Play- 3rd draft

1.   Yesterday I was thinking why I stopped writing.

I stopped when the presenter said, she noticed? Talking about my mom.

I had to stop there.

I think as a kid of 3 and a single mom that didn't say hi to me or speak. she just did her cooking responsibly and went to work and yelled at me and Lesly to clean on the weekends.

You know how people wake up to the sound of the alarm or birds chirping? Not us, we woke up mom yelling at us to clean. 

We were girls, which to her meant free house servants. Every Saturday was a clean-a-thon. And I was raised to think that cleaning the house made you a woman. Which meant women that have dirty houses are not women. I wonder what they are then. Rats?

Anyhow, until this day I analyze my life and I realize that I spend a lot of time cleaning. Like ridiculously. In a society where all that matters is money, I spend more time cleaning than I should and I should take that time to learn a high income skill, so I have been told. 

So I clean on Saturdays listening to Temptations. It became a routine. Now everything I hear temptations songs I associate it with cleaning on Saturdays. Always Saturdays. For most Dominicans, Saturdays was spent in a room full of fog called the salon. They waited in line for the other Dominicans to go first. Bayonne, a small town, had 1 Dominican lady that was an expert at hair and her name was known. When I would see her she would look tired and eyes under her bags. or the other way around, you know what I mean! She also looked at times so tired that she was almost going to pass out, probably tired of doing all those ladies hair. Standing up from sunup to sundown. People got to sit down while they waited her turn. She was standing rotating that brush and blowdryer. Over and over again, getting every strand. My version of a nightmare. 

Let's try this again, I lost track.

2.  Yesterday I was thinking why I stopped writing.

I stopped when the presenter said, she noticed? Talking about my mom.

I had to stop there.

I think as a kid of 3 and a single mom that didn't say hi to me or speak. she just did her cooking responsibly and went to work and yelled at me and Lesly to clean on the weekends.

When I was writing, this thing came up. Like me feeling bad for needing attention. when it comes to mom, its like a violin starts to play out of nowhere. She's so sad. she works so hard, she gets up at 5am. She has three kids! 

In co dependency things I learned that we all have different roles. Mom is the victim, nothing is ever her fault and she always needs to be saved.

Hero is the one who saves the victim. In my analysis, us (her 3 kids) have taken that role at different times. Cesar worked nights in high school in a paper route. He sold knifes door to door in the summer. Or he had a car, so maybe not door to door. He worked a job that paid a lot and he was gone for 3 months. Rosa said her man did it and earned thousands. Him and mom would whisper when he would come back so I guess that means they were talking about money. 

I am the escape goat. Blame me. I went to the mental hospital. I didn't clean enough (I always over cleaned, but I don't know what else I could be blamed with). Auris is "dramatic" as my sister says. Which means its not okay to be me and express myself. I guess they want me to be like them, cold and repressed and hiding my secrets. Another one, Auris is broke! which they think is so funny when I lose a job or there is another wrong turn in my life. They don't help, offer advice, or connect me with a job. They are there to complain and make fun of me. Not helpful at all.

Lesly She was the hero when me and Cesar went to school. She had a car early and mom would have her do all these errands. As a typical co-dependent, she played the hero, I want to save you role, I am responsible for things you should be responsible role. So she did all the errands. she didn't have boundaries. She did everything mom asked. And mom is never happy. that's kind of her skitch. her go-to. Even when you do all she asks, and she gets you to do it out of obligation of guilt because she's your mother and she acts so helpless. then you are exhausted and tired and she talks bad about you behind you back (I have people reporting it back to me). And it gets so exhausting. 

3.  Yesterday I was thinking why I stopped writing.

I stopped when the presenter said, she noticed? Talking about my mom.

I had to stop there.

I think as a kid of 3 and a single mom that didn't say hi to me or speak. she just did her cooking responsibly and went to work and yelled at me and Lesly to clean on the weekends.

It was not okay to get noticed. It was not okay to have a problem. It was not okay to need attention. Cesar was always gone working. Lesly never came home, she escaped to go to Jennifer's house. In my hero season, I went where everyone was running away from: I went home. And at home my mom ignored me (like Cesar). My mom never asked how my day was. I calculated this as she didn't care about my internal state of mind or state of being. 

So if you ask why I felt bad. I stopped sleeping and it wasn't until I started doing things at night, like cleaning pots and they make a noise. That she noticed. It was not okay to be notice. I was a problem child, the worst thing a single mother has no time for. Everytihng is survival. Like the kids in math class, I was supposed to be quiet, ask no question and try to solve the problem in the board. 

I couldn't ask about my dad and how they met and what to do with my broken heart since everyone I loved was in an island I didn't know if I would ever go back to. I wasn't allowed to discuss my feelings. I tried with my sister but talking to her was like talking to a wall. Literally. There was no reaction, no uh huh. She was a year older. But good God! You had the same exact experience as me why don't you feel things?

It was years later she told me that she didn't know she had emotions until much later in life. 

So when my uncle gave us his old computer and i found a writing from my cousin. I was like whoa. There is this thing where you put words together and its like the page is listening to you. Its no longer in my head, swirling around and around until I get tired just thinking about all the words and feelings and emotions that I cannot express.

I was not supposed to get attention. Even worse, I was not supposed to 'need' attention. Everything was in survival mode. and we all knew that we were so close to the bottom, financially. We all worried about mom. It was the thing to do. But no one could be around her. I took that one, I wore that cape. But she ignored me. and she kept asking me 'do you have to pay the rent?' when she would see me sad. Around her, it was not okay to have emotions. Her response to sadness was, it should not exist if you do not have to pay the rent. 

It was very dismissive, just like Lesly dismisses everything I say by saying, with an accompanying roll of the eyes, "You're dramatic."