english reflective

If you ever get a chance to leave your busy world, and take the time to just observe the world around, you can see its dying desire for love. But, love is not as simple as admiration and a desire for another being, it has also intertwined itself with acceptance, companion and respect; not only for a significant other, but dear ones as well.
I found myself surrounded, sitting amongst unfamiliar faces. Some faces I may get to know within the next year, and some I know I may never understand. But, as I know all too well, they all hold a common goal. They all wish to belong to a bigger group. To feel accepted , to find those people whom they can share their joys and troubles.
I was born to a troubled family that bore deceptions. To a mother, a father, an older sister, and later joined by a younger brother and another sister. We grew up knowing the traditional Mexican ways, you did everything as a family. I was the daddy’s girl. My mother was a stay at home mom and my father was the bread winner. To me, my life seemed very ordinary.
It wasn’t until I was ten that my mother began working and that I noticed changes in my life. It’s as if her job had allowed her to take control of her life. Not only did she spend more time out, visiting my aunts and grandma, which at the time I was more interested in remaining at home and playing with the neighbors, than accompanying my mother. She also began to spend more time on the phone. By no means do those pervious statements imply that she neglected her children, the pattern later came with my father. She seemed to be put off by his mere existence.
We had never grown up hearing an argument, everything had always been the way my mother said, and my father had always supported it. He was a man in love with his wife. But, as the months piled on, in 2003, so did the hushed arguments. They were all muffled sounds though doors. Thinking back I never recall my parents ever showing affection towards each other, in fact, it isn’t until my mother couldn’t sit next to my father, that I came to realize this. As the weeks of their hushed arguments continued, I woke up to find my father asleep in another room, having not paid every much attention, I wrote it off as my mother having grown tired of my fathers snores. But, as the tension between the two of them grew, it became apparent in the eyes of my older sister and myself, that it was becoming unbearable for them to be near each other. I began noticing my father’s obsession with my mother’s cell phone. The process wearing more on my father than on her. He wore a look of depression and discontent, while hers was more cold and stubborn.
It was growing and becoming more noticeable, both my parents believing it to be unknown to any of their four children. My father had always had of way of dealing with disappointments by shutting himself off, from the rest of the world. Becoming a stranger to his children. My mother had begun visiting one of my aunts almost routinely, and her voice becoming softer, almost soothing over the phone. There was not doubt it was over.
I can still remember that hot summer day, my mother having asked us to enjoy the day outside, went to put an end to her unhappiness. I can still hear her voice ringing in my ears. Repeating over and over that he had to go, he had to leave his children and return her freedom. She was no longer chained to the marriage her parents had forced her to be apart of. She was going to be free, to live a life with her children, a life that she was in control of. She had hurt him, and with little protest he left. He walked into the hot summer air, only to find me waiting to greet him, demanding he tell me where he was going. After all it was uncommon for him to go anywhere without me. He looked at me and with watery eyes he told me how much he loved me and how he had to go, but he’d be back soon.
But, he never did returned to that household, and its almost as if he had left his ability to be a father behind, with the rest of his belongings. I knew it was the end, I had overheard it all. I knew that my dad was walking away from us. And at the tender age of ten, I also knew why. I had managed to watch enough soap operas to know when there is an affair. To know when a mother threw away her family, for her own happiness. I had known, but refused to acknowledge. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that my mom chose to confirm it.
To this day, I do not understand why a mother would choose to tell her ten year old daughter about an affair and break her heart. To create pent up hatred for someone she loved and hated. Not only was this the beginning to a very long divorce it was also, for me, the beginning of my understanding of the ugliness of human nature.
It took me years to learn to cope with the absence of my father, and the forgiveness towards my mother is not fully yet developed, but is instead replaced with understanding. I now understand that a mother can only bear to live uncomfortably for so long, before she begins to seek acceptance and joy someplace else. It would be selfish and wrong to have asked her to continue with her marriage to spare us these feeling. Though I will never understand the affair, I have come to cope with the absence of that man.
So regardless if you’re standing at a high school, gazing upon teenagers, or looking at a ruined family life, it is clear that all we want as humans is to be loved and to feel like we belong.