for perfection, thinking if I remove some food off her plate, she can finally find the time to spend with me.

I’m 36 now, and she still chooses to not spend time with me. She still chooses to see me as someone who dims her light everytime I shine mine, without her knowing that I shine because of her. I chose to shine so she can see that there is more to life than the darkness that she is accustomed to.

I’ve been  out of a relationship for years now and I am devoting the time to healing my childhood trauma and becoming a better version of myself – no, becoming who I really am, the authentic, taking-up-space, nurturing person that I have always been. I was listening intently to the conversation I had with my previous partner and see how he manages to spill in some manipulative tactics in between enumerating the many times he was the victim in our relationship and that he had to mature because he didn’t have a choice, I saw my mother, wounded, saying the exact same words – I didn’t have a choice.

But we all do. And as I caught myself inflicting myself harm inside the comfort room of the apartment I had in Makati and realizing this is the same thing I did to myself when I was being reprimanded, shouted and lashed hurtful words at by my mother, I chose something else. I chose myself, not the dictates of society that a complete family is a happy family, not the dictates of society that unwed women (with two kids, of different fathers) are frowned upon and heavily judged. 

I chose to break the family that was already hanging by a thread, by sins of omission, by conversations that never transpired but hunted the both of us.

 I chose myself.

 And it is the most liberating thing that ever happened to me.