Isabela

**Today**



"Ana is standing outside the yellowed wooden door. She feels apprehensive because we lied to my boyfriend to come here. Nate wouldn’t let me be alone right now because his protective side takes precedence over any modesty when I’m in danger. My friend and I barely slept last night after I received the call from the hospital.
Even though the room is spacious, with light tones and so chic that it looks more like a hotel, I feel hands gripping my neck, choking me. All the hairs on my body are standing on end, and the energy of the place makes me believe in the same crap my grandmother did, as if there were evil spirits here. It’s like a storm is trapped just below the ceiling, with dark clouds boasting lightning, and a strong torrent of water accumulated, held back, ready to fall and soak us.
The woman before me doesn’t look like the person I came to see, whom I haven’t seen in many years. Her once round and rosy face is sunken, with visible bones. Her hair, which used to be dark blonde, no longer exists. With no eyebrows or eyelashes, my mother is unrecognizable.
I should hate her, toasting to her defeat as if savoring an old vintage wine. But is there any pleasure in seeing your mother with terminal pancreatic cancer? The only thing going down my throat is the heavier bitter taste of disappointment.
And where is the husband she left her daughter for?
Alone.
Withering.
Lost forever.
“Hi, Mom!” I say, wiping away some tears as I sit in a brown leather armchair next to her bed.
Her faded eyes, as if her soul is slowly disconnecting from her body, focus on mine. A brief burst of light permeates them, and she shudders while managing a small smile, coughing a little as she tries to sit up.
It hurts like hell to see her this way.
It hurts to know she’s left in a hospital because when she found out about the cancer and started chemotherapy, the husband she devoted her life to left her for a younger, healthier woman. Her friend, the doctor who called me to say Diana wanted to see me, was the one who told me all this. I had no idea she was sick or that Marcos had left her.
When you lie down in the nest of a serpent, you can’t expect anything different from its venom coursing through your veins. It’s no surprise he’d leave her when she was no longer useful.
“I thought...” She coughs, then extends her skeletal hand toward me, asking me to hold it. I glance away, avoiding her gaze, swallowing the damn sob stuck in my throat. I’m not evil, but I should be. I don’t hate her, but I could. Who would judge me if they looked at her now and shouted a ‘well done’? But I love that bastard. And I don’t want her to die. In fact, I’m cursing the universe because it’s going to take yet another person from me. Even if it’s someone who never loved me. And even being a fool, I lie down on her and hug her — I wish I hadn’t come, daughter.
“I’m a needy little bitch,” I say bitterly, pulling away from her body that smells of medicine. “How can I refuse a request from my mother, who wants to see me before she dies? Why didn’t you call earlier, when you found out?”
“Would you have taken care of me, despite everything I did?”
“I don’t know.”
That doctor called me yesterday. She told me my mother, the brilliant researcher, had only a few days left. She has no family. She spent her whole life in an orphanage, but since she was always a prodigy, she received a scholarship for college as soon as she left there at eighteen. Then she lived at the university until she got pregnant with me and later married my dad while studying. Until she became one of the most famous doctors in the country. Until she had the daughter she claimed to love and then destroyed.
Ana is out there. She’s a safe harbor. I’m not alone.
And I’m going to be okay when this is all over!
I have to be!
I’ve been living perfect, sweet days with a beautiful man who, for almost three months, swears his love for me every day when we wake up. We live at the college, the place we love and from which we have no desire to leave. I hardly go to my apartment because the loft we live in has a beautiful view of the temple my boyfriend loves. When we look out the window, lying in bed, we can see the entire campus.
I live every day in the perfect song I dreamed of. My boyfriend is stable, and I’m fighting every day to overcome my phobia. I’ve identified the triggers that make me self-harm. It doesn’t take much thought to know it’s abandonment. I’m so much like Nate that I sometimes scare myself. Whenever I believe that someone I love is leaving me, that I’m going to lose that person, I think the fault is mine, and I have an overwhelming urge to punish myself. Knowing this trigger and the mechanisms to gain a different perspective in moments of pain is what will help me hold back the impulse to cut. But nothing has made me feel that urge lately, and I have faith that it won’t happen again. However, if I do collapse for some reason, my mind is a bit stronger and more capable of facing that impulse without yielding.
My relationship with Nate is beautiful; it makes me crave marrying in a wedding dress, something I always thought would never happen. Sometimes I catch myself in front of the mirror imagining what it would be like to have my belly growing, holding a baby with the light, almond-shaped eyes of that delinquent. I dream of being the mother I never had. And, at the right moment, I’m going to be the best mother I can.
Everything about Nate makes my life seem happy. It’s easy to forget the pains we’ve lived and just think about the present when we’re together. When I’m in class or at the gym with Ana, Bia, and Cris, I find myself missing him.
Anyway, everything is going well, even though we’ve never been able to find out who the hell made the blog. Nate planned to expose my stepfather, but we’re still talking to a lawyer to put the plan into action and try to ensure that Marcos really gets screwed over as much as possible, although that’s not something guaranteed. The point is that I need to cleanse my soul. He has to pay somehow, even if it’s just with his name stained as a pedophile in front of everyone who still respects him. It’s a pain trying to make a powerful criminal pay in this fucked-up country. There’s always some loophole that can leave him unpunished. But I’m willing to fight to make him answer for what he did to me!
Diana won’t have enough life left to end up behind bars. And fighting against her is more difficult. She’s still my mother, even though in many moments she herself has forgotten that.
I know I’ll never forgive her. But I’m unable to free myself from the duality of feelings she created in me. It’s an eternal dance between love and hate.
“I know I deserve this. That I destroyed you. That I didn’t fight for my only daughter,” she confesses. A tear rolls down her wrinkled, stained face. “I let my vanity take precedence over my duty as a mother. But when I realized what I was doing, I had already lost you.”
“Or you only realized because your husband left you? I knew everything, Mom. Your friend, Adelaide, told me over the phone.”
“That’s not true. I ended things with him the day you cut your wrists. I stayed in his house, taking care of him, out of the threat that he would send someone to kill you. But we weren’t a couple anymore. We slept in separate rooms, and I always locked him in his room when I went to mine to make sure he wouldn’t try anything against you.” Her words shock me. Is it a desperate lie to gain my forgiveness at the end? Or a truth that makes total sense, considering that psychopath loved to get what he wanted through blackmail? However, it’s still absurd how casually she talks about the scenario we lived in. She could have run away with me, damn it."