He estado meditando sobre las mujeres y sus relaciones con sus respectivas madres.

I have come to the conclusión that most women (I haven't quite talked to men about this to see their point of view) tend to fall under one of two categories: 1) either they idolize their mums and spend every waking moment as near to them as they can; or 2) they resent their mothers and tend to want to be as far away, or as different, from them as it's humanly possible.

You can distinguish them since the first will likely talk about her mother in every conversation you have ("y entonces fui con mi mamá a tomar un café", "mi mamá me comentó que...", "estaba visitando a mi mamá"). The second, on the other hand, will most likely never talk about her mother unless she is complaining and her greatest fear is to someday wake up and realize she has become her mom (matenme porfavor, no quiero continuar con la maldición).

¿Y yo en que categoría caigo? Con todo el dolor de mi alma, en la segunda.

Truth is, as a child I idolized my mom: I did everything she asked of me and believed her to be the Absolute Bearer of Truth. I grew up being very close to her and being always atentive to her wishes and needs, and while I recognized that she messed up sometimes, I always excused her, no matter how childish she could be.

y entonces llegó la "adultez".

And then I realized that she was human. Suddenly, she was just another person and I began to see her flaws in a completely different way. I realized, quite shocked, that I resented her. For several reasons, no less. No me malinterpreten, I love her dearly and couldn´t envision my life without her. However, she fell rather nastily from her altar and I saw all that I had not seen before.

Mi madre no sólo es humana, sino que es castrante (de manera figurativa, claro, no puedo ser castrada ténicamente...), obsesiva, posesiva, bipolar, temperamental, violenta, autocompasiva, depresiva, impulsiva, floja, egoista, narcisista, paranoica...


And I probably forgot some other adorable traits. Sure, she is also a loving, liberal, defensive and somewhat devoted mother who really does care for us and tries to do her best. It´s just that her best usually comes at our expense.

When I entered college I realized that most kids did not have to raise their younger siblings, that it was perfectly acceptable to go out with friends on weekends and that having the occasional boyfriend was not supposed to be a maratonic spree of hide and seek. I mean, it´s not that I didn´t notice it before, it´s just that it never seemed so pathetic as it did then. And does now.

My mother is the kind of woman who believed her husband to be unfaithful, the need for evidence be damned, and had no qualms discussing it in front of her children. Por lo tanto, I was subjected for years to the emotionally-scarring torture of seeing my mother pick fights with my stepfather, who I always considered my real dad. No dudo que mi padre haya sido menos que perfecto, but I never saw daddy treat mom wrongly. If he did, he hid it rather well, while my mom didn´t. This put her in a rather unfavorable position, since she came out looking like the villian in a Cuento Vaquero, bad dialogue included.

Sometimes the fights were justified, like when dad picked on one of us and mom defended us, he got all macho and picked fights with other drivers, or when he came home upset and began a Reign of Terror while we cowered, trying not to invoke his screaming anger. Other times, however, she begun fights for incredibly irrational reasons, like the time dad wanted to hear Barry White after one of her typical bad-cumbia marathons and she screamed of how unfair it was because he didn´t take her out to have fun.

Muchas veces iniciaba peleas sin razón válida y yo le mencionaba que tratara de dejar competir con Elba Esther Gordillo por el mayor número de disputas dentro de un mismo partido. She never paid attention, claiming she would never let herself be treated badly again. She fought with daddy nearly daily right up to the morning he had a brain hemorrhage and he did not ask her for help, perhaps because she was upset, or perhaps because he did not think it was a big deal and stupidly tried to be strong. No creo saberlo nunca.

Dad lasted all of 11 days before he could not hold on anymore. It was a painful, tiring and horrid affair for everyone involved. When daddy finally passed away I felt one of the only good parts in me wilt with a rather destructive force, and though I was sourrounded by many, I was really alone. Pero después de todo, siempre lo estoy.

I needed my mother. So did my brothers. We needed unity, but she was too consumed in her own pain and guilt to even bother to return our hugs, let alone help us deal with our father´s passing.

The kids were affected by it, but they, like kids do, seemed to bounce back much better than I. No sé como, pero lo asimilaron de manera sorprendente, aunque probablemente hay cicatrices.

A lo mejor fue que no tuvieron que ver lo que yo. They never saw my dad cry, immobile, incapable to speak or move anything but his eyes. They did not spend endless nights in stiff plastic chairs, holding daddy´s hand against their cheeks and speaking soft words of encouragements and promises of things that we would never do again.

They didn´t live through That Night, the one where the doctor and nurses rushed in a last effort to save dad. Where the doctor said that daddy would not make it, and that it would be a good idea to call my mom. They did not have to swallow their tears and walk back into that room, pretend to be strong and speak to daddy about how everything was going to be fine.

That Night I stood alone for hours, holding dad´s hand and looking out the window of the sixth floor (neurocirugía) of Hospital La Raza, watching the rain fall upon an always lively Mexico City in the early hours before dawn; waiting for my mother and trying not to drown in sorrow; willing myself not to break down and sob, because that was the last thing dad needed. I never, ever, felt so alone and lonely as I did then.

Sí, quedé muy traumatizada por eso. Mamá también, pero a ella le fue peor, porque sintió todo el peso de la culpa acumulada en esos días. For the last 11 days she wondered if things could have been differently; if she had not been so bitchy with dad that morning before he collapsed, would he have said anything? Could it all have been avoided? Had she been a bad wife?

No voy a mentir. Siempre le dije a mamá que no, que todas las parejas discuten. En realidad, sólo era de dientes para afuera, porque no podía sentir pena por ella. Se lo había dicho muchas veces antes y me ignoró. No había sido una esposa atroz, pero pudo haber sido una mucho mejor. I do not blame her, I do not think she is guilty of anything, any more than I am. I do not condemn her, that is not my job. I, however, do not excuse her behavior either. She is a grown woman who had her reasons and made her choices; it is up to her to evaluate her behavior now.

She has not matured. She has not grown up. Neither have I. I resent her, and sometimes wish I could just go far away and forget all. I love her yet hate many things about her. Aunque suene como mala canción.

I feel she is rude, crude and impolite. She is superficial and immature. She feels all men want to seduce her and all women are out to get her. Her idea of help is for others to take over her responsabilities. She has some seriously paranoid moments where she blames people for things that are hardly believable or even plausible. She is controlling, bad-spoken, and lazy.

She complains she never goes out, but she never lets me do it either, under the pretense that I will have my whole life to do it. She constantly complains that I am fat, saying that she does it to inspire me to lose weight. She is volatile and treats the kids like crap when she gets upset for any reason, until I have to tell her to not be so offensive. Y eso que mi boca no es de santa.

Pancho, my 13 year old brother, resents her as well. He feels she is paranoid, bitchy and immature. He complains on her laziness, which comes down to an all-time record when she calls on us from our various duties, like homework, just so that we can change the channel or answer the phone when it is right in front of her. Él es más valiente, él si se hecha sus rounds. Aunque, claro, siempre pierde, como tiende a pasar en los matriarcados.
Si alguna vez se preguntaron por qué estoy tan dañada, ps ya lo saben. Una muy mala combinacíón de genes defectuosos con una infancia de las que no salen en Disney. De esas en las que no hay querubines rechonchos y culones, pero sí pajaritos cantarines que te la mientan melódicamente. Donde el conejito peludo sí brinca ansiosamente a tus brazos amorosos, pero no por bondad, sino porque tiene rabia y quiere morderte con sus babeantes fauces.

Así como la ven, pudo haber sido mucho peor.