aysabaw.com

She was washing the dishes when I arrived home that night.

I placed my bag on top of the dining table and sat.

I called her,  Ma, then I started telling her about my first heartbreak. I sobbed. She stopped whatever she was doing in the kitchen, gave me a glass of water and sat beside me.

It wasn’t actually a romantic love that broke my heart but betrayal from some friends that I held dear.

Looking back at it, I am not even quite sure if it was worth my tears. It was actually so childish and is not even worth wasting my time but even so, while writing this and thinking about how I felt the night I wept in front of my mom, I am now, almost into tears. Somewhere within me, is a scar of a wound that never healed.

But then I realized why I was so devastated with what happened to me. It was because of love.

We always ask ourselves why love is often accompanied by pain. I think, it is because when we love, we care. We love even though the people we offered our love to isn’t worthy or isn’t capable of loving us back. We love until we feel the pain. And once we feel the pain, we try to escape the hurt and move on. We leave those undeserving of our love. No matter what kind of love it is, romantic, friendly or family love. When everything turns sour, we all turn our backs and leave.

But there’s one kind of love that we can lean to. The love that has always been there but is usually ignored. Our mother’s love, that is.

We, the unworthy kids, always breaks our moms’ hearts. They did nothing wrong except to love us but all they get in return are headaches and heartbreaks. But then no matter how many heartbreaks we give them, they never told us lines like, I need space, or It’s not you, it’s me.

My mom is a very strong woman inside and out. I sometimes wonder if her heart was ever broken but if that even happened, I bet she’ll never tell me.  I rarely saw her cry, well, except while watching Armageddon or the likes. She never projected weakness. She isn’t the usual mom who’ll cry while applying medicine on my wounded knees, or kiss or hug me to make me feel better.

When I was young, she’d scold me, look at me with a stern face while pressing hard on my wound so I could very well remember the pain and start taking care of myself, avoid falling down and getting wounded again.

I didn’t see her stern face that night but I would never forget that reaction on her face while I cried. She didn’t scold me. She just said, that’s life. It’s good that you’ve seen who your real friends are as early as now.

After my first heartbreak, I never thought that there will be a lot more and I always wondered if my mom have gone through this much too or even more.

Thinking about that night and writing about it, I am not sure now what brings me to tears. Was it the memory of the pain inflicted by my first heartbreak? Or was it the memory of my mom’s face as I broke her heart?