speaking up

1:23 | November 5th, 2025

“You’re the most important person in this family.”

My family just got back from Spain. Last night I couldn’t sleep, anxious about many things. I began to mentally come up with a cake recipe for my birthday, remembered the one stuffed animal I had an emotional attachment to that was stolen by some girl at school when I was in fourth grade (RIP Sholly), began to daydream about my new manuscript, then remembered all the times I felt like the odd one out, and well, it didn’t help that my mother had decided to reach out because she needed to contact my father otherwise she was getting kicked out because she couldn’t pay rent.

Yes, my mother, the person that wished me a happy birthday any day but my actual birthday. The woman that disappeared and drifted away. This person has the energy and time to ask for favors, and plead for my mercy; when I had to find out how to use pads and tampons on my own, cry myself to sleep when there were mother-daughter events at school, leaving me to survive mother’s day.

Well, many things were on my mind. Plus, it is now spring and the nights have gone warmer, which I loathe with every fiber of my being. I long for autumn once again.

The last time I looked at the time it was past four am and I woke up by eight with quite a lot of commotion outside of my room. I slept a good four hours. Yay.

This full moon is supposedly the most potent full moon of the year and I’m feeling all the effects. It’s like all the stitches that had been healing have been ripped apart and I am encountering the wounds as fresh as they once were.

“You’re the most important person in this family.”

My grandpa is retaining water to the point he looks pregnant, and his feet do too. My aunt won’t stop talking in a Spanish accent. I’m somehow unbothered and glad they had a good time. My grandma held on tight when she hugged me and called me a thousand warm nicknames I hadn’t heard in years. She barely kissed my cousin’s cheek and I noticed the change.

Have I been blind all along?

My grandma is not someone that opens up, unless she’s having the yearly breakdown and she has no other choice but to speak. She has texted more than she ever has in general during this trip. We barely communicate when she’s at the countryside and I’m in the city. These past few weeks has constantly called and I know they have been in constant movement.

She called me one night with a sad tone in her voice, saying she wished I was there, and that she missed me and promised the next trip would be just the two of us. All of this has surprised me, because again; this is the woman of silence.

At first I thought it was the guilt talking all along. A few days later I felt lighter, realizing that even though the guilt was talking, she was talking.

“You’re the most important person in this family.”

I like to believe something in Spain sparkled up her soul. Perhaps it was the reminder of her father, her heritage, the mother land she never lived in, the grandmother and mother that taught her about her ancestors and how to make paella, the culture she was born into but barely grasped.

Something changed in her and she decided to speak, something she doesn’t do. I’m not saying she’s a mime, what I mean by ‘speaking’ is that she spoke from the heart, not the ego. Not the classic mundane chit chat. She said things that came from deep within. Things I’ve never heard her say in almost twenty-one years.

3:21

They got here around 11:30am. We chatted and my grandpa told me all about Spain. What they ate, what they drunk (this was specially important because his favorite cocktail is not a thing in Europe), and then my grandma joined us. She kept complaining she needed to color her hair with urgency, and I felt like everything was as typical as it is.

After a bit I went to my room, knowing lunch would be served in a couple hours. I was playing guitar for a bit and then sat to arrange a couple paragraphs I wrote last night while sleep deprived. She knocked on my door, and she did a thing she’s never done before. She sat down in bed, in front of me and asked if there were any news, if anything had happened.

I could hear the rest of my family sitting on the terrace, talking and laughing over cocktails and cigarettes, but she was here. Usually, when I disappear nobody notices, there’s no questions, there’s no visitors to my room. I stay invisible until someone calls for lunch and then I’m just another person at the table.

She saw my new guitar and grabbed it because she thought it was pretty. I stood up and sat by the bed and she asked if I had been playing lately and handed it to me. She sat on the chair I had been sitting on previously and I told her I had learned a Cat Stevens song, one that I knew she liked.

I played “Father and Son” and she sang along with me. I was holding tears while trying not to mess up the chords. She sipped her wine and asked me to play again.

I don’t think we’ve had an intimate moment like this. I would remember. I know that for sure. I do recall the times when she picked me up from school or I’d go with her to the hairdresser and we’d sing along to Frank Sinatra’s “Something Stupid” when we were in the car. Once we listened to the song in loop about five times and we laughed at our stupidity for not changing it.

After that she asked me if anything was wrong. And I said I was fine. And she told me she noticed my voice sounded strange the day before, when she called before boarding their plane. I told her the truth. I told her that the feeling of being the odd one out in the family had been weighting me down recently. I told her I felt like an extra piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit. I told her that even though I didn’t like family travels because of the chaos (she agreed with me on this), didn’t mean I wasn’t hurt I had not been invited.

And her response was that she loves me and I’m not the extra, she said “You’re the most important person in this family.”

She said my grandpa’s brothers loved me and always spoke wonders of me, that she loved me and my grandpa did too but he was just an asshole, and I laughed as I cried. I have a hard time being vulnerable in front of her, because as usual her response would be “don’t cry”, and I believe crying is the most human thing we have… besides from breathing and defecating, of course. But the first thing we do as humans is cry. We have no other language but crying for some time.

She said I shouldn’t think that I’m the odd one out, and I told her that they have made that evident my whole existence. She replied that she did understand that it was harder for me because I didn’t have a nuclear family, and then said again, “You’re the most important person in this family.”

One way or another that statement made me think of the healing I’m supposed to bring to my kin. I’ve been the cycle breaker, the generational trauma healer, and this remains as my role. I felt my role being validated one way or another. Like there was importance behind it and she saw that, even if she’s not entirely conscious of the concept of it.

I don’t have a mother but she has been the closest to it. Even with all her silence and her orders for me to remain small, as time has passed she has allowed my greatness to spread around. I remember when I told her about Paul, who would then become my editor, and she said she would sell her car if it was needed. It was an impulsive thought that came out because she felt excited and because she had been having a couple drinks that evening, but I recognized it as something new.

Maybe as she has seen me grow, she has grown in certain areas herself.

Once she said I inspired her. And that I was her only friend. — At the time I felt slightly weirded out by the friend thing. I thought friends didn’t have a relationship like the one we had… but it’s true. I’ve been the only one there when the yearly breakdown comes and she cries desperately, unable to grasp who she is or why she became this silent puppet.

I was the one that went to check on her that easter a couple years ago. My grandpa had insulted her all day. We were having lunch and he said another thing to her, and she yelled at him to stop, that she was a person. She grabbed her wine glass and broke it against the table, out of pure rage and sadness stored deep in her heart. After that she kicked a chair and broke it before storming out of the dining room.

Everyone went back to their meals in silence. Her daughters began discussing European foods and my grandpa drunk from his glass of wine. My cousins were in shock. Nobody said a word about her seat being vacant and the aftermath of her right there, in front of their eyes. I was the only one that stood up and went after her.

I have recognized her fragile heart more than anyone else.

“You’re the most important person in this family.”

And perhaps she had recognized my resilience more than I thought she had.