I want to be known

I want my sons to know me, unlike the way I know my parents. I know hardly anything about them except generic things like personality traits, some likes and dislikes, and behavioral traits I've come to know through observation. 

I know that my mother is devoted to us, her children, even now as much as when we were young. Her way of showing love to us is cooking food and making sure we have plenty to eat. She seems to think that by quenching our hunger and thirst, she could pour love into us.  But we have always been starved for more than food. We wanted to hear what she thought about love and life, what her dreams were, what broke her heart, and what made her happy and sad. What her hopes were and what made her want to go on living; most of all, whether we were enough just the way we were and whether we were loved. But these were not topics that we discussed ever, and the words "I love you" were never uttered. 

Instead, she religiously brought me a cup of tea and woke me up each morning. I drank the sweet and warm liquid thirstily and arose for my day, mostly before the sun rose those days back in Sri Lanka when we used to go to school so early in the morning. For me, her actions were the epitome of love and devotion and to this day I tell the little girl inside of me that it was enough - it is enough for us. I wish I could tell my mother that it was enough and that at least now, she should try to stop feeding me food, because now I can provide for myself, and I must learn that skill of being an adult who fends for myself under all circumstance. But in her eyes, I remain a child and in my giving her the satisfaction of being a child, I am weakened inside. It is a conflict I always have, the conflict between self-love and the love for another. But you see, we never talk of love in our family. Even if it broke us into a million pieces inside, we would never say those words that our souls long to hear or the things that need to be said. And we go on year after year, decade after decade, while our unspoken words fill up the rooms that we occupy and hang in the air between us, threatening to suffocate us. 

So I'm so generous with my sons. I tell them that I love them so frequently that they will have it etched in their subconscious minds. I have willed it into their very cells just like my mother must have too. I try to tell them about what I think and what matters to me. Sometimes, it feels hopeless to have conversations with little people like this, but I suppose I'm doing it for myself more than for them. You see I'm new to this whole concept of self-love and what it means to love oneself. It has taken me close to four decades to realise that, it simply means, living your truth and doing so even if you might think that it might hurt or offend others. To do that, one needs to be truly courageous.