Mum, What Should I Do?
It’s funny.
Every time I’m stressed, I find myself saying,
“Mummmmm…”
Not Dad, not God, not even Love — just Mum.
Maybe in hindsight,
it makes perfect sense.
Mum has always been the one I run to
when my knees buckle under the weight of life.
When I don’t need solutions
just softness.
A place to fall.
A place to be.
Mum, why is love so hard?
Loving someone else is hard.
Loving myself at the same time feels even harder.
It feels like pulling my own limbs
in opposite directions,
trying to hold someone close
without losing my grip on myself.
Am I losing myself?
Am I giving too much?
Did I love too little
or did I love too much?
Do I stay?
Do I walk away?
Do we love each other, or just orbit out of habit?
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Are we mirrors or strangers?
Comfort or distraction?
Can I quit?
Can I stop?
Is it wrong to stop trying
when my hands are already trembling
from holding on so long?
Am I not good enough?
Do I not deserve to be loved right — or at all?
Did we love in a wrong way?
Or is it just the wrong time?
Is he the one?
Are we just not meant?
Mum doesn’t have the answers.
Neither do I.
We just sit in the silence together.
And somehow,
that is the answer I need.
Because maybe love isn’t just about finding
the right person
or making the right choice.
Maybe it’s about returning again and again
to the parts of myself
I refuse to abandon.
Maybe love
is learning not just how to hold someone,
but also how not to drop yourself.
So I whisper into the quiet,
“Can we solve this together, baby?”
Not only to him.
But also to me.
To the girl who’s trying.
To the one crying in bed.
To the one writing poems
and asking questions
that have no straight lines.
Is this what love is?
Confusion, hope, ache, longing.
Maybe not.
But this is where I begin
Naming the hurt.
Tending to it.
Holding the girl who still cries out for her mother.
And promising her:
We will learn a gentler love.
Together, one day.
