i’ll look for you through all the noise.

☼
Journal Kita
3 min readJun 16, 2024

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Joy Wang from the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

perhaps every oldest daughter is their mother’s nightmare.

of reliving their life once more just to find out their dreams couldn’t be achieved,

of the blank canvas that got ripped in the middle of sketching.

everything hurts when i’m with you,

but it hurts worse to not be with you.

and how do i stop my anger when my heart aches so bad?

of the possibility of you stop loving me when you know the real me,

or else worse, you loving me when i’m…. all these.

when you could be happy,

when you could live a life that makes sense,

why would you choose one with me?

mother, i have never hated you.

my anger stems from just confusion.

a mask of feeling terrified.

i love you,

( i wish you can forgive me of my mistakes and the ones you haven’t know yet )

but loving you always feels like i have to make myself small.

and like the chinese mother you are, you always remember i am big, i am getting fat.

so how do i make myself small for you?

my bones are too big, my laughters are too big, my body is big. i am big. i am all these, i can’t be small. i can’t pretend i’m skinny and elegant.

i am my mother’s daughter.

i feel everything so much like the earth rotates around me, like there’s cosmic chaos out there.

will you look for me in another universe?

when i’m your picture perfect daughter?

one who’s going to reach all their dreams,

who’s going to save millions of people,

and one who doesn’t cringe when they look at the mirror,

one also without the inked scars in their body — just to feel freedom from the life that reminds them of all the pain they felt.

i love you,

and i know you love me,

but i wish you like me.

even now, i still wish you do.

but if i could choose to live again in the next life,

i’d still choose you as my mother again,

through all trials and tribulations,

and despite the hurt i know was fated between us,

i’d still choose you.

because you’re my mother,

and i am me because you’re my mother.

a part of me is you.

a part of you lives in me,

from my blood to my too-wide-smile,

my naïve self, my loving too much self,

and the woman who forgives all the hurt just to stay one more second with their loved ones.

one who laugh awkwardly when they did a mistake,

one who conceals everything with believing it’s all going to be okay despite them crippling down.

but i wish for you a daughter that isn’t my father’s daughter,

one who’d hurt you with words and think intelligence is more important than losing an arguement.

one who’d turn their back from you for themselves,

one whose heart fuming at you,

one who sometimes think of themselves higher than you,

one with problems they can’t solve in their head,

one who’s still hung up over all the things that hurted them.

you deserve a loving husband that treats the girl in you like your daydreams,

and children who tells you they love you like a prayer each nights

but i am my father’s daughter, so i said “ okay “ and go to my bedroom to sleep.

and we spent another night not talking about it.

but i love you,

i really do.

i just wish i could love you better,

without hurting myself.

but if given the chance,

i’d chose you as my mother again.

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