Matilda, Maybe Love Was Never Enough to Save Us.
Perhaps we loved each other deeply, but life was crueler.
Kalau ditanya tujuh puluh tujuh kali lagi setelah semua jalan yang sudah berlalu di hidup ini, sepertinya aku tetap ga akan benar-benar yakin untuk memilih hadir di dunia ini.
Kalau sejak awal tau harus menjadi sekuat ini, rasanya aku ga akan percaya bahwa ternyata bisa bertahan sejauh sekarang.
Kalau tau hidup akan menuntut perjuangan sebesar ini, mungkin memang akhirnya sampai saat ini aku juga belum sanggup menerima semuanya dengan ikhlas.
Bahkan sampai hari ini, aku masih belum menemukan satu alasan pun yang benar-benar membuat yakin kenapa aku harus hadir di dunia ini, kenapa aku harus menjadi sekuat ini, dan kenapa aku masih terus bertahan serta berjuang sebanyak ini.
“You can let it go,
You can throw a party full of everyone you know,
And not invite your family, ’cause they never showed you love.”
Mom, in another life, I hope you are loved the way you have always deserved to be loved — gently, fully, and without having to beg for it. I hope your days are no longer filled with survival, but with peace. With warmth that stays. With happiness that doesn’t disappear overnight.
You need to know that I love you more than I could ever put into words. And I’m sorry for every moment I made you feel unappreciated, for every time my gratitude failed to reach you even though my heart was always full of it.
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If the world asked me a thousand times who I would choose as my mother, my answer would still always be you. Again and again. In every lifetime, in every version of me that could ever exist. Because no matter how difficult life has been, loving you has never once been difficult for me.
But, if there truly is another life, and if your happiness exists in a world where I am not your daughter, then please choose that happiness instead.
And if my existence became even the smallest reason behind the heaviness you carried all these years, then I hope in your next life you never meet the kind of man who stole the light from your eyes and left you carrying pain all by yourself. You deserved softness. You deserved rest. You deserved to be loved correctly.
“You were riding your bike to the sound of ‘It’s No Big Deal,’ And you’re trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels…”
I hope in your next life you won’t have to exhaust yourself every single day just to keep us alive. I hope you wake up slowly in the mornings with nothing weighing on your chest, I hope you spend your days doing things you genuinely love, without guilt, without sacrifice constantly swallowing you whole. I hope for once, you choose yourself first.
And maybe I don’t even need to exist as your child in that life. Maybe it’s enough for me to become the sunlight touching your skin while you drink your warm tea in the morning. Or the quiet midnight wind accompanying you when the world finally feels calm. I think I would still find you somehow, in any form the universe allows me to.
But in this life, in the only life where I get to call you Mom, I will continue praying for you with everything I have in me. For your burdens to become lighter. For your sadness to loosen its grip on your heart. For every kindness you gave to the world to return to you twice as gently.
And if someday you ever question whether you were a good mother, I hope you remember this, being loved this deeply by me could only happen because of how deeply you loved me first.
So if love alone could save a person, Mom, I swear you would’ve been the happiest woman alive.
“You can see the world, following the seasons, Anywhere you go, you don’t need a reason.”
