Souvenirs of the Mind
By: Jacqueline Bonilla
Tags: Mental Illness, Relationships Love Dating, Memoir, Mothers, Mexican American

Men like him demand your undivided, unwavering loyalty. Beyond the constraints of the alpha male lies a lot of need for speed and torque. Motherly affection, high sex drives and amusement in the shape of a supermodel fuels the needs to their muscles. Right on, lets race the Trans Am through the city of Dallas, let’s go smoke until our muscles loosen and our true conversation topics began to unwind. Men like him rocked your world with their fast pace, but the stress of maintaining it was enough to kill the love. I left that relationship in a mess, with the worst punch in the heart and stomach that led to the nervous breakdown of nervous breakdowns. At least music fills time when tears fill up the valleys of my face.

I had just started my new job at the energy company, and I was super excited about joining an industry where I could make an environmental difference. It was the summer after my semester at my new expensive school, and so I desperately needed the money. I had done amazingly well on my interview, beating out the competition of around 10 different people, and everything was slowly turning up for me.

He greeted me with the enthusiasm of a thousand suns. Do you believe in that stuff? He had asked me during the interview when I told him I was born in Roswell. The littlest of quirks had often led me to believe that aliens might be real, or at least I liked to imagine they were. How had he known to ask, and why had I responded with a “Not really?” I still had doubts.

I went my first week at the job with the vigor of my own enthusiasm. He was the sales manager, responsible for the daily training sessions that developed us into efficient sales professionals. He was boisterous, confident and extremely extroverted, all traits I desperately wanted to have. I stuck by his side for the first few weeks, trying as always to learn from the best.

I was the only girl on the sales team, and being single, I appreciated the guys’ advances. Nobody was as persistent as him. His exuberance as he trained me was downright adorable but a little overwhelming. How did someone have so much energy to produce and provide and lead all at the same time? He drew me in with that charisma though, stimulating my senses to the conclusion of a high and the ecstasy of love making hotel excursions. It was foolish, it was impulsive, but my hypomanic self was in love, in a love that has been hard to replicate when sober and symptom free. It only took a month for me to move in with him, leaving my best friend’s house for an apartment with my new boyfriend.

What was I looking for that I’ve been unable to find?

“I’ve walked down high streets, looking through windows. I’ve been lost in crowds of strangers. Searched record shops and cosmetic aisles, phone books want ads bus stops and libraries,” Against Me! lyrics provided more comfort to me than anything else in the world.

The apartment was a two-bedroom loft in the middle of Dallas, snug in its second floor with wooden floors and open hallways. I loved it as soon as I stepped inside. At first his room was the smaller one, but when I moved in and his roommate moved out, we moved all his things into the master bedroom. It was at the end of the hallway with carpeted floors. The drone of the air conditioner reverberated off the walls into our room, providing a gentle lullaby at night. The cars off Columbia raced out the window, cocooning us in a blanket of noise.

He had a guitar that he sometimes brought out. When he was wooing me, he played Umbrella by Rhianna with a hazy Southern drawl that brought chills to my arms. “Watch this,” he said, as he began playing a Jewel song from memory. I always watched with such amazement at his talent and his persona, a persona that I tried to imitate without luck.

It didn’t take long for me to get adjusted to his energy. We meshed extremely well, talking and joking about work and our past with youthful exuberance. I learned that he had almost been married a few times, that his time at the Marines had left him with many scars. He had fought for twelve years in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting the War on Terror and keeping Americans safe. I know now that his past is what drew me to him. He was exclusively masculine, strong and capable, and my wounded feminine energy wanted a partner that could keep me warm. Here was what I was looking for.

Our first few weeks were blissful. I had never lived with my partner before and I found it very appealing. We ordered a lot of takeout and got high every evening. It was the lazy girl’s heaven. There was the undercurrent of traditional femininity roles I had to assume, such as cleaning and laundry and cooking, but it honestly wasn’t too bad. We spent all our time together and I was so happy at first, working and thinking with my boyfriend, that a little extra cleaning was a minor blip in my day.

It was our third week there on a weekend. The bed took great care of me as I emptied out my dreams onto the pillow. He was up earlier than me as usual, taking care of his motorcycle and his car. I often stared at the ceiling and wondered about my life in that bed. My cappuccino machine waited for me in the kitchen.

He came in with his thunderous footsteps. Size 13 Jordans, comically large next to my own. He was next to me for a short second before he got up rapidly.

“Come on, let’s go!”

“Where are we going?”

“Just get ready.”

I got up in a flash, anxiously waiting for him to disclose his secret. I was fully dressed when he let me in on the fact that we were going to Galveston.

We drove to the gas station to fuel up, and get some snacks. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and so was he. My face could not contain my smile as we began our road trip down south. We connected his phone through the aux cable, and he played his cosmic beat music. EDM often fueled our adventures.

“Are you excited?”

“Heck yeah, you always have the best ideas,” I laughed.

“I love the ocean more than anything else in the world.”

Tops down, cruise control at 90, driving south in Texas on the last trails of summer. My hair flew and flipped in front of my face, sometimes hitting him in his. He made a point to laugh every time. Long stretches of the Texas road were almost empty, guided only by the winding trees and grasses. A cowboy in a horse waved at us from atop a bridge. Life was ours and ours only during that voyage.

Coming into Galveston Island greeted us with the smell of salt and sandy beaches. The trans am had done a great job on the ride, not even using half of the tank of gas.

We checked into a hotel five minutes away from the beach, cozy and quaint. We barely gave ourselves enough time to dump our things before we rushed to the ocean and began our integration with our aquatic selves.

He had spent 12 years of his life fighting in one way or another. He was strong, capable, and intimidating. He was six years older than me. And despite all of this, he was still capable of being a total child when he got in that water. We jumped and splashed and swam for hours at a time.

He told me of the water training he had to endure for the MARSOC program, about the grueling exercises and team building activities. In a way he was recreating the stressful events, in a manner that allowed him to be the king of the world. We took a few pictures that day, beaming with the greatest of smiles.

I rinsed the sand from my hair with the chlorine of the pool. It’s almost too beautiful to describe, the way the illumination of the pool intermixed with the glow of the night. We each had a couple of beers before I went into the pool. Laps of floating dreams lifted my spirits. A couple joined us in the pool at around 8 pm. I often wondered what he thought of me in relation to his past partners. It’s something that I will never get to know.

Despite our magical excursion, he was more somber than any other night that night. His water drenched skin was warm to the touch of the sheets, but no warmer. He pulled away when I got too close. I turned my gaze to the ceiling, wondering about the oceans. Were they there for me and my big ambitions? What did my ambitions mean in the context of the universe? I didn’t have LSD for answers, but I had a mirror and a hulk of a man that promised me the world. It was enough to drift me off to a deep sleep.

Back at work, rejuvenated from our excursion, happy as two burnt clams, things were picking up. Our sales numbers were increasing, and we had the regained confidence of an all-star team. We practiced our pitches in front of our coworkers, trying to overcome objections and the looming threat of obsoleteness. In a market with low energy prices, solar energy was a tough sale.

“Let’s go knock that door.”

We took turns on the field excursions, hopping in and out of the car as we pitched our products. Doors never opened, and if they did the homeowners were just not interested. We often laughed at this phrase in the office, because we knew that it was only the beginning of a dialogue that landed a sale. We learned that selling was mainly human psychology at play, and that solar was as desirable as the promises of a bright future.

I was the top salesperson in the month of September, earning a good $12,000. This was often money that we never got to see, as the company was never looking out for the bottom line in its employees’ paychecks. I did not learn of this fact until a few months later. I was so focused on work that I overlooked going to my psychiatrist, and I missed out on my antidepressant refill. It was no wonder that I decayed into my old self within a few months of this time period.

My old self was mousy and timid, quiet and reserved, afraid of herself and her promise. I had been that way for years, but especially so in my freshman year of college. I did not know how to disentangle myself from my fears and anxieties. I started having severe anxiety at work and it made a marked difference in how I was perceived. No longer was I able to maintain the high levels of enthusiasm required for the job and my numbers started slipping.

“I’m not feeling well,” I told him earlier in the evening. He didn’t seem to register my statement. The stress of his motorcycle accident a few weeks earlier had never escaped me. We had been on our way to our lead appointments. He was in his motorcycle and I in the company vehicle. I hated running those appointments, because they tended to be bad leads. I stopped on the way there for a quick gas run, and as soon as I rejoined the early morning traffic, I got a call from Jack.

“ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE!!! I JUST RAN OVER A DOG, CAN YOU COME PICK ME UP!!!”

“Oh god, are you okay, send me your address.”

I hurried over there; the appointment long forgotten.

The dog had not survived the incident, but thankfully Jack only had a couple of bruised ribs. The way he described his pain was excruciating, and I never wanted to see him like that again. I was his help during his recovery process, driving him to the hospital and back home while he got better. The hardest part was not being able to hug him to qualm my frayed nerves.

Instances like these were not uncommon. Many times had he come home in a rage after being in traffic and someone cutting him off. He dealt with the rages with the motorcycle, so now that it was off limits for a few weeks he could barely handle his dinner.

I ate my dinner in a quiet stupor, antsy from anxiety and stress. How do I reach out to him, when he blocks me out?

Tears began to spill from my eyes once we were in bed. I couldn’t handle being a functional human being, and I had nobody to turn to. I tried to keep quiet, I did, but it just wasn’t happening.

“What’s the matter with you now?” He demanded, turning his back to me.

I couldn’t say anything through the pain.

I kept grinding like I knew how, adding in a little meditation here and there to induce some relief. Being in Dallas gave light to my loneliness in a way that New York had never been able to. Here I was a Texan at home, with open roads and Mexican food at my disposal. I had some sort of financial security, so my depression was not tied to that. I was spiraling due to medicine withdrawal, but I desperately wanted to believe that I could control it.

I stared at myself in the mirror, such an intimate thing in all my mental states. Could you see the truth behind your aging face? Could you make out your essence? I thought I could. When the going got too intense and I lost sight of my humanity, when the aches took my breath away and the delusions started creeping in, staring at the mirror was the only thing that brought me back to the ground state of reality. I had almost slipped into the fugue self when I decided to smoke a little bit and enjoy my own company.

“Slip it in!” Black Flag roared at me from my phone. Slip it in indeed, my alter ego was a cocaine happy hooker. I laughed.

He was gone for a week to see his family in Illinois, and I had the apartment to myself. It was honestly the happiest memory of that entire experience. I learned to appreciate my loneliness when I could get it.

My muscles twisted and strained as I danced in front of the mirror. Here was my freedom, in the movement. I remembered my dance lessons from my modern dance class at Columbia, how liberating the ritual had been. I tried desperately to recreate the experience in my no audience living room.

Leg, extend.

Feet, twirl and point.

Core, tighten, twist.

Girate.

Jump.

Arms, raise.

Head, rotate.

Combine any of these movements into a cacophony of movement, into a streamline of dance. I lifted myself back up with every turn. Where was my audience but in the markings on the wall? I preferred it that way.

I kept it going for a while, gently swaying to and fro across the floor. Here was my freedom.

When the music stopped and the quiet settles I slipped into my bed. Jack was supposed to come home for the New Year, but it was two days away and he’d only called me once. I got ready to pick him up at the airport the following Monday when he called and said that his flight was cancelled. I knew he was lying to me but I couldn’t prove my point.

I had been in charge of the team at work, and it was a dismal failure. I could barely bring my own numbers up nevermore the results of my coworkers. I sensed that I was going to be fired, especially without Jack’s protection.

Sure enough, Jack called me that evening to ask if I wanted to move with him to Illinois. Crying in the company Jeep, I answered “I just want to get out of here.”

“Pack your bags tonight then.”

I turned in the company vehicle, told my boss I quit, and packed my bags that evening.

I was going to miss the apartment the most.

His family came down with him to pick up his car and motorcycle. Their thick Midwestern accents were a delight to my uncultured ears. Jack’s sister Kelsey immediately fell in love with Jack’s Texan lifestyle, but they were quick in disregarding it for the plains of Illinois. They complained that the Mexican food was not authentic, and I died a little inside.

With all the bags and vehicles properly packed, we hit the road for what I thought would be a new beginning. Not all road trips lead to clarity though, and I was in a lot of pain. The obfuscation from their cigarette smoke wafted to my mind, numbing any hesitation. Deep inside I was reluctant to admit that life with Jack was painful, and here he was isolating me from my family. I failed to see the connection as I looked up at the clear skies of Mt. Olive, Illinois. It was a brisk night, and a new year. I never gave up on our hope.

Kelsey had three children, Makayla, Nathan and Colt ages 13, 8 and 4, respectively. They were charming and witty and full of adventures, and they quickly welcomed me in.

“She’s good with children, ain’t she?” His mother said.

“She sure is,” Jack replied. Nothing more was said of the subject.

If I thought my mental problems were bad before, I was in for a rude awakening with his family. Kelsey was unmedicated and bipolar, with a long history of trauma. She needed help, and Jack’s brotherly instincts stepped in. He worked around the house, adding and removing walls and the required insulation. He was willing and able to overlook all the problems that she contrived out of nowhere. He looked for a new job and got one within a week due to his stellar resume. I immediately began applying for a new job as well, but I was in for a waiting game.

“Want to watch a movie?” MaKayla asked me.

“Sure!”

We sat down in the living room and turned on a chick flick. We were trying to avoid the fight going on in the dining room.

“…Then leave! What are you even doing here!” Kelsey was yelling at her on and off boyfriend Paul. They had been together for a good six months and had broken up at least four times. The kids all flocked to the living room, hoping to get away from the noise.

“I’m fucking done with you anyway,” Paul muttered. He had been the one to drive Jack and Kelsey to Dallas to pick me and the car up with his Chevy Silverado. He walked past Jack with his head lowered, trying to avoid an escalation. Jack headed to his car to smoke a joint, trying to avoid the whole fiasco. Familial arguments were the norm for him growing up, and it was triggering a strong response.

“You guys want to go outside?” I asked the kids.

“Yeah! Let’s go play!”

The tension of the next few days was enough to warrant more meltdowns. I’d spent all evening drawing and trying to not isolate, but it was hard to not feel lonely. The kids were at their father’s house, and Jack was about to get home from work.

“How was your day?”

He ignored me. He’d been isolating more and more, leaving us both stranded.

“You want something to eat?”

“Sure, what do you have?”

Kelsi had cooked dinner the night before, so it was now my turn. I made some quick mac and cheese with rolls of bread. He ate his meal in the living room, separate from my pestering. I told him about the job applications I’d filled out that day but he just turned up the TV.

“Fine, I’ll go take a shower.”

I got up and got my things ready. The water felt so good on my aching shoulders and my tired mind. He didn’t want me here anymore. I didn’t want to keep chasing the elusive man. I decided to confront him.

“Jack, I’m not feeling good. You haven’t been present in weeks.”

“Are you really starting this right now?”

Before I gave him a chance to ignore me by leaving the room, he got up and began yelling in my face.

“I’M TIRED OF YOUR SHIT! WHY CAN’T ANYONE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Stunned, I began to walk away. It’d been three weeks in Illinois and everyone had given him all the space he needed. I had a job interview lined up for the upcoming Monday. I just wanted some connection.

“I SHOULD HAVE MADE YOU STAY IN TEXAS!”

That was the final blow. “If you didn’t want me here you could have just told me Jack,” I was tired of backing down all the time. “SO YOU WOULD HAVE BROKEN MY WINDOWS?”

“What are you talking about? That’s not the type of person I am” That’s when I knew that he’d never known me at all.

He vented some more, but I was done. I went to MaKayla’s room where I was staying and laid under the covers. “Grandma, necesito ayuda,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and imagined her calming presence by my side.

It was a lonely bed, now accompanied by my mother. She holds my hand sometimes before falling asleep. I left Jack in Illinois, tried to keep myself sane with the antipsychotic medication. The breakdowns had taught me to at least take my pills.

I was water. I was the light. I was the truth. I spelled my name out in cursive over 50 times. Who was I really though, without the aid of my medicine? I looked through my notebooks and guessed as to what was next.

My mother taps my back before my alarm goes off, sensing that the time is almost here.

“Se te va hacer tarde, no?”

“Todavia no.”

I turn and try to head back to sleep.

My current job was tedious and boring, giving way to many hours on the Internet. I had to keep it hidden though, for the rules were strict. I handled the finances for a large local company, taking in checks and credit card payments. I had a terrible resume, often quitting jobs to return to school, and yet never graduating. Finances were difficult as I had no parental support, and school in general was a great disillusionment for me. I had to withdraw from Columbia due to my mental illness, and I honestly felt that I had no future. I tried to not grow too depressed as I thought about my wounded ego. How do you let go? I asked this question daily as I prepared for work, as I drove to work, as I waited for the day to end. It made no sense to me, how life just keeps on going whether you are ready or not. It drags you along to the end of your wits if you’re not careful, and I hadn’t been careful. I had spent the years since my first hospitalization trying to find a way to make it all make sense, but I somehow kept adding to the layers of pain. As I stared at the computer in front of me, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was strong enough.

Jack quickly stopped talking to me after I left Illinois, as soon over as it began. It tore me apart to unhinge myself from that relationship, but I couldn’t tell you that I wouldn’t do it again. I admitted to myself that there was no future there, and I taught myself to let him go. I used to be ashamed of loving everything about a person too quickly. It obviously got me in trouble, but at least letting go had become easier now, as I attempted my Buddhist training. I meditated for a bit, to pull away a layer of my pain.

Now that I’d left that past goodbye I longed for the affection of another body. I got ready for another date with another stranger, putting on my little makeup and trying on my favorite clothes.

The present drew a cocoon around me, slowly comforting me with its transience. I was growing comfortable in my skin, learning how to love my body and myself. The mirror in front of me gleamed with an incandescent glow, full of hope for the coming evening. The past five years had taken a huge toll on me. I’d gained 20 pounds from my ideal weight due to the lack of exercise and movement. I looked like 30, with a fading hair color and permanent scowl marks. I had so much stress in my body that it was all affected. My posture, my gait, my sleep. I was trying to reboot, and the only solution thus far had me sleeping and praying to God for a little extra love. I hoped that the evening provided a little closure.

I quickly kissed my mom goodbye. She worried about me and wanted to know everything about the guy. “Make sure you ask for his last name” she requested of me. I laughed as I headed out the door.

The drive there was uneventful, full of traffic stops and winding streets. I reminded myself to remain calm as I stepped out of the vehicle and headed towards the swings of the park we were meeting at. I found so much comfort in the swings of parks, remembering a time when my elementary school friends and I would philosophize about our experiences of childhood in the hood. They loudly creak under my weight, slowly gaining momentum as we reached for the stars. At nighttime swings and the moon were the only beings that witness our madness.

The short while I waited for my date was the best part of the evening. He came in with an air of smugness, as if he expected me to immediately fall at his feet. He’s recently graduated as an engineer and has been unable to find a job. With Covid still in full force, this was a common theme. We talked and eventually held hands, but like other men before him he immediately wanted to escalate things. I had a track record of uninhibited activity, but I was more tired of the game than anything else. Midway through his advances he stopped and told me that he couldn’t do it- it felt too much like cheating. Fancy me meeting another being still living with their ex on their mind.

“Como te fue?” She asked when I got home. I didn’t know how to explain to her that emotional unavailable men frequently wasted women’s time.

I sighed, “No muy bien. No estaba muy interesado.”

“No te preocupes, vas a encontrar a alguien.”

Yes, but when? I tried to not let it affect me too much, but I can’t deny that that night was lonely and grim.

I’d left my date at the park and tried to keep myself sane with my medication. One, two mg. At first it was amitriptyline, but now it was Risperdal. The small yellow pills were swallowed down with tap water. When I first was diagnosed, I tried vehemently to not take any medication, but it spiraled into a psychotic break. Knowledge was power, and I was the power personified. Spirits visited me at night, telling me of their deaths and current pains. American Spirit smoke cleared the winds of the hotel room where my manic self-stayed, dislodging the stuck energies of the crevices and corners. They told me that sharing their story would set them free. I felt the same way.

David Bowie’s Heroes played in the background as I fell asleep. My music tastes grew deeper into a punk maturity. It had started when I was around 13. It was the resolution to an anger that started when I was 5, and festered into the overweight and suicidal body of an 8-year-old. Fibonacci imposed his fortunes on my story. I waited for 34.

My mind wandered to the last time I saw Jack. After the fight, I gave him another weekend but he wouldn’t talk to me at all. I knew I couldn’t stay, so I packed up my bags, crying the entire time. I had given his family and him all my money for their cigarettes, and I had none left for my return trip. I called my best friend Alice and told her everything.

“You need to come home now, Jackie.”

She sent me a few hundred dollars for the Greyhound ticket. I left that same Tuesday.

On Monday he stayed home, knowing that it was serious. In a last ditched attempt at manipulation, he played breakup songs all day. Was it a taunt? It sure felt like one. Having called Alice to tell her all my problems had opened my eyes to the severity of what I now know was abuse. I was a shell of a person, trying to claw my way up into a semblance of normalcy and affection. We were a terrible couple.

“What a fucking bitch,” Kelsey muttered under her breath. She seemed to take all our arguments personally and was now surprised at my decision to leave.

I ignored her, focusing instead on the books in front of me. I left An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and The Body Keeps the Score with Nathan, left MacKayla a couple of eyeshadow pallets and some toys for Colt. I felt terrible that I couldn’t say goodbye to the kids, but I needed to say goodbye to them both. I approached them in the living room.

“Hey Kelsey, I just wanted to thank you for having me here these past few weeks. I know it’s been stressful, and that our arguments haven’t helped, but I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate it. You have a great thing going here, a house, a great dog, and three amazing children. I really don’t want to leave Jack, but this isn’t healthy for either of us.”

I started to tear up. “I wish things were a little easier, and one day it all makes sense.”

Kelsi and Jack looked at me with an equal mix of disbelief and gratitude. I went to hug Kelsey and she started crying. Jack said nothing but got up to throw up in the bathroom.

Having laid myself bare, I went to cry in MaKayla’s room again.

He wouldn’t talk to me and that’s what hurt the most.

The next day went by in a flash, and before I knew it, we were approaching the Greyhound station. Everyone had tagged along, almost as if to assure that he wouldn’t take me back. For a second I thought that they would simply drop me off, but Jack and his family got off to drop me by the bus. Tears were streaming down my face the entire time.

I hugged them all goodbye. When it came to Jack, I prepared myself for an ocean of pain. I was leaving a part of my heart behind, and yet his hug temped me into staying whole. He allowed himself to breathe and be, but he quickly pulled away and left the room. I closed my eyes and waited for them all to leave.

A few minutes later I checked my phone to find a message from Jack.

“This is hard for me too. Right now, we’re both lost, but it doesn’t mean we’re bad people.”

I climbed into my bus and laid my head against the glass.

I woke up by the sound of my alarm, but unfortunately it was Saturday. What was I going to do today? I stared at my wall. All I wanted was a Pepsi, I laughed inside.

The air got sullen sometimes, when not cleared or wafted. The sullenness covered my skin, seeped into my pores. Who does the wafting, the air or the motion? Butterfly effect, right? I played with my arms and my hands in bed until my mom woke up. Shadow figures were only for the shadowy nighttime.

“Que horas son?” She asked me. I got up to look at the clock on my phone. I told her the time.

“Me haces un café?”

I grumbled but headed to the kitchen. I heated up the water in the kettle, waited for the bubbles to form. We used instant coffee now, just like my grandma and I had used over a decade ago. I took the glass bottle from the cupboard and unscrewed the top. I dipped my metal spoon into the brown aromatic granules and scooped a big teaspoon of the coffee from the bottle into the cups. It was an easy but rewarding process, having the coffee steaming hot ready to wake our bodies up.

I went to take her the coffee with milk. She sat up in bed.

“Gracias,” she mumbled through her sleepy voice. She asked me if Martin, my stepfather, had called. They no longer lived together but he was nevertheless still demanding of her time. He had already called but I let it go to voicemail. I asked her if she wanted to talk with him.

“Pasamelo.”

I dialed and handed her the phone. It was frustrating to deal with their melodrama.

“Let me go shower,” I told her in Spanish.

I don’t understand what they even talk about. I got my clothes ready and headed to the shower. Showers were a ritual for me, rituals of cleansing and rejuvenation. The water rid me of the memories of the previous day. I let the stream run through my long hair, coasted it into my scalp to relieve the dirt. Purity.

I got out of the shower and resumed my coffee. The phone lay dormant by my mother’s side. Her foot tap tap tapped on the edge of the bed, giving away her nerves.

“What did he tell you? You want to go with him today?”

“No, not today. He said the same things as always.”

“I know,” I mumbled.

She looked off into the distance.

When I was dealing with Jack’s absence, I’d taken to calling her on the phone to vent. I told her how lonely I felt and how hard it all was. I wondered what it would take for her to open up about Martin to me. She needed therapy but I couldn’t afford it without insurance. I thought about my own therapy, how much faith the man had in me. I brushed the thought aside.

My mother’s marriages had both been disasters and we both knew it. Poverty, abuse and neglect had taken away both of our vigor, yet here we were, surviving together. It was a camaraderie written in the stars. Mother and daughter, the classic motif. I headed out the door.

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Don’t take too long.”

There was nothing to see outside of my apartments, but I just needed some fresh air. I considered looking for another date, but I’d grown tired already. As my cousin Karen loved to say, I was bored. I should have brought her along.

“Hi! Did you bring me anything?” Karen ran out to meet me at the door.

“I just went for a walk,” I said laughing.

“Wow, how rude.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, I just got up.”

“Go eat then.” She gave me an offended look but proceeded to ignore me. I just shook my head.

I went to my room where my mom still sat. She looked as tired as her 55 years allowed her to be. She smiled at me. Sometimes all she asked for was affection, so I tried to accommodate the need.

I sat down at my desk, waiting for cosmic inspiration. I remembered my delusions, and the thought of manic alien entities was enough for me to buckle down. Half of the time I missed the mindset, half of the time I worried it would never leave. I took out my watercolors and my special paper, ready to take on the day with my painting. A starry sky flowed from my fingers, sparkling with the luminescence of faraway lands. My mind drifted off to the edge of the galaxy, made a sweep and landed in Mexico.

Hopes. Jacqueline Bonilla 2020.

“Que llueva que llueva la virgen de la cueva…”

I must have been four years old when I did the rain dance. Little did I know I was summoning the magic that would mark me as its own for the rest of my life. It rained that night, solidifying into my young mind my own prowess.

Grandma was a beautiful lady. Toasted almond skin and dark hair, she could have been a model when she was younger. Luz Maria. She even had the classical name.

Grandpa was a genius, starting his own business from scratch, on his own back. He tinkered with mechanics and construction, providing for a family of ten.

I was just a little girl, but their companionship suited me perfectly. Grandpa worked outside as I helped with the plants. It’s the long con, he taught me. It took me decades to decipher his message.

My mom was single then, taking care of my aging grandparents. I thought they were just taking care of us. Her codependency was not yet as marked as it would later present itself, but I knew from a young age that I couldn’t ask her for my needs.

Grandpa’s fruit trees provided me with all the entertainment I needed. Pomegranates, mangoes, figs. Tomato plants, watermelons, seeds. A whole universe of treats provided the backdrop of those early years. My dog Bellita ran up to me, inviting me to an afternoon of play. I chased her around the house until the sun gave out.

“We’re going to move to Arlington.” Those words would mark my development more than anything else. I was excited.

“We’re going to America!” I asked my grandpa about Bush and the election. “Who will be my president?”

“We’ll have to see.”

I knew better than to rush things.

Bellita followed me to room where my mom was lying. I sat in the corner of the room. Bellita laid down next to me. Nobody had mentioned the separation, so I lived in the present. I whispered in her ear, “America will be so fun! We’re going to go to school there!” She licked my face in excitement.

My mom got up from the bed.

“What are you doing mija?”

“Nothing, just painting.”

Dinosaurs and turtles had taken over the page. A Native girl with solemn eyes stood in between the creatures, marking the division of the earthly sessions. The pain of my delusions marked itself in all my work. I put the brush down and stood up to stretch. The weariness of the pain marked my body. I didn’t know how to make it whole again. I laid down next to my mother.

“What do you want to do today?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here all day.”

“Get ready then.”

We put on our shoes and jackets and headed out the door. The air was crisp and fresh, brisking us along to the Mazda Tribute. I held her hand as she stepped off the curb. Her coordination and her eyesight were failing her, so I tried my best to provide. We boarded the vehicle and started driving.

“Where do you even want to go?”

“I don’t know, just around.” I tried to not get frustrated with her. I headed to Walmart to go for a walk.

Growing up in the economic meltdown of 2008 and 2009, we’d been extremely poor. Going to Walmart was our excursions of the month, dressing up in our best clothing and joining American living in its most basic sense-consumerism. We’d spend an entire afternoon looking at products, imagining the beautiful skin and hair we’d have if we could afford them. It was easy to do the same again.

We walked through the entire store, paying particular attention to the home goods sections. She wanted the new apartment to look pretty, and we’d slowly been adding more decorations. We had a shelf with pictures of grandma, a dream catcher on the wall, a Virgen de Guadalupe above the bed and my paintings above my desk. She wanted to add curtains above the window and I wanted a rug for the floor. Out of habit or tradition, we walked out of the store empty handed.

There was an air of sadness around our drive back home. She didn’t want to go back, and neither did I. What was there to do though? She confided in me at night sometimes, telling me she wanted to leave. The looming of death hung around our lives, challenging us into defiance and complacency. Was I ready to fight for our lives? It seemed so daunting, but the thought of not fighting was enough to warrant anger to rise in me. I was going to do what I could to let her be happy and thrive.

I was angry. Angry at myself for letting the world take over, angry at my friends for telling me to back off. I had hurt them, and I couldn’t forgive myself. I tried to move forward to keep bumping into the same challenges as before. I tried to arrange my finances so I could attend therapy again, but it was a long shot. My paycheck only stretched so far, and my mom needed cataract surgery.

I did a lot of staring at screens, passing away the time. Where was my future but in those moments? I lived in the internet. I thought of my memories, acknowledging that they would be the only thing to bring me comfort in the coming year. I wouldn’t get a break until Christmas, and my Grand Canyon trip had been postponed. My heart hurt.

La Rosca de Reyes offered a hint of a fertility promise. I got the baby and I now had to bring food. Fertility and abundance, those were the themes of a future that I couldn’t step into. I cowered on the sidelines, sluggish and dense.

My regrets looked just like the New York Subway system. Winding, looping, buried underground. My Saturdays now had the companionship of a friend who really cared about me. I felt lucky enough to alter my hair to an ashy blonde. Mac Miller’s painting was packaged as a gift to a friend who no longer confided in me. My interpersonal relationships loomed and ebbed away, grasping at solidification. What was there to do? I picked up the brush again.

Glow with Me. Jacqueline Bonilla 2020.

Sunflower dreams haunted my psyche. I longed for the warmth of the yellow sun and the summer mists. When was the last time I touched a sunflower? First grade, walking toward my elementary school. There was a field, before the subdivision of middle-class houses. The flowers looped around the roads into the mounds of the rich earth. My mother walked with me to class, our reprieve in the middle of the days of blossoming pain. I hated my parents for the mental anguish they caused me. I began to gain weight, numbing myself in tortillas and frijoles. The other students began to make fun of me. I began to isolate in earnest.

We lived in the ghetto, surrounded by a Hispanic and African American community that didn’t know how to handle the mental health of an 8-year-old girl. I cried myself to sleep most nights. There was no comfort in the skies or in the flowers. My stepdad Martin tyrannized my mother into submission. I knew I would never allow that to happen to me, at least not for long. The walls went up, the voice grew quiet, the self-love slipped through the cracks.

The greatest pain was watching your mother cry in self defeat. Along the way she lost her spark, took her victories and hid them in the past. The daily fights only led to tears and vindication. I spent a lot of time in the yard outside the apartment, playing with my classmates or by myself. I jumped through hoops of my own design and listened to the trees. My grandfather passed away when I was seven, so I did a lot of things in his honor. The greatest struggle was to honor his strength and rise into the person that I was meant to be. Just because I’d failed before didn’t mean I would always do so. I had been successful at one point. A brief smile curled over my face.

The greatest pains lead to the greatest realizations, and I could only care so much. Detachment was a skill I’d never mastered, for I never knew the limits. I approached the pain on the fringes of my mother with trepidation, ready but not willing to take on its tendrils. A held hand was a promise of a brief reprieve from your troubles, I tried to tell my mother. I tried to make her understand. I held her hand during sleep that night.

I closed my eyes to welcome dreams of escapism. I opened them back up when she was asleep.

There was no dream greater than her peace.

I got up again to paint. Here is my goodbye.