VALENTINE’S Day is often draped in hues of red and pink, wrapped in roses, chocolates, and grand professions of love. But for some, this day is not a celebration of love but a reminder of love that was lost before it ever had a chance to bloom.
For Aya Amir Mohamed Tongcua Deiab, 13, of Barangay Guisijan, Luau-an, Antique, love is not a fairytale written in the stars but a wound inflicted by the very man who should have been her protector — her father.
Born into a love story that was doomed before her first breath, Aya’s very existence became the catalyst for her father’s departure. Her mother, Brooke Saan Tongcua, a Filipina searching for stability in a foreign land, found solace in a man whose culture would not accept the daughter they created together.
When Aya was born, her father arrived late, clutching a blue teddy bear, expecting a son. That moment defined her entire relationship with him — disappointment. “A father is his daughter’s first love,” they say, but for Aya, he was her first heartbreak. The rejection cut deep, a pain that lingered in spaces where a father’s love should have been.
Growing up in a broken home, Aya carried the weight of unanswered questions and silent burdens. Did her mother resent her for the pain her father left behind? Was she merely a reminder of a past best forgotten? The ghosts of these doubts followed her into adulthood, lurking in every conversation left unsaid.
“To believe that I was a piece of my mother’s worst tragedy made me feel like an idiot, a burden, and useless,” Aya confessed. “Maybe my mother despises me because I remind her so much of my father?”
But fate, though cruel, is not without irony. Her mother, years later, found love again in the most unexpected way — a dating app. While Aya’s skepticism loomed, she chose to grant her mother the happiness she never had. And in an astonishing twist, her mother’s new partner became the father she never knew she needed — a stranger who showed her that love is not always defined by blood, but by choice.
“That may have been the biggest risk she made since the man she met online ended up being 10 times more fatherly than my biological father,” Aya reflected. “But I knew he made her happy by the way my mother’s eyes crinkled at the corner of every shot they took.”
Yet, Aya’s journey of healing is far from over. The name she was given, a relic of a past she never chose, remains a battle she fights within herself.
“Since my father named me after his mistress, Aya, I have always found the name repulsive,” she revealed.
“But I will not let it define me. In the future, my pride in what I am doing and my objectives will not be constrained by the false constitution in my name. I aspire to be the greatest lawyer in history,” she proclaimed.
This Valentine’s Day, while the world sings odes to love, Aya’s story stands as a solemn reminder that love is not always beautiful.
Sometimes, love is the absence that shapes us, the pain that teaches us, and the resilience that allows us to rise beyond it./PN
