This is Me.

Just ME.

ME. Two letters. Three different meanings: my names, my nickname and finally, me. I've spent many years  trying to understand and come to terms with the different parts of me. As any other human being, I'm made of different "mes": the mom, the wife, the daughter, the teacher, the friend, the sister, the writer. I've always seen myself as a complex person because of my capacity of unfolding myself into different types of me according to the situation. I know I sound crazy, but this unfolding thing has always helped me to cope. 

I can't say that I had a horrible childhood, but I can definitely say that it wasn't perfect either. I can't remember the first time I've heard my parents arguing, but I can definitely recall how afraid I was of my father and his violent reactions. Even then, being the typical daddy's girl I thought that it was all my mother's fault. I don't know why but I always thought my mother was a bitch, always complaining or bitching about something. How wrong I was! How late I realized that! Anyway, as I was saying before, I used to travel with my imagination a lot. I've always loved reading and writing, and when I didn't want to be where I was, I used to write or read so I could go somewhere else inside my head. 

As I grew up, things got worse and worse. Not only I had to endure my father's reactions and now beatings, but also I had a group of "friends" who decided that bullying me was their best way of entertainment... So I had to take it. I was a very stupid tween, I thought what they did was okay and out of love. It wasn't. It wasn't okay. It wasn't out of love. It was straight out of jealousy, but I was so naive, that I didn't realize that. You might be wondering what they were jealous about... well, here is where my "unfolding" appears again. When things were completely awful at home, I was my best version as a student, always getting As and contratulations from my teachers. Little did they know that whatever I did back then, I had to do it for my own sanity, for my own head. I was a depressed pubescent girl, who had a very dysfunctional family, the worst of friends and a body she wasn't comfortable with. I needed a escape. I needed something to set me free. So, I buried myself in books and music, and tried my  best to find a way to release the breath I was holding.

Some years later, when I was fifteen, I switched schools, and luckily for me, things on the friend side began to change. Do you know that saying: "friends are the family you get to choose"? Well, that's what happened to me. When things got even worst at home, I had an extra family outside my house and those were my friends. Some of them still remain, some of them were left along the way, but I'm the luckiest person to have found them: I found a shelter for everything that was happening to me at home, though I had never said a word about it. Back then, was when I realized that I didn't need to split myself into different versions: they loved me anyway, when I was up, when I was down, when I wanted to talk or when I didn't. They always loved me. And not only I could count on them, but I also had a new person who wanted, by miracle, to love me too: my now husband.

As years went on, things began to get increasingly worst (as if that could have been even possible): my father's violence towards my mother, brother and me was such that led him to lock my mom inside her bedroom while she was bleeding because her blood pressure went up sky-high after being yelled-at for hours by him, refused to call a doctor and kept on taunting her by saying things such as "go ahead, call someone, nobody will help you". She called me and I hurried home only to find her shaking and him telling me "I don't know what's wrong with her, I was in the other bedroom listening to music and she called you". I never felt the need to kill someone as much as I did that night. That was when I realized how I'd been wrong about my mom all that time. He was manipulative, violent, a liar. He told people horrible things about my mom, my brother and myself. He tried to make us believe he had wanted to kill himself, when he actually didn't. He was a complete psychopath!

Everything came to an end on January, 2010. My father had left before Christmas to another state to live with some family of his, and suddenly appeared at home one day. He came with three crucifixes hanging from his neck, a bunch of bibles and locked himself inside his bedroom with church music sounding on the background. He came out 2 hours later, saying that he wanted to talk things out with my mother and that's when the debacle happened. He began yelling at her, grabbed her by her arms and threw her against a wall as I couldn't stop shaking. All those years of being absent inside myself during rough patches of life came back to me suddenly and my mom says he stopped because I screamed, a very high-pitched scream and when he stopped, I told my mom to pick up her stuff because we were leaving. He tried to hold me and again I yelled with that different voice "don't touch me" so he let me go. 

That's the story of how my mother, my brother and me began to live freely. The harrassment lasted a couple of months: he spread lies all around town, he tried to run me over with his car, he kept all of our stuff and refused to let me take it out, he followed my mum around and threatened to kill my brother. We had to move to another city, my mom had to change her job, but finally, we began to feel free. Six years later, we still hear about him from time to time because he had some health issues and his girlfriend decided to call us to tell us how disappointing of a son and daughter we were and how she hoped we would rot in hell, but the feeling is different.

This is me, trying to blend all of my layers into one. Trying to understand that everything that happened to me doesn't have to define me. I have a loving husband, an adorable daughter and a baby on its way. My house is being built. I work at what I love. I have a lovely mother and a too serious but loving brother too. I can't complain. I try every day not to be like him, I try not to let all of these things from my past get involved with my present or future. I try. I'm sure I'll make it.

This is Me, letting everything go.