i told my mom about you

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I told my mom about you.

You might think from this alone, or together with all the other times I brought her up on our two dates, that she and I are close. It’s a little more complicated than that.

She’s the first person I text when the trivial frustrations of corporate politics eat away at my patience before noon. She learned to love my dog after years of swearing to herself she despised animals, all because I begged for help one random Wednesday night after a nervous breakdown. Growing up, every time I wanted to try something new, she’d break her back to guarantee me a chance at it: Painting, ballet, piano, theatre, swimming, football, a school trip to Japan. I’d neglected then the amount of sacrifices she’d made to pull everything off, without me having to worry about excelling at any of them. As long as there was a way, she would pave it for me, worn fingers and tight-lipped smiles blurred out in the digicam photos and tapes.

Inevitably, I will mirror such tendencies. My pride is the best and worst of me. Paired with the stubbornness of a youngest daughter, it is devastatingly relentless. Often in the middle of our arguments, she’ll look at me, a pained expression aging an otherwise youthful face, and I’ll spot the regret flickering across her large doe eyes—regret for the monster she hosted in her womb and cultivated in the past 23 years.

You see, she was the eldest of five. Her father, to the rest of their town, was a beloved local politician. Dapper, polished, charismatic. A provider to his wife—twelve years his junior—and his children. Rarely did his practiced eloquence give anyone reason to believe that behind closed doors, he lived by the bottle and not the virtue he preached of to rouse a rally. He treaded the thin line between passion and violence until he was consumed whole by the latter. In that quaint, haunted house, gathering dust and ghosts, my mother’s heart hardened. She was forged in fire until it no longer burned her to touch. More than being stubborn, she was resilient in the face of such circumstances.

She was not given the grace to be soft. By the time she started working, she was paying for her siblings’ education. And by the time she met my father, any meager semblance of romance sufficed to pick her armor apart. Little did she know, she’d be rendered defenseless for 27 years, vulnerable to his rage. She’s back in the haunted house, only this time bigger, in the city, and with two children locked away in their rooms every night to keep safe from the spirits of unspoken resentment.

When I look at her, I see everything I don’t want to be: A shell of the potential she was promised to have, drained of life by a marriage she’s trapped herself in. Every Mother’s Day, our father hands me money and leaves it up to me to buy the flowers. During her birthdays, before my brother and I bought her cake off our salaries, she would throw her parties by herself. Sometimes I forget their wedding anniversary follows five days after; there hasn’t been much celebration around that time of the year. Not recently. The same can be said for dates, compliments, romantic surprises, and quiet professions of love. Never in my life have I witnessed my father indulge my mother in any of these.

Admittedly, I carry the weight of her past, and those before her, with shame. I’ve never talked about my family at length to anyone, save for a close few. When I try to, my jaw sets into place, snapping my mouth shut—like all the other times I was told to be quiet, to stop crying. That was barely anything. You’re overreacting. You feel too much.

That’s why when I met you, and you called me beautiful the first time, I didn’t believe you. And the more you said it, in every language you knew, I was more nauseated than flattered. I had never heard my father call my mother beautiful, nor smart, nor inspiring. Perhaps he believed it once, in their youth. But skin sags, bones break, muscles tire, and so does the heart. So does belief, over time. When you’re a narcissist praying to a god thinking he’ll give you everything you want, you’d eventually stop going to church when things didn’t go your way.

I only told my mom about the beginning, the end, and the brief middle. I spared her the details. She doesn’t need to know that you got on a bus in the middle of a typhoon to make your way to me, albeit arriving three hours later than the time we agreed on. I don’t tell her about the warmth that began blooming in my chest when you texted me you were near. You were flustered when you got there; I had barely registered that you were there sitting across from me in that restaurant, blue-green eyes not once straying from me.

I didn’t tell her about how I kept checking a clock on the restaurant wall, not because I wanted the date to be over, but because every time I did, I hoped the hands of time would move as slowly as you spoke, as carefully as you asked me about where I saw myself in five years. You told me I could ask you for anything, too, but all I wanted was more time. The world held such a currency in its hands and I wished it spent more on us. When you flew back home, I looked at every clock six hours behind. But my mother didn’t know about that.

She wouldn’t understand. It wouldn’t mean much to her if I told her about how, on our second date, you insisted I try your meal, on top of the heaping poke bowl I’d already ordered for myself. She’d chalk everything up to my naivete, antagonize the hopeless romantic I had always pretended I wasn’t. My mother—at least, the one I grew up knowing—would call me a fool for letting my guard down around some stranger I met online. But the walls had long tumbled down before I first saw you make your way to me. I think I must have stepped out of them to greet you at the door. Even now, it’s still open for you. You wouldn’t even have to knock if you decided to come back. You could hammer the door down or rip it apart with your bare hands and I would welcome you home.

Before, I could never imagine myself telling her about you. When I was with you, I was unfiltered, animated, rolling my eyes at your corny attempts at flirting yet wavering when you hold my gaze for too long. Blue-green, blue-green, blue-green. The land. The sea. The earth. I spoke of you to my friends with a fondness I didn’t know I was capable of. After our first date, all I could feel were the soreness of my cheeks from smiling and the growl in my stomach; I had neglected to finish my meal, not wanting to miss a single thing you said. I watched sunsets, ate at new restaurants, accidentally cut my finger while cooking, flew to Hong Kong, and all I wanted to do was tell you all about everything. I wanted your dreams, your houseplants, pinot grigio, imperfect paintings and Excel spreadsheets.

I could never allow my mother to see that I was… soft. Even after years of forging my own kind of weapons against the world, I had dropped everything in my arsenal when you held an umbrella over the both of our heads in the rain. The very softness and warmth she was punished for, the parts of her she had to stow away, beat steadily in my chest to the sound of your name. The moon was full the night we met, and so was my heart; I didn’t realize until we parted, until you were on a 24-hour flight to Amsterdam, and it was too heavy to keep to myself.

Yet I still told her, because it was important enough. You were important enough. I let one week pass since your final message before telling her, thinking the bleeding would have mostly stopped. I thought she would be angry when I opened the conversation over dinner, but all she did was gasp in shock and then, wide-eyed, ask me, “When are you introducing him?” Every wound I sutured tore itself apart. I would have let you meet her, I would have. And I wouldn’t have cared if she liked you. I only cared for her to know I liked you.

Whenever she looks at me now, I sense her pity. I feel her stare boring into the back of my head, trying to read into my mind. I dread the day she succeeds; she would only see images of you smiling, or tying your shoelaces on the sidewalk, or the way our hands lingered on my waist before you booked a ride back to your hotel.

At the same time, I imagine she must be relieved to know I’m not some robotic spinster-in-the-making, programmed to swear off love and all that has to do with it. You helped me learn I’m not. I know she knows she could have learned to be herself, too, in visions that visit her dreams every now and then.

I told my mom about you. In some selfish way, I hope the fallout hurt you just enough that you tell your mom about me, too.