My Worst Critic

I wish I had the power to freeze time. So I can tell everybody I love how I feel for them and not feel diminished by the admission.

For 22 years, affection has always been a sign of weakness. This, I learned from a mother who barely took the effort to even slightly jump for joy whenever her eldest daughter brought home 3 gold medals when the rest of the kids her age had, at most, one. Every Recognition Day, my mother would sit stone-faced beside my beaming dad, who could not keep to his seat and was all over the room taking pictures, or nudging strangers telling him that was his daughter on stage. She would turn occasionally, to acknowledge envious parents and nod proudly that she was being envied – for the possession every woman in the room wanted but did not have.

I ventured Manila to escape. 16 years had been long enough a wait and it was my chance to break free from her condescending look and her grunts of disapproval, not because I constantly failed but because she wanted more medals on her wall. Funny because mine filled half of it; beside the family photos that captured smiles of the perfect middle-class family, which appeared to have no other worries besides what to wear the next day. But beneath the veil, we were strangers. And so I had to choose to leave, though I knew it was going to be difficult. It was the consequence I had to face to avoid having to deal with her again.

Six years have passed since I talked to her. Really talked to her. Not that I did when I was younger. But she always knew what I was up to. Many a morning had I woken up to the sound of my desk drawer being ransacked, with my eyes slowly opening to vision of my mother hunched over the paper cluttered desk, in desperate search for a doodle of a boy's name, or of hearts, and worse, of my journal and the letters I wrote and received. I did not have to talk to her about my thoughts. I was not allowed to hold secrets.

Six years without her and I have transformed into the person I am now. Full of riddles. Forever veiled in mystery that not even the closest of my friends and the most intimate of lovers could crack. My mind could not be read. It was a skill I learned from seeing my thoughts being thrown about despite my silence.

And for the longest time, I found it difficult to feel, to express appreciation for thoughtful deeds, to treasure friendship, to truly, madly fall in love. Do I blame her? I don't know. My father always told me that I what I am is the result of my own choices. One cannot choose parents. So since it wasn’t a choice, it is possible that it is not the source of my pain.

She arrives soon. And that feeling of wanting to curl up in the corner and fall into a trance is too inviting to pass up. I am a stranger to her, as she is to me. I should not even mind nor care what comments pour out like mad from her tiny mouth. I have built myself strong enough to match her caustic remarks without having to sound insolent; mastery of the craft of hypocrisy following six agonizing, but free, years with too many acquaintances and very little friends. I should not have to kneel in submission anymore.

But I will. Because I love her.