My mother finally said it.

“Don’t overwork yourself and risk your health. I’m proud of you regardless.”

“Pero paano kung ‘di ako makakapagtapos nang may Latin Honors? Ma-didisappoint ka po ba, ma?”

“Bakit ako ma-didisappoint? Bonus na lang kung may honors, pero ang mahalaga sa‘kin ay makapagtapos ka, nak.”

I grew up with the silent pressure my family had quietly made me carry — making me sink and dig a painful pathway for my feet to take me to my dreams. To the dreams my mother built for me; to the dreams I learned to make my own.

These dreams were all I have ever known. My eyes were only focused on them. The ropes and ropes of thorns tied to my arms were dragging and wounding me as I strived to make them proud. As I worked so, so hard, despite the fragility of my bones and despite the easiness there is to bring me to tears, I worked so hard to make myself the daughter they dreamed of.

However, no matter how much I believed in my efforts and that I will make it — things won’t always go the way I prayed they would. How can I carry this grief? This pain of failing? This fear and uncertainty that my dreams are still mine? Am I going to have to let go of more dreams?

Mom, I failed again.

The first time I saw the look of failure, it made me want to die — whether it was a terrible or muted death, I couldn’t care less. It felt like the ground I was stepping on was slowly opening and I was falling in — with only the face of disappointment being my last view. It was terrifying.

The hatred and apprehension of dying because of the same death again created a hole in my heart — a heart devoid of hope — and I just wanted to do anything, anything to erase that look on their visage.

I carry my inner child with me, and she is just as petrified. However, when I told my mother about the breaking of the dreams I had been working hard for in the past two years, she became the mother this inner child yearned for.

And all at once, I was twelve years old again.

“Ang gusto ko ay maayos ang kalusugan mo’t hindi mo pinapahirapan ang sarili mo. Ang gusto ko lang ay makapagtapos ka’t magkaroon ng magandang buhay, anak.”

The golden childhood I couldn’t live freely, the teenage life I had to sacrifice because I was locked in my room studying, the opportunities I missed because I didn’t have the privilege to take them, the kinds of love I couldn’t welcome because I wanted to focus on my future, and all the things this world wanted to give me but I couldn’t accept them because I was trying to grow up even though I was only twelve. If only I could turn back the time and make it all better. If only I could restart my life and enjoy the moments I look back on with regret. If only I could be the child I was supposed to be and the sixteen-year-old I wanted to become.

I should have lived my life at sixteen and not regret that I didn’t at twenty.

But those words that my mother had said while I was lying on her lap as she brushed my hair, they were enough to mend a part of me that’s long been unresponsive.

I grew up in a non-affectionate household, but my mother is now trying to build a safer home and I will do the same.

I have been trying over and over and over again.

To hear these words not because I brought a medal to the table, but because she knew I did my best even though I felt like I failed — it was everything I wished for.

Finally, my mom has said it.

“Proud ako sa’yo.”