The Days I Have to Remind Myself I Am Not My Mother

There are days when the anxiety seeps into my throat, regurgitating bile and my throat is closing in on me. The oppressiveness of old relationships bind up my current communications. Saturday afternoon and I’m trying to relax but my throat and my anxieties are weighing me down.

• What is PTSD?

Generational and societal shame Mother’s Day rolls around with a rotting stench.

I don’t want to be reminded of my past through ads. I know it’s there. I feel it in my fucking throat, my fucking modismos/idioms. My fears. My hurtful mom.

I get irritated with my mindset, I get irritated with me. I close my eyes and I just see low income apartments, cockroaches in underwear, they invade our toothbrushes, our food, it invades my sense of self. Dirty, wrong,

Listening to my mom’s sex tories in a damp basement when I was 8, “And every time I felt like a doll/Y me sentia como una muñeca cada vez,” and that’s where I learned to be a fucking therapist.

At the age of 8, I was taught, “kiss on the cheek, smile, say yes.” I fought at every stop, but my body wasn’t mine. It wasn’t me. Chamaca grosera became the main words in her lexicon reserved for me. Roaches squashed but the paranoia still gets me. “Please don’t let me be like my mom” I pray to me.

Never ending heartburn, feeling of forsaken.

May the seventh feel less like a man-made hell in my future, slowly healing my heart, healing the sutures.

Closing note:

Mothers Day can be hard for many of us who feel guilt for no longer having a relationship with a toxic figure in our lives. The celebrated status can weigh heavy on our conscious, guilting us with every sale of a bouquet. You’re not alone, and you can hold space for people without having to physically hold them in your lives. Te amo, me amo. Amate.