Love Me Tender

NEVER in my whole life did I ever imagine myself sitting in a little room in Los Angeles, fiddling with the hem of my dress, waiting for someone to ask me about my life. It was a strange kind of quiet here - not like the kind I knew back home in Manila. This quiet was heavier, like it was pressing into my chest. I sat on a pale blue chair, my legs crossed at the ankle, while the soft hum of the air conditioner filled the room. Outside the window, I could see the tops of palm trees swaying against the cloudless sky, so different from the heavy rains and gray afternoons I grew up with. Everything in this city felt wide and distant. Even the people. I suppose I should've been used to loneliness by now. I lived most of my life in the spaces between people. My father worked overseas, in places I'd only ever seen on maps. For as long as I could remember, his voice came through crackly phone calls once or twice a week, saying how he missed us, how he'd be home soon (even if he never was), how he was proud of me. But promises were easy when you were far away. And my mother... she worked long hours at a hotel, leaving before the sun was up and coming home long after it set. She was a good mother, in the ways she could be. Tired, but kind. Stretched thin, but still soft when she smiled at me. Most days, it was just me in the house. A small girl in an old, sunlit room with faded curtains and a cassette player by the bed. I remember lying on my stomach, flipping through old magazines my mother brought home, circling the faces of singers and actors I knew I'd never meet. I'd listen to love songs on the radio, imagining what it might feel like to be wanted so badly, to be sung about. I don't know when it happened - when that hope turned into something else. Maybe it was when we left. My mother and I packed our lives into two heavy suitcases and flew across the ocean to Los Angeles to be with my dad. She said it was for me - for a better life, for opportunities, for a future she couldn't give me back home. I believed her. I think I still do. But L.A. was nothing like I imagined. It was big and loud and hollow. The streets stretched on forever, and the people spoke too quickly, their words sharp and careless. I felt smaller here than I ever did in Manila. Now, here I was. Seated in a tiny room with pale walls, a ticking clock, and a woman named Dr. Alvarez who wore glasses on a chain around her neck and looked at me like she could already see every broken thing I was too scared to name. "This is just a conversation, Marie," she said, her voice soft and slow, as if she knew I might run if she moved too fast. I wanted to be anywhere else. Back in my old room with the pink curtains. Back at the little bakery near our house where they knew my name. Back in a place where I didn't have to explain myself to anyone. But there was no going back. Not after him. I wondered what Dr. Alvarez would think if I said his name out loud. Even the memory of it felt heavy in my chest. "It started a long time ago," I said, unsure of where to even begin. "I guess... I was always looking for something. Or maybe someone." Dr. Alvarez didn't interrupt. She didn't press. She just waited. I thought about the girl I used to be. About Manila. About afternoons sitting by the window with the radio on low, the smell of rain hanging in the air, pretending I was someone else. Someone beautiful, someone important. Someone worth chasing after. I thought about the way his voice sounded the first time he spoke to me. Low, rough, teasing. Like he already owned me. "I didn't think it would be like this," I whispered. "I didn't think... love could feel like drowning." There. I'd said it. Not his name. Not yet. But the truth. Dr. Alvarez only gave a small nod, and the room fell silent again. I realized then that this was how it would go - piece by piece, memory by memory. And maybe if I told it right, if I said it all aloud, I could finally leave those pieces here in this room, with its cold air and walk out lighter than I came in. Maybe. I took a breath, my fingers stilling against the fabric of my dress. And for the first time, I opened my mouth to tell my story. "I didn't know it then... but meeting him would be the beginning of everything I was never ready for."