Letters
to
Leonor
Nathalie O'Hernandez
This is a picture I took in Switzerland. These sisters were playing and chasing each other across this field and I thought it was lovely.
Prelude
Dear…
I really don’t know what to call you. You are alive but I don’t know who you are. I haven’t seen you in maybe a year? When you saw me you hugged a stranger. I don’t want to talk to the person you are now. I want to talk to who you were. I want to talk to the woman everyone has told me about, before the disease and decay of your mind took over. I will say “Dear Leonor.” Leonor is such a beautiful name. It feels better, more accurate than Mommy which I said the last time at seven. I am not seven anymore, I am twenty-two, and I can’t fit into that time-capsule you have put me in. I hate it, I feel so small in there. I am a formed person, I have had experiences you can’t even fathom because of how you still view me as a little girl. I am grown. I am different. I have stopped dreaming that fantasy that maybe I could change the laws and also discover the medicine to cure you. I need to live for myself now. I know that it will never be. I know that there is a good chance I will never get another hug from you. I know that with each passing day, as every wrinkle forms on my face and every change in my body comes, you will grow further away. This dream I once had of us, it never had a chance. I hate you for not knowing me, but I also know that I can’t hate you. I feel so conflicted, I feel wrong, I feel guilty, but it’s how I feel. Why couldn’t you be okay? Would death have been an easier fate? Am I horrible to say that? Are you possibly happy alive? Away from me? I don’t know if I have to let you go. Do I have to let you go? There is no manual for dealing with a mother with Capgras Syndrome. Most people don’t even know what that is and they give me a blank stare. I feel like screaming but it’s trapped within me. I can’t scream at them. I have gotten too good at keeping my composure, as I say that one line “It’s a rare mental disorder, she believes I am an imposter, like I am not her kid.” Then they continue, as if the line and its existence died in the air, just as quickly as it was said. But it’s my life, it’s my reality, and I just say: “it’s fine, it’s hard but it’s whatever. How’s your family?”
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I am my mother's lost daughter...
but she is the one who is lost.