Que dios te bendiga. May God bless you.
The thought behind it will always be more significant to me than the actual implications of those words. My skepticism was oftentimes welcomed by reassurances from my family; there was an explanation to any question I would ever fathom, and some things are above me so I would never be able to understand them. Even in middle school I had a hard time believing that anything was above me; I knew too much already, and I refused to mystify what I couldn’t understand. I spent years swallowing the guilt that came from the half-hearted agreeance I responded with any time they wanted to dispel their concerns of “losing me.” My dear mother — you ask yourself what you could’ve done differently? Nothing. You did everything you could’ve possibly done. I asked myself similar questions, I begged for proof. Those 4:00 mornings after a sleepless night … I promise those were hard for me. I tossed and turned; countless nights the moon was serenaded with the lies I told myself in hopes I could reconsecrate my reality. I shed some tears realizing I would one day lose my father, my mother, my sisters. I shed some tears realizing that one day, not too far from now, I will be forgotten. That my kids might not get the opportunity to meet my beautiful grandmother. But knowing that you, momma, sleep with an unequivocal confidence that there is a light at the end of the tunnel keeps my mind at peace.
A life of autonomy. My family has enough on their plate to feed the next 86 families over, I will always avoid adding more to it. An ideal of independence etched into my identity forever. What I’m supposed to do, what I’m told to do – a moral compass expected to be aimed towards the heavens. Instead I follow a primal drive from within – one steering straight towards evolution and progression. My mother sits on a throne overseeing a surfeit of compassion and I don’t fall too far behind. My alternative being a limitless reign over a world bound by life’s limits. Without a constant fear of eternal simmering or a promised glorious forever, my compassion blends into survival. I’m living within my infinity, my promised forever is now, and it’s just as glorious. A numbered existence — the basis of my boundless devotion to experiencing a glorious life. My mother’s inevitable blessing is significant and valued; I just no longer seek reassurance.