Hola

I had a happy childhood, surrounded by laughter and love.  Yet I was painfully insecure. I always felt out of place and spent most of my time caught up in my own self-doubts. I hated the way I looked, my body and non-existent Puerto Rican curves. I began binging and purging at age 13 which persisted for most of my life. I smoked my first cigarette the following year and quickly became addicted. Marijuana followed in college. Three concurrent addictions that masked and fed my undiagnosed depression.

 

Growing up in the Bronx was a blessing and a curse. A daily exercise in duality. It felt like a place no one wanted to be, and everyone was trying to escape from. Even though it was a safe neighborhood, there was nevertheless an underlying sense of purgatory. Yet, you’d declare that you were from the Bronx with a sense of superpower.

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Likewise, my family always felt like a juxtaposition of parallel worlds, with a home life that was very different from our social life. Around our family, friends, neighbors, my parents were happy, dancing the night away to salsa and merengue, talking, laughing, enjoying themselves. But at home, it always felt like silo’s, with my mom upstairs, my dad downstairs, and my sister and I shuttered in our own rooms. There was rarely any fun/laughter apart from when with our extended family.

 

I’ve replicated my childhood home and family dynamics with my own children. Despite an amicable divorce, I have begrudgingly become the disciplinarian, the homework monitor, the doctors appointment scheduler, the parent-teacher conference rep, the consequence enforcer, the home-made cauliflower pizza maker, the take your vitamins and packaged lunches of leftovers, fruits and veggies, vacations camping, or long weekends at abuelo and abuelas, telling them to clean their rooms and assigning them chores to earn a meager allowance.

 

I have lashed out at my kids for the hardships of making ends meet in today’s economy, for shuttling them in different directions while working full-time, for being picky eaters of only pizza, chicken nuggets, plain pasta, Starbucks and candy, despite all of the delicious options I painstakingly prepare. For being spoiled by their father with an iPhone upgrade for an A. Lavishing them with monetary rewards, because he can. While I skimp and strain to afford us one vacation a year. And I have hated myself for being so hard on them, for taking my frustrations out on them because they were the only ones around. I’d apologize, promise to do better, but kept falling back into the same cycle of self-hatred turned aggression.

 

But the straw that broke the camels back and set me on a path of self-destruction was when I began to see my patterns of self-loathing in my daughter. She was such a friendly, confident, chatty, happy baby and young child. Everyone was her bestie. She was full of excitement and energy. A natural leader, born on a stage. But somewhere along the way and without me ever realizing, she’s become a shell of what she once was. She began self-harming. Cutting her arms and legs, and covering them up in sweatshirts and long pants. Hibernating and isolating, like her mom. She had to be reminded to shower, brush her hair and her teeth. While her twin would go off to sleepovers, kept a busy social schedule, talked about her friends, acing her tests, and lived her best life - her sister just existed.

 

All of my demons were staring me right in the face. I tried my hardest to remind her of how amazing she is, how talented and smart and funny and friendly and beautiful and loved she is. But it never reached her.

 

We took her to see a child psychologist and my worst fears were confirmed. I had broken her. It wasn’t as bad on the weeks with her dad, but still a far cry from where she’d been, and I was the only one to blame.

 

That realization set me on a rapid downward spiral. It’s one thing to mess yourself up and not know why, or how to stop. But it’s something altogether different when you do it to the one person (or 1 of 2) that you love most in the whole world.

 

And rather than be able to help her and give her all the love and care and support that she needed, wanted, deserved, I just sank further into my depression, until the only answer I could come up with was she would be better off without me.

 

I began fantasizing about ways to die, that wouldn’t look like suicide, because I didn’t want her to follow in my footsteps. I dreamed of the brakes going out in my car while driving through the mountains. Getting sucked out to sea when the rip tides were strongest. Getting hit by a bus or truck. Being carjacked and gunned down. Cracking my skull falling out the window while cleaning them. Getting electrocuted during a rainstorm by a downed power line.

 

My death was the only way to save her.

 

I recently ended a relationship with a wonderful man whom I will always love, because I had nothing left to give.

 

Dead to the world, dead to my girls, dead to my family, dead to my love, dead to myself. Until there was nothing left but my death.

 

I confessed to my sister after sitting with two bottles of pills and alcohol. She made a basic observation. “You hope tomorrow will be better, but you’re doing the same thing day in and day out, expecting a different result. It’s the definition of insanity!” Then she asked a very simple question, “What have you done differently today than yesterday?" It was then that I realized that I had been doing absolutely nothing to help myself other than rinse and repeat, and I needed to get help. 

 

That’s what lead me to a wellness center specializing in the treatment of mental health disorders, trauma and addition (THC and nicotine in my case). I surrendered to the process and did the difficult, painful and exhausting work day-in and day-out for 8 weeks.  

 

Surrounded by incredible counselors, and an amazing community of misfits from across the globe, who lovingly challenged one another. We each arrived from different walks of life with our baggage full of traumas and regrets. Yet we all shared the same goal - to get better. We were stripped down to nothing and taught the skills to build ourselves back up. Better, stronger, more resilient, through a mixture of Western therapies and Eastern philosophies.  

 

I’ll never truly be able to thank everyone involved with helping me realize a better life for myself and my family. My hope is that I can pass on some of the knowledge I have gained and help others struggling with putting their shattered pieces back together.