Mi Hija Es Muy Independiente: My Daughter is so Independent

A story goes around my family often when someone talks about my childhood. They would say, “You were so quiet, so self-sufficient that your mom would have to go find you sometimes.” When hearing this story, I would equate that to my aggressive sense of independence and how mature I was from a young age. But then, when I started talking to a therapist and peeling back the layers to find a starkly different reality.

I was trying to survive a childhood where my mom was disengaged because she was trying to survive herself. This meant finding things to do on my own when my sister was gone to school. This meant being inside my head a lot more when things outside didn’t seem so safe. It meant hiding when others would stare or say pitiful things about me.

I was cursed, people would say, because why else would a child that was born so beautifully become a monster six months later with a lazy eye that refused to look straight? It was what others would say. The best one of the things they said was how people forgot to say god bless her after complimenting me. This, according to everyone, was a curse hidden in a compliment. But everyone knowing so much about me made me want to hide from everyone else.

My sister became my bodyguard, and then when my mom left for the United States, she morphed into this bodyguard-sister-mom thing. But when the world became too much, as it usually did, I would hide even from my sister. In hiding, I learned to do things independently, entertain myself, and be alone. But then, when I would hide for too long, I wondered why no one would get me, and then I would remember that my grandma moved slower. She was so much older.

Plus, my grandma would say, let her deal with her demons, when she talked about me and she would close the door and whisper prayers. Prayers I would hear from the other side of the door as I hugged my knees to my chest and shut my eyes because I didn’t want to see the devil my grandma talked about so much when she referenced me. But eventually, she would come and open the door. She would do the sign of the cross and ask if I was ready to join her outside. Sometimes I nodded and sometimes when my demon still brewed inside I would keep my eyes closed and shake my head.

In the midst of my solitude, the quietness became a comforting pal. The devil that lurked everywhere I couldn’t see gradually became familiar, almost like a third primo. As the hours turned into days and the days into weeks, I found myself in a continuous state of self-reflection. The longer I remained by myself, the more I realized that no one would come to check on me, at least not until something in their day sparked a memory and reminded them of me.

It was as though I was a painting hanging on a wall, easily overlooked and forgotten amidst the hustle and bustle of life. My presence was as quiet as the solitude that enveloped me, making it too easy for others to let me slip from their minds. But the one person who couldn’t forget me was me. I was the constant audience to my own performance, the ever-present observer. I was the one who couldn’t forget me – for how could one forget oneself?

When I realized I could take care of myself, everything clicked. That’s when I knew I was the only being who couldn’t disappoint me. So I stepped into the world as a premature adult, and I became a one-woman show. But I became exhausted. Always exhausted.

But then I hear my mom’s pride in that one undramatic child who never asked for anything, who left home and never came back, who has had no troubles at all. I look in the mirror and see the scars etched in my soul like railroad tracks, and I smile and say, “Si, Ma.”