In Her Absence...

It was around 11 a.m., and the sunlight creeping through the windows was tainted by the city’s smog, casting a grim hue across the room. That light in the City of Mexico has always been a little dirty, a little dull, much like the atmosphere inside our home. The arguments were never quiet, never contained.

That day, I remember the yelling reaching a new, unbearable level, filling the apartment like a storm, seeping under the doors and into every corner. I was around four years old, alone in my bedroom with my baby brother, who sat next to me in his crib, his wide black eyes watching me as if he knew something terrible was unfolding. His innocence weighed heavy on me, even then. I tried to reassure him, tried to reassure myself, that everything would be okay, but the sound of my mother crying in the other room shattered whatever fragile sense of safety I was clinging to.

The argument was always the same. It revolved around my mother wanting to visit her family, and my father, as always, refusing. The reason? My “uncle” J. But J wasn’t really my uncle. He was my half-brother, my mother’s firstborn, a secret that had been woven into the very fabric of our dysfunctional family. My grandparents had adopted him, pretending he was their child, and so he became my “uncle” in the tangled mess of our family dynamics. The layers of this lie, like a poorly scripted telenovela, were too complex for my young mind to fully grasp at the time. All I knew was that J was the source of so many fights, a ghost that haunted my parents’ marriage and, by extension, my childhood.

It was more than just the family secret, though. I always suspected my father felt threatened by J’s existence. I see it now; how he must have projected his own childhood traumas onto this situation, onto this boy who symbolized a part of my mother’s past that he could never control. My father carried deep wounds, many of which I’ll speak about as this story unfolds. He was just a boy when he was left alone to fend for himself in an apartment after my grandfather passed away not long after his mother's passing.

None of his older siblings wanted him to live with them. At twelve or fourteen years old, he was abandoned by the very people who should have protected him, forced to grow up in a world where he had to survive on his own. I can only imagine the trauma that must have carved into him; the fear of abandonment, the sense of being unwanted, unworthy of love. And now, as a man, those wounds were still raw, still driving his actions, even though they had been buried for decades. J represented a part of my mother’s life that didn’t include him, and perhaps that made him feel like he was second in her life? I guess I’ll never know.

I stayed in my room that morning, trying to shield my brother and myself from the chaos outside. But it was impossible to escape the sound of my mother’s sobs or my father’s angry voice. Then, the door creaked open, and there she was, my mother. Her face was wet with tears, her eyes swollen with grief and anger. I remember the way my stomach twisted as soon as I saw her; I knew that look too well.

Somehow, deep down, I always felt like I was the source of her pain, the reason for her unhappiness.

She came over to the crib, scooping up my brother in her arms, bouncing him roughly as if her emotions could be soothed by movement. Then she turned to me, her words sharp, unexpected. “I’m leaving your father. Who do you want to stay with, him or me?”

I was four years old.

How was I supposed to answer a question like that?

Even at that age, I had already learned that she was not a safe person for me. Her moods were unpredictable, her anger always simmering just beneath the surface. My father, on the other hand, in comparison, felt like home, my emotional anchor. So I chose him. I said with a tremor in my voice, “I want to stay with Dad.”

The look she gave me in that moment, an expression of infinite disappointment, a kind of betrayal that stung so deeply, has haunted me for fifty-five years. I can still see it in my mind as clearly as if it happened yesterday. In that instant, I felt something snap between us. It was as if, in choosing my father, I had severed some invisible cord that tethered us as mother and daughter. And in the years that followed, that severed connection manifested in a thousand ways.

Every decision I’ve made since has been haunted by that moment, by the feeling of having disappointed her so deeply that I could never make it right. I learned to live for the approval of others, to avoid displeasing anyone, all in a futile attempt to erase the shame of losing my mother's love and connection. That moment, the instant her eyes filled with disappointment and pierced mine, became the seed of a belief that I wasn’t worthy of love, and so, every action I’ve taken since has been a quest for validation.

I shaped my life around the fear of rejection, desperately seeking approval from others, hoping that if I could just be good enough, do enough, or please enough, I would finally prove my worth. It became a pattern, a loop I couldn’t escape, as though by collecting other people's admiration, I could somehow fill the void left by the love and connection I lost that long ago day.

But now, after all these years, I can finally acknowledge how deeply unfair it was. It was unfair for her to ask me to make that choice. It was unfair for her to place the weight of her unhappiness on the shoulders of a four-year-old. And it was especially unfair to hold it against me for the rest of my life, to cut me off emotionally because of a decision I made out of fear and self-preservation.

Looking back with a compassionate heart, I can see now that I was just a child, trying to navigate an impossible situation. I didn’t deserve the burden she placed on me, and I certainly didn’t deserve the shame that followed. It’s taken me years to understand that my choice that day was not a reflection of my worth or my loyalty. It was the instinct of a little girl searching for safety in a chaotic world.

This is where my healing begins: in the recognition that I did nothing wrong.

That little girl, sitting on the crib, trying to comfort her baby brother, was doing the best she could with the tools she had. The mother-daughter cord may have been cut that day, but I’m learning how to mend it within myself, to rebuild the connection with the part of me that was wounded so long ago. It’s a slow, tender process, but with every step, I feel a little lighter. The shame is lifting, and in its place, I’m finding a deep well of self-compassion.

In truth, it was never about who I chose that day. It was about the impossible weight of being asked to choose at all. And now, as I reflect on that moment, I choose me. I am choosing to heal, to forgive in due time, as I am finally allowing myself to express and sit with the sadness and the anger that have been contained within me for so long, and to release the shame that never belonged to me in the first place.