Dear Leonor,
​
I don't want you to be dissapointed in me.
This is very hard for me to say.
But I felt so disheartened.
I felt like I had no choices.
I was trapped in a rectangular box. Day after day.
So I sliced.
I sliced again.
I sliced and sliced,
until there was a map of dead end roads
all over my forearms.
It was a pattern I had created on my skin.
The color of flesh in the background,
with crimson streaks scattered.
I don't remember much about this except that I was overcome
completely succumb to erroneous emotion.
But when realization struck,
when I realized what I did
Panic.
So much blood.
So many potential scars
I'm thinking about scars?
I wanted to live.
I did.
But I still felt hopeless
and I still felt scared.
But I did.
So I made some calls.
I slept that night.
Empty vitamin E capsules in the trash can,
like honey, dripped onto deep maroon ridges
hmm, honey, sweet like honey
maybe things could become sweet like honey.
Hmm, maybe things could become sweet like honey.
Dear Leonor,
I am upset with you. I just had a psychiatrist appointment and I am pretty much standing in my own way. I hate that I have this. I hate that you are the reason I am this way. But what I hate most, is that up until now I haven’t been able to take responsibility and control over my own life.
​
The doctor said “Do you want to feel better?”
​
I read the dated patient notes and my assessment as a patient, and it made me feel like something less than human. But I am human. Why is it so cold? I hate so many things about myself and they are all because of your absence, because of what it did to me.
I hate that I can’t take my medication. I hate that I even have to take medication. I hate that I will probably have to take it for the rest of my life. I hate that I am mentally ill.
I hate that this is hard, but that I still feel alone, and that at the end of the day I will always be alone. Just me and my mental illness.
​
I feel like it has trapped me.
​
It’s just a pill and I can’t do it. There is resistance all throughout my body. I feel like gagging at the thought of it, the taste of chalkiness I have to put in my mouth.
​
I don’t just want to be another person with depression and anxiety. But it has consumed me. I am a victim, yet I can’t allow myself to be.
I feel incomplete as it is.
I am a victim, yet I can't allow myself to be.
Dear Leonor?
Do you want to hear something maddening? Something so silly, goofy, just crazy? Well I learned that I am a diehard for integrity. Integrity? Yeah, integrity. Meaning that I feel my stomach drop, like someone is plucking out a strand from my core, like breaking a guitar string. It’s the reason why I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor. Not that doctors don’t have integrity, but that being a doctor would mean that I wouldn’t live a life of integrity, to the standard to which I hold myself.
Why? Well it all started with my optometrist. I don’t know if I should really call her my optometrist because I saw her once when I came home during some college break and then somehow it just hasn’t been in the cards for us to meet since then. But anyways, she said some stuff to me that I never forgot. She was a short, slender asian woman in what appeared to be her 40s, with straight long black hair and a headband. She asked me, “do you eat your vegetables?” I replied, “I try, but I should be better about it.” Then she went on to explain that she would be able to tell and that fat in the eyes can say a lot. She then asked me, “Do you know a 4 by 4?” I’m like “What? What do you mean?” She immediately responded with a story: “I had a doctor tell me to eat my vegetables and exercise, but they were a 4 by 4, they were large, so why would I listen to them? Listen to me.” I am not defending what she said, well how it came out, I don’t know, but I get it. The main idea stuck with me though, and so I know that there are two main reasons why I won’t be a doctor, although there are a bajillion reasons, many from others, urging me to be one. The first is, medical students are 3x more likely to die from suicide, and I am already at risk because of my past history, so why would I put myself in an environment to get sick again? Second, I would become a 4 by 4. Not literally, but in the sense that, during residency I would be working 70-80 hour weeks, not sleeping, exercising, or eating well, but then telling my patients to do these very things. I can not do that. I stand by that sentiment. I value integrity, and I feel it in my heart that it would be wrong. I want to live a life where I “walk the walk” and where my actions follow my beliefs, because I truly believe there is no other way to live and exist in this world. That being said, I wanted to tell you that. I am proud of it, and I feel like you would be proud of it too, and proud to know me.
​
***
Sorry I had to stop for a sec.
I wonder so much about you, it’s crazy. When I saw pictures of myself with fake bangs during halloween, I kept thinking of that picture of you that used to be in that boudoir in our first house, the house of my childhood. You had dark brown hair and bangs, just like me. I think I see you sometimes in my own pictures. Have I found you by finding a piece of me? Are we a puzzle piece? Can we be? Can it be that every time I learn something about myself, I find a piece of you as well? I mean I am made from you, I am half you, according to science. Let’s consider that a majority just between us, our secret.
I yearn to be tender, and to hold your hand and to see myself in you. But I can settle for this for now, for the times I see you in my reflection. You were so beautiful, and in these words, and how you exist within the bounds of my words, you still are, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.
I love you. I miss you. I wish you existed, this version of you I speak to is based on the person people tell me you were before that tumor and this disease. But I am not silly, I know that the woman I had in my life until 7, diseased and incomplete, lost, was not my perfect match. We argued and I was a daddy’s girl. I was never comfortable with you, maybe I always knew something was off, but I think in another life we could have been great. Never perfect, maybe highly flawed, but I think we could have been something, and I would do almost anything to get the real, flawed version of you. The one that I would fight with and maybe hate at times, but because I can’t, because I must do what Papi says, and make the best of what I’ve got, I will have you exist here, in this space, as the fullest potential, as the woman I know you were, who had everything going for her. Because you deserve everything, you deserve joy and happiness, no suffering, and you don’t deserve to suffer every day like you do, so here you don’t. Here you are magnificent, awesome, and just the best person in the world. I will honor you and the memory of your life this way, as that beautiful brilliant dentist and woman who worked three jobs, because you deserve better than this. We did mom. But it’s okay, because I am making the best of it. And I am doing this for you. I am writing this in honor of you. God I love you and I am sorry we don’t have a relationship. I wish I could cure you, but I can only mend my own heart.
I will honor you and the memory of your life in this way.
Dear Leonor,
This will be my last letter. I have really enjoyed getting to talk to you. It's been something I never thought I would be able to do, but here I am.
I am not ready to write this. I'll come back.
​
​
haha just kidding. will I ever be done?
Dear Leonor,
I am writing these letters to you because this is the only way I feel like I can share space with you. I don't know what other form of communication as intimate, aside from putting pen to paper, and getting to feel my knuckles brush the paper beneath, as I move my hand across. I have a forever callous on my ring finger, from many years of furiously jotting down notes and from when my brain works much faster than I can willingly write. Even the few times when I get to see you physically, there's 6 inches of invisible glass between us at all times. I can scream and you will still not hear me. I feel so helpless and desperate. You are a ghost of who you were. I feel like someone is playing a cruel joke on me and I am just waiting, begging to wake up. So here I am writing to you, because this is the only way I have a mother. Through the bounds of these words, and in between these lines, you exist, similarly to how you live in the deepest escape of my mind. Isn't it crazy what our minds can do? I mean, I think of what yours has done. I think of how I keep my eyes closed an extra hour in bed, tucked under the warmth of my comforter, comforted by the dreams that are real behind the tips of my eyelashes. Like little soldiers they stand together, not letting reality enter, until they are disarmed and flicked up. As quickly as light rushes in, the quiet is gone, and anxiety and reality creep in. If I could create a world where I could come visit you in when I lay to rest for 7 hours, I think I would spend my usual hours awake actually sleepwalking and drifting. The way I crave for your reality and your presence is like a nagging ant carrying a single crumb. I will relentlessly holdfast and not stop until I am home to you, in our world, in my mind. I am so scared of death, but I wonder if we could see each other like how I've just described. You and Papi have raised me Roman Catholic, and I still believe in God. I always talk about how being a science major has made me believe in Him more, since how else could our bodies and living beings, all of creation, be so intricate and complex, without a designer? So as much as I question, because part of me has doubts, I hope there is a heaven, because I will look for you there. Maybe our suffering, yours for your lost children, and me for my missing mother, will cease, and we will be able to embrace and kiss in the clouds. Otherwise, who could have allowed for such bitterness and strife that exists a lifetime? How could babes and animals of innocence be slaughtered, abused, or hurt without an everlasting peace they will eventually find? There has to be something greater than this, for why do we suffer like this?
Through the bounds of these words, and in between these lines, you exist.
Dear Leonor,
I had the boys read my letters, and they think I am so harsh and full of hatred for you. I thought that by sharing with Papi and my two brothers that it would be something they would understand because of their familiarity with your illness, and due to their own experience with it. But, my experience has been very different from them. Also, I know that one of them really doesn't know me or understand me, even though I try hard to explain myself to him. The anxiety of waiting for his insults literally made me shake the other day. He just says things in hurtful ways because he sincerely intends to hurt me. I know he looks at me with judgement. He just always wants to fight with me. But I am tired of fighting back. I will not put up with the insults and way he speaks to me. I don't understand how he can defend someone who openly betrays him, being friends with one of his ex best-friends. I don't understand him, and that's why I will never speak for him or assume to. I will speak to him kindly and that's all, but in the same way I don't understand him, he doesn't know me. He was cruel when I shared my heart, when I shared these letters. I'm tired. He is difficult. I just don't know how to connect.
​
Meanwhile, I meet people every day at school, whom for some reason that I don't understand, tend to really like me. Is it weird that I don't understand why people want to be my friend? I don't know what it is. Yet, of course, a lot of people I deeply revere, don't want to be my friend, or I have to beg for their attention. It's made me realize, I need to be more intentional in the energy I give, because despite how I feel, my energy is valuable. I am valuable, right?
​
I think that beyond the pain and emptiness I've felt from your absence, there's this crack in the foundation of who I am. There is always a question mark, even if it's not explicit. I, for some reason, question my intuition and my judgements because of your absence. I don't know what it is. It's like I have incomplete wiring, or a small hiccup. I just can't seem to trust myself---it's an insecurity I can't shake. I don't know if I will ever be able to overcome it. I just keep waiting for you to assure me, but I can't get an answer. Therefore, there will always be an uncertainty in my voice, in the presentation of my opinion, and in whoever I believe I am.
​
I feel guilty. Hearing from them made me realize that I am so defensive and in fight-mode when it comes to you. I don't know how to be gentle with you. I don't know how to have patience. I am struggling so hard to let go of my anger and pain. Just writing these letters have been so immensely difficult for me. I remember describing this to my therapist once. It's like my feelings towards you and your illness and honestly anything remotely related are all trapped together in a room that's locked away. I push and push it away, as if I had erased its existence on blueprints. But then when the door is opened, it lets out a gush of hot air and fire, which burns and aches through the foundation. The smoke fills the air, and I can't tell anything apart.
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Rationally I know that your illness is separate from you, but emotionally, all I've ever done is blame you and put it just on you. And it doesn't help that you can't defend yourself. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to resolve these feelings because I just started to let myself feel them and think of them. The last time I allowed myself to feel all of this, I cried for about 3 hours straight about not having you in my life and about the hole I constantly feel. It was a stupid Little House on the Prairie episode, where this little girl cut her gorgeous, long blonde locks so she could buy her mom a new dress. And then the tears rolled out for hours and hours as my whole body throbbed with pain. I had to have my boyfriend Gabe just hold me for those hours.
​
Mom, I don't know how to be gentle with you. I don't know how to show you grace. And I can't rationalize why I am like this. You are suffering at all times. You still think your children are lost. You've been thinking that since you fingerprinted us, probably even before. You are in a constant state of anguish, and I feel powerless to help. I also feel ashamed of my displaced anger. This is so raw, and so hard. I wish more than anything that you could fix me. That with one touch, a hug, something---that you could make me whole. I wish you were okay. I wish that I could process my emotions at a faster rate. I wish I had the capacity to learn and to move forward. But this is where I am at.
​
These letters are raw because I am only now at a state to process. They have freshly come out of that smoking room and they are still hot. I need time for them to settle, to cool down. I need time. But we don't and we have never had time. I am sorry I am deficient in some way that doesn't allow me to sever my anger towards your illness from you. I apologize ten fold. Even as I say that, it's uncomfortable and I feel resistant. I don't hate you. I don't think I ever had. I just don't think I've known how to love you. When people say their vows, it's in sickness and health, and I don't know how to love you while you are sick. I am trying to now.
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There is one letter that I wrote to you, that felt so messy, that for a while I had written "brain mush" next to it. I think I wanted these letters to be perfect, the same way I've wanted to be perfect for you. But what I've realized is that they are so terribly, beautifully flawed and imperfect. I am not perfect, so far from it. But I know within my heart I've had something to say. It calls to me, but I am not ready. I am on the path towards it, and I can feel myself getting closer and closer, but I am not ready. I have more to digest. I have more to feel. Thus, these letters don't have an end. They are alive. They are parts of my soul searching for yours and they are in a constant state of metamorphosis, as I live and grow. I am not done searching for you. Our conversations are not over, they have only just begun. Forgive me mom, I will find you.
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Our conversations are not over, they have only just begun.