When my mother told me about her difficult, challenging past, I knew how amiable I wanted my future to be—for me and for her inner self.
My mother was a little girl with big dreams of entering the medical field. With the two letters ‘MD’ at the end of her name on a white coat earned from countless sleepless nights and reviewers taped onto the walls, that was the life she has always wanted.
Maybe she won't take her husband's surname,
Maybe she won't get married at all,
Maybe she'll choose herself this time.
She dreamt of travelling beyond this country, a place that feels like home even if it's a thousand kilometers away. One that doesn't know her name nor her past, but welcomes her with open arms and doesn't expect anything from her.
Maybe not travel, but permanently settle in a country she had long saved up for. A country that lets her breathe and start anew—where the foreign wind kisses her cheek but carries the same breeze she felt when she first started.
She's free, she doesn't look back, and doesn't regret anything at all. She'll settle if she wants to, not when the circumstances force her to.
She will meet many important people, she attends medical training when she has the chance, she gets to support her family the way she wants to.
A man won't strip her off of her potential.
Having kids is at the back of her mind.
Even if life doesn't bend to her will, she shapes it and makes it her own.
That was the story I’ve always heard from her, ironically, while she's washing dishes, watching shows, or maybe cooking—far from the life she has always wanted.
“Wala akong pagsisisi kasi kayo naman ako kapalit. Mahal ko kayo, mga anak,” is how she would always end it, but I know it haunts her on quiet nights where whispers echo louder, that you could've been big—where your identity doesn't revolve around being a ‘mother’.
“Baka ngayon, doktora na ako.” I always hear that when we talk about dreams and what could've been. She could've been the greatest doctor—a hotshot one at that. She always had the smarts and determination for it after all.
But reality doesn't pity people. Either you win it, make it, or let go of it.
In my mother's reality, she never had the money to pursue a medical degree. And when the time came and she did, where she poured all of her time, money, compassion, and studies for—where she finally got the chance to make it out of this country and bring her family, a man stripped her from it.
An insecure, immature man and a woman with dreams don't end well in marriage.
That awakened something in me—one that woke up the path that I knew I’d want to take.
I'll be the woman that my mother wanted so badly for herself.
I am my mother's extension of herself. I am the daughter that will continue what she left and bury the regret she has been carrying. Not because she told me to, but because she sacrificed everything she has that it's my turn to make her sacrifices worth it.
I'll take up nursing. Not because that's what my mother wanted to take before, but because I knew this is the only pathway I can bear to take to get away from this country—a country that takes its healthcare workers for granted and then complains about its shortage.
I’ll move to another country, save up, and tour my family around. Maybe, while taking a stroll, I'll look into my mother's crinkled smile and realize that this was all she wanted all along.
I'll take in the unfamiliar, foreign breeze; where the wind blows softer and carries a promise of stabilization.
I’ll take a glance from behind and gaze at what's in front of me afar. To honor where I first started—the reason why I first started, and the future and challenges I chose to endure.
I'll do anything to make my life amiable—not soft and not easy either, but a routine where fatigue doesn't become my lifelong duo.
Will the road to the future I so badly want be a treacherous road? Yes. But I'll work hard for it, I'll make sure of it. I'll shape it and make it mine.
I'll live that life, because my mother was once a little girl who dreamt of living it too.
