A letter for my daughter Danica Rheynne Yu

Oh such wonder you are to me...

‘Twas almost midnight when I successfully tucked Nica to sleep tonight. She was able to sleep in the afternoon so it became torturous for me to try and let her sleep. If only you know ‘nak what your mom’s schedule is but I know you’re much too young to really comprehend why mommy became so busy already.

Mornings I wake up before you do so we could encourage you to wake up early. I know you hate waking up as I hate waking up too. Manang mana ka sa mom mo, nak, so I know how you feel. But even so, I push myself to wake up at 5:30 am. Do you know I sleep around 3am? But I don’t complain. I love waking up for you. Though I am not the one who do your morning routine with you, but I want to just be there, as much as possible I want to be alert and wide awake so we could cuddle, play around a little and pray together. I love receiving a hug from you and wishing you a good day as you bid me goodbye as you head for school. My body’s really tired so I try to sleep before 8 to wake up around 10:30. As you head to your other home to study and play some, mommy is already wide awake busy with work. You know I work for you, right? Sure you understand but maybe not as well because you continue to make green papered money for me ‘cos you want me to have money. I know what you’re saying is, you want me to have money already so I won’t be so busy and we’d be back to playing more. So though I have a lot of things I need to do and my body’s feeling a bit tired, when you arrive from your other home I make sure I spend an hour or two with you. I want to be with you, to make you feel you’re my number one because I love you.

At night my energy’s about to run out but you are at your most energetic. We play around, sometimes you ask me to toss you around like a crazy lil girl that you are. Do you know mommy’s heart is not so good? Sure you do, but maybe not as well because you continue to beg me to make rough play with you as I try to gasp for air every now and then. But it doesn’t matter, I want to love you and make you feel how much you mean to me. I just stop when I can’t take anymore and see that you are already satisfied with our “play” which actually feels like a UFC bout.

Then it’s time to go to bed. I bought you 3 storybooks and you want me to read all 3 of them plus online stories before you sleep. I am so tired, ready to cry, but I don’t because I want to read you stories. It’s therapy for me to hear you giggle, listen to how you interpret the stories and how you laugh when you change the story and make all side comments about how the characters are portrayed in the illustrations. I love your imagination, ‘nak. You have such a brilliant mind I can’t help but be proud of you. There are nights when you simply don’t want to sleep when I have a deadline I need to reach. You know mommy still need to work, right? Sure you do, but maybe not as well because you still say you don’t want to sleep and you want to cuddle some more. And I do. I love cuddling with you my dearest one. I love feeling your skin brushing against mine. I love your butterfly kisses, your giggles and many I love you’s. I love how you make all sorts of reasons just to distract me and give my full attention to you. I love you so much my lil girl. As tired as I am but I like spending time with you.

Now you’re asleep and I look at you and I sigh in great wonder. You are such a sweetheart. I can’t start working yet because I am just amazed by you. As tired as I am but you energize me. You gave me so much strength because you make my heart happy every time I see you. You are so wonderful. I never thought I am capable of loving another this way until you came into my life. Ours was not a love at first sight but a love that grew and it’s growing exponentially. I will never stop loving you.

Oh how blessed I am in this life of mine.

(Danica aged 4 years and 10 months as of this writing.)

Empty well

My heart is like a waterless well. You throw a piece of rock and wait for the sound of the rock splashing on the water below, but you don’t hear anything. You try to throw in more and more rocks but there’s not a sound. The well is dry and very deep and practically useless. It even poses a danger. You’d want to just cover it up to avoid wasting the space but covering the hole would cost so much time, energy and you don’t have enough soil. You’d choose to just leave it as is and surround it with signs so others would be warned. It is left abandoned. It stays there- empty, useless and dangerous… No one cares about it. No one wanted to figure out why there’s no water under there. No one wondered whether it once had limitless flow of clean water and how useful it once was. Surely something happened to that well. But no one cared to figure it out… they just went to dig another well that serves its purpose. So this empty well stays empty. No one cared... No one figured out why… No one really tried.

Words are mere words. It no longer has power

You open your mouth and the words started to pour out and slamming its way into our bruised hearts. But our hearts have been bruised for so long and oh so many times that your stabbing words no longer hurt. We couldn’t feel any more pain. Your words can no longer penetrate through the thick scabs surrounding our hearts.  We’ve become accustomed to your insults.  Your vile words are all the weapon you have. Without its power you cannot harm us.  You’ve used it on us for so long and it broke our souls.  But we know better and your words are worthless now. Your hatefulness can now only affect you. Instead of pushing to attack and be violent, I chose to step back and walk away. By doing so I prove one thing and that’s the only thing I need to prove. I am so much better than you. I pity you… so much. You trapped yourself in your own world of hate and you can’t even see it. I pity you… Why did you allow yourself not to find joy?

Love is easier said than proven

I realize it's so easy to say we love people but it's so hard to actually prove it. I myself am guilty of this. I say I love you to people who I don't exactly really love. It occurs to me that love is such a strong word and sometimes we use this word to mean we are comfortable with this person, we like hanging out with this person, we are having fun with this person and so on... But do we really love these people we claim to love?

I am one of the victims as well. When a friend tells me I am loved, I believe it with my heart. But sometimes too, that love is only expressed in words and I'm left with a lot of "clues" that tells me I'm not really loved. Sometimes these people who say they love me only makes me feel like a doormat. They only end up making me feel like I'm not as good as the other persons they also love but I just take it in, shove off the pains, and just continue on believing that I am loved. Well, baby, that old me is GONE.

If I want to make a big change in myself then I have to clean out my closet and throw away all the junk that's burdening me, including people. When I don't feel it's okay then I have to trust my instincts and tell myself over and over again that IT IS NOT OKAY.

There are a lot of people who are still there to make me feel special in their own ways and I can actually feel they love me. I too would need to make that change and avoid saying I love you to people who I only like hanging out with or something. By learning to value what love really means is crucial to create a great relationship with others. I don't want to be the girl who makes others assume that they are a lot more special to me than I can really make them feel because that is just not fair to them as it's not fair for me as well.

The life of a work at home mother acting as a single mom

So I’m back to working at home. I am so thankful to have been given this privilege by my new company to be working at home because I get to spend more time with my daughter and I get to watch her closely and bond more with her. But working at home as a single mother isn’t all that fun as it can get a bit exhausting too because I have a very demanding boss who I love so much and her name is Danica.

So here’s how my life goes day in and day out.

I don’t want to start with the first thing I do in the morning because my day doesn’t start out that way. Let’s just start at around noon because that’s when my day starts right now (but this will change starting next week when my daughter starts going to school but for now let’s begin around noon). Noontime I wake up and start my day with a cup of coffee. I usually don’t eat yet around this time but slowly preparing for my lunch. I start my day really slow and you’ll understand at the end of this blog why. I prep myself to start working and around 2PM usually I’m already doing some work. As much as I want to focus on work, I can’t. Why? Because my little 3 year old, and sometimes with her cousins, would barge in my room and make a mess or would beg me to move so they could use the laptop. It can drive me crazy sometimes but what can a mother do, right? So basically the whole day I do my work less than I wish I could and more with getting myself insane dealing with a very active little girl. It pays though whenever she’d come to hug me and kiss me and tell me I’m the best mom in the world.

At night I usually get to work for longer hours and I love working at night because it’s more peaceful. I try to tuck my daughter to bed as early as possible but usually she’d fall asleep around 10 or during unfortunate evenings, around 11 or 12! If she is really exhausted then she’d fall asleep easy but when she isn’t then I need to do a lot of convincing and we spend a long time with storytelling before she’d doze off. By the time she’s asleep I’m also feeling a bit tired but I still need to work. I usually work until around 3am and I’d quickly try to get some sleep by then. Oh just to add, sometimes when I work at night I would still go and check up on her whenever she’s moving during her sleep because she would sometimes get nightmares. I’d rush to her so she’d stay asleep. Waking her up would be a disaster because she’d stay awake until dawn!  Usually around 5am she’d wake up and ask me for milk. Sometimes when she sees there’s sunlight she’d force herself to wake up and demand that I’d wake up too because she was told that night time is for sleeping and day time is for waking up so I should wake up. Considering I just fell asleep and groggy, that is just impossible so I still have to convince her some more that I need to sleep. Sometimes she’d keep on talking to me after I take off her diaper until she can already go out and be with her yaya. I try to go back to sleep again feeling really groggy. Around 7am or 8am usually she’d come barging in the room trying to wake me up for some petty reasons like she’d talk to me about Peppa Pig or Pink Panther or would tell me her cousin fought with her again. It goes on and on and on until around noontime I get to wake up and I feel like I could just sleep the whole day but I can’t otherwise I’d be tagged as a lazy person. 

That’s my basic regular routine… Add to that the other things I need to do to keep myself sane so I still squeeze in some time to go out and hang out which is one of the great perks of working at home. And although I’m glad to have this job, I also have a job as a writer and got a new task up as well so I am basically working for this company I’m with but also doing some freelance jobs on the side. On top of that, starting June 4 I would have to help prepare for her school which starts 10AM and would help her with her assignments!

Sheesh! And they think being a stay at home mom is the most convenient and laziest job around.