Baby Came Home [h.s.]

1

I guess you can consider this my first actual entry. Dr. Judd suggested that I write everything out to better understand where things went wrong – to help me move forward. So I guess I'll start at the beginning.

60 years ago, my abuela and abuelo moved to the golden state of California with two hundred dollars to their name and their hearts full of ambition. It didn't take very long until my abuelo had found a job and they were settled into a home. It also didn't take very long for my abuela to find out that she was pregnant with a girl.

In the coming months, my abuela started doing odd jobs wherever she could – babysitting, housekeeping – anything she could find. My abuelo took more shifts at his job, working himself to the bone to make sure that they would be able to provide for the new baby.

After months of hard work my abuela went into labor, and after 13 hours of pushing, out came my mom.

"Dios, she's beautiful" My abuela breathed heavily, admiring the blessing that had just entered their lives.

"Sé mi amor. What should we name her?" My abuelo responded. While he'd been so focused on admiring my mother, he hadn't realized the life fading from Abuela's eyes. She passed only minutes after my mother's birth, leaving my father to provide for his daughter and to give her the only name he could see fit.

**

"Mariana, there are certain things you will learn in life. Do you think we'd be living in this dump if I had the opportunities that you have? Mija, going to college is the only way for you to succeed in ways that I cannot. All I want is to see you thrive."

My mother hated to hear her name come from his lips. Every time it was reverberated, she was reminded of the expectations he had for her, the life he had already mapped out for her. Abuelo had decided to name my mom after Abuela, hoping that she'd live on through my mom. However, my mom hated the burden of trying to be someone other than herself.

"Papa, I know! We have this same conversation day after day and I get it. You and mama came here with nothing. It's up to me to make this family better. I know. It's just stressful, okay?"

Just like my mother's hate for her name, she hated being confined. She would always tell me that she loved Abuelo with all of her heart, but sometimes love isn't enough to make someone stay. And although he was her father, and she was his daughter, she moved out on her own the day she turned eighteen.

She never told me that story, I think, because it was too painful for her to relive. Although she moved out, she didn't lose contact with Abuelo. In fact, I think it made it better.

My mom would call Abuelo to talk quite often, and my mom always said that moving out made Abuelo realize that she was her own person. That it made it easier for him to accept that he couldn't control who she would be and that she was her own person.

My mom never went to college, although I don't think that's why we didn't end up in a better situation. If my mom had gone to college, she probably would have racked up debt just to end up dropping out. But my mom did say that moving out made it easier for Abuelo to accept her decision.

My mom was what you would call a serial job hopper. She could never stay in one place for too long, and I think that might have carried over to her patterns with men. When I became a teenager, my mom told me about how she had the time of her life in her twenties.

She would go out with friends, date different guys, but it was always harmless. She said that they would always ask her out on another date, or ask her to be their girlfriend, but she would always say no.

"Julieta, men think that they run this world and that they're entitled to everything. Well guess what? Women were not made for a man and if you ever feel like you owe a man anything, you don't."

"But what about dad? You married him, didn't you?"

"Yes, but your dad was different from any other man I'd ever met. We were soulmates, and I will die believing that, you hear me? Mija, your dad would have kissed the ground I walked on if I told him it would make me happy, and although I still stand by the fact that you shouldn't owe anything to a man, I would have done the same for him. But it's because my love was reciprocated that we were able to work so well together."

And although my parents were in love, it wasn't enough to stop the inevitable.

When I was still a toddler my dad passed away, leaving my mom to provide for me just as Abuelo had for her. Sometimes I think my mom always focused on telling me the best memories that she had with my dad so that even after she's gone, I'll still remember him through her.

I know my mom went through a lot. She grew up without a mother, my dad passed away just as soon as they'd figured out a plan for their lives, she had to raise me all on her own. I do sympathize with the trauma she endured throughout her life, but that doesn't mean I'm not angry at her for the trauma she caused in my life.

My mom always said that mental trauma can manifest into physical pain, and after these past couple of years, I'm starting to actually believe it. After my dad passed, my mom said that the pain of losing him was too unbearable, that she could feel her heart breaking and that she couldn't even manage to get out of bed most mornings.

My mom couldn't afford to feed me and pay medical bills to try and get a diagnosis, so she turned to the first opportunity that was presented to her. Opioids.

My mother was a loving person at heart, she only wished the best for me and for me to succeed, however I decided to. But that was when she was sober. When she was high on pain pills, the version I got was a lot less loving and a lot more violent.

I feel like Dr. Judd and I have made progress when it comes to the issues I have with my mother, so I'm not really going to delve into the extent of that. I just think I should start from the beginning, and for me, that's with my mother.

Because of my dad's passing, when I was younger, my mom didn't entertain the idea of any man. She was very adamant about not wanting to date and that my dad was the only person for her. But that was when she first started using, and that was a different version of my mother.

Once I got to middle school, she started going out with guys, just to see if she was ready and according to her, she was. Thus began the endless cycle of being introduced to men that only stayed for a week at most. There's nothing wrong with being non-committal and I don't think it was wrong for her to see what the world had to offer in terms of dating.

But, eventually just being introduced turned into random guys staying over for weeks, or moving in on Saturday just to pack up their shit and leave on Monday. She went from idolizing my dad to allowing scruffy men she'd just met to sleep in the same house as her teenage daughter. I shouldn't have had to experience what I did, but here we are.

I've resented my mother for so long now, that I'm not even emotional writing all of this down. It's just how my life was, and I shouldn't be okay with that. I know Harry wasn't okay with that. Sometimes I could tell by the way he looked at me that he wished he could tell my mom exactly what he wanted.

But that's Harry, and I'm supposed to be talking about my mom.

Well, actually, we're supposed to be talking about me. But aren't we all just a culmination of everyone we've ever met? Every interaction we've ever had ingrained in our subconscious and helping us construct who we want to be and exactly who we don't want to be?

I'll conclude today's entry with this: At the end of the day, I think my mom was ashamed of herself. Spending every second of the day high made it a lot easier for her to ignore all of the bad things that had happened in her life and all of the bad things that she had done. She knew that she damaged me in ways that could never be repaired and her way of coping was apparent. I have no sympathy for her because she never had any sympathy for me.

So it goes.