In the minutes after she was born, all of the lights came on. We watched her climb the wall of my body and land, exhausted, at the shore of my breast. Under the sharp white of hospital light, they did the weighing and measuring, and she screamed so that every number and value only reached my ears as alive, alive, more evidence of her realness, her presence. She sent howls up into a brightness that must have been like looking at the sun.

When I close my eyes to sleep, and all is quiet, and all I can hear is the sound of my breathing in the dark, I see him. Two black eyes glinting in the night. One smile, too white and too wide, unmistakable above me. I open my eyes in a panic, fear crushing my chest, paralysing my limbs and he is still there, looming above me in the shadows. I reach desperately for my phone. Light blinds me. I blink a few times as the image of a dog pops up on the screen.

Every week she asked me how I felt and every week, while, in general things were “fine,” I always told her there was almost always a day, or a couple of hours a day, where despondence grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was as if someone, something, was wrestling me and trying to get me to give in, to tap out. We were in different weight classes though. I was the lightweight and the despondence was the heavyweight and I didn’t have any agility or tricks up my sleeve to counteract the weight disparity between us. 

Finn arrives in what is unmistakably his truck, a Toyota pickup smothered in bumper stickers: “Keep Your Laws Off My Body!” “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” “No Coal Exports!” A plastic Buddha rides on the hood, a compass of sorts to guide Finn through hazy adventures. He steps onto the driveway wearing a faded Grateful Dead t-shirt and flashes me a peace sign when I greet him.

I began losing my eyesight when I was three – a result of poor genetics and squinting at the television too often. My sight worsened until I was nineteen; by then, I was nearly legally blind and opted to have my vision corrected through surgery. Until that point, losing my eyesight afforded me both a gift and a curse – the gift of insight and the curse of knowledge. I saw the world in layers of truths and half-truths, of what people thought they knew and what actually happened behind closed doors.

The first chicken bus honked at four AM.

The second one blasted its horn at 4:20 a.m., or maybe 4:30. It didn’t matter. I was awake well before dawn, like every day in San Andreas Osuna, Guatemala. I wondered why I didn’t hear the other 30 people sleeping at the Finca — surely one of the twenty three Guatemalan Army personnel and seven Engineers Without Borders staff heard the blast horns designed to wake all possible passengers in a twenty give mile radius. I weighed what to do in the darkness before breakfast at six and chose to shuffle off to the shared toilet ahead of any others. 

It’s that same feeling. When you’re a few weeks newly pregnant and no one knows but you. The grocery store aisles are spent dreaming of new life with a baby while you scooch past the crowding carts whose temporary owners probably have their own secret story happening.

When I was in the second grade, I was a carefree child with no real worries that I can recall. I spent my days in my head dreaming up stories, which I now know is characteristic of my personality as an INFP on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I was also an avid reader by this time, quickly consuming any book I could get my hands on. 

“Come on Beth, while Urkie’s not looking, let’s do a magic carpet ride even though she told us not to.”  My cousin Carolyn’s magic carpet ride meant my sitting on top of one of our grandmother’s assortment of throw rugs and Carolyn pulling me at top speed up and down the hallways and other wooden floor rooms of Grandmother’s boarding house in Birmingham. 

Dressed in a salwar kameez, I twirled and danced inside my room. I loved my long red tunic, the loose flowing pants and the sweeping scarf looped around my neck

I don’t miss him, but what I do miss is sitting on the cold sand of the beach in October, when the wind shivered my young bones, and I would huddle against him, burying my face into his cigarette, scented pullover. He would cross his arms for his own warmth, with a Marlboro Gold hanging from his blue lips. He never wore a jacket and even after all this time, this is the only way I can remember him.

oo often single mothers are accused of being bitter and still stuck on wanting to be with her child’s father. But, in my opinion, being bitter has nothing to do with it. It’s just all that stress of doing everything by yourself that’s piled up on your shoulders and everybody takes it for attitude.

Because maybe the truth isn't a narrative, which is an idea that's new and terrifying. Maybe it's something else. When I was on too many mushrooms, after the part I thought I was in an episode of Doctor Whoand before I almost called you, I went inside my head and tried to find something bigger and behind God, who I don't believe in.

Eight years ago, I sat across from my therapist in a puddle of tears, then heaving sobs. The despair that had been weighing me down for months had only escalated, leaving me frightened and inconsolable. “Do you think this has anything to do with Bobby?” my therapist asked. “Absolutely not,” I said, blowing my nose. “The relationship is perfect.”

Latinas are unjustly taught to prioritize the needs of others over their own. Within the Latinx framework, loyalty is a cultural expectation. For instance, familism is imparted into our children along with superstitions and the ABCs. Niñosare taught to blindly respect elders and esteem the family unit over the individual. Latinas, however, are supplied a special strain of “loyalty.” One laced with codependency and side effects of dissatisfaction and neglect.

A few weeks after turning eighteen, I packed my belongings into my boyfriend’s car and left for Western Washington University. In a short year and a half, I would drop out after struggling with drug and alcohol abuse and an eating disorder, symptoms of mental health conditions that went undiagnosed until years after I left school.

I look deep into my face in a circular mirror smudged with impressions. Some fingerprints and dental debris. Did I make this mess?  Maybe they are messages from the other side? I stop and wipe them away. I pause and consider my reflection which I barely have the effort or the energy to do most days. Tiny holes and small pinpricks. I see my eyes and catch my consciousness for a second only to dart them away. Hazel and unsure.  I don’t know that person. I see instead my pores.

n a childhood where my parents were always fighting, my escapes were the idealized versions of romance I saw in movies. The years leading up to their separation were filled with my frenzied consumption of the messages I received from Moulin Rouge (love is a many splendored thing!), Rodger & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (the far superior version with Whitney Houston and the most beautiful Prince Charming there ever was), and The Little Mermaid(who fell for a man she saw once).

The beginning of the New Year is filled with urgent and strong worded resolutions. Weight loss is always at the top of the list for most Americans, especially women. That is why I was I surprised to experience the realization that my body is worth acceptance, no matter the size, in January of 2018. I can look in the mirror and accept myself.

It was so hot, albeit a humid heat. Cockroaches the size of a baby’s hand were everywhere; I had never seen anything like it.  Texas during the summer time was relentless. I had been there since the middle of March and had gotten married in May.