Luz Vazquez

Memoir
04/03/2019

Blinded

As a little girl I was blinded by everything. I was only allowed to see what my parents allowed

me to see and of course I believed and trusted them, after all that was all there was to the world

to me anyways and they are my parents right?

But what happened as I got older? I was always told I appeared older than I was, not because

of my physical appearance but because of my level of maturiness. I always took that as a great

compliment and did nothing but thank my parents because after all, they were the ones who

raised me right?

I always wondered why our lives are the way they are. Why different things happen to different

people. Every life is different. Every person is different but when it comes to family, you’re

supposed to know the people you live with pretty well, no? It is your mom, it is you dad, it is

your sister in my case. At the end of the day, they are a part of you because they are always

there, they nurtured you and they raised you. A person cannot take that away, right?

You see, I have all these questions because there was a part in my life, fall 2018 to be exact,

where my life fell into a million tiny pieces.Shattered completely. Everything I thought my dad

was, everything I had known him for, everything I had admired him for and looked up to him for

suddenly disappeared.

My dad and my mom both raised me but as I got older and I started building my character. My

mom and I really bumped heads all the time simply because we have the same personality and

we would bump heads. I, then, got closer to my dad and I would spend so much more time with
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Memoir
04/03/2019
him. After every conversation we would have I would learn a life lesson. I would always think to

myself, “I want to be as wise and as knowledgeable about life as my dad is,” but what did I know

right?

Then later came to conflicts. See, my parents have always fought for as long as I could

remember. When I was younger of course I would get scared, things being thrown across the

room, my mom yelling at my dad, my dad trying to stop my mom from hitting him. As a child I

wasn’t able to comprehend how two people that say “I love you” to each other every night could

insult each other in such a hateful way. But what did I know right?

Truth is, at the age of 9, I was so used to this I no longer stopped doing what I was doing when

I heard yelling. My sister would come into my room crying because she was 5 and did not

understand and all I would say as I hugged her was, “you’ll get used to it, don’t worry.”

As the years continued, the conflicts grew, not only between my mom and my dad but my

mom and I.

After every fight my mom and I had, my dad would take me out to cool down and to talk about

the conflict. He then fed me everything I wanted to hear about my mom at the moment and as

that little girl that I was in the past I believed every single word. I without knowing any of dad’s

intentions I started creating this very real image of my mom that was never there. That created

even more conflicts between my mom and I but I did not care because my dad always said,

“Aqui estare para siempre protegerte y defenderte.” Which means, “I will always be here to

protect you and defend you.” Can I simply ask, where is he now?

I can recall very vividly every talk we had. He would use himself in every example and say

things like, “I got a raise because I am the type of person to do things the right way, to do things
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Memoir
04/03/2019
how they are supposed to done and that’s how I want you to do things because no one gets far in

life if you do crooked things.” Then he would follow with a gesture with his hand pointing

straight ahead simply saying, “always straight, never fall off the line.”

One of my dad’s favorite saying was, “ el leon siempre piensa que todos son de su condicion.”

Which means that every lion thinks everyone is of his same condition. The first time I heard it I

did not understand what he meant. He then explained that it means that if a lion thinks every

other animal is out to hunt him because he himself is a hunter. With a person it works the same

way. If a person is a liar, they think everyone is lying to them. If a person is a cheater, that

person will think his or her partner is cheating on them as well.

He continued this pattern and he told me so many scenarios of his life where he included a life

lesson that a night in the middle of fall in the year of 2018, when my dad decided to leave after

an argument my mom and my dad had, I was completely convinced my mom kicked him out.

There was no way my dad was running away from a problem. That was his number one rule.

Always confront something If you knew you did wrong or are trying to fix something. Why

would he leave?

During this period it is when I had a lot of problems trying to piece things together. I had so

many questions. Little did I know, all of them were going to get answered and it was then that I

learned such a valuable lesson.

First, I found out everything my dad had ever told me were simply lies. How did I find that

out? Communicating with my mom. This one afternoon I sat down with my mom just out of

simply curiosity and that night turned out to be the worst and best night of my life. It was crazy

to me how many lies came out of my dad’s mouth when so many times he said his favorite
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Memoir
04/03/2019
saying. So many times he made me feel guilty over his favorite saying. After my dad left we

were forced to talk more which created this beautiful mother-daughter bond we have now but

before we got here, I was extremely confused with myself. Everything I was taught, everything I

knew about my dad was a lie and everything my dad told me about my mom was a lie so who

did I know? I didn't even know myself at that point.

I felt so much frustration because I was so sure of the person that I was and the person I was

becoming with my dad’s guidance that now I did not know what defined me. I had so many

questions I had to ask my dad that it is as if he knew I knew everything already and he would not

come see me. The man that said he would always be there to defend and protect me was

suddenly scared to confront me?

Now as I think back and although it hasn’t been a long time, I am able to feel no frustration

towards my dad. He did everything wrong but I can take simply the life lessons he taught me and

apply those to my life. There is nothing worse than to hold something within you for years and

let it affect you physically and mentally. That is why I have decided to let him be at peace. To let

him be happy with his new family. But I will never forget, “The lion always believes everyone is

of his same condition.” And that is all I will ever keep from my dad, afterall, it is the only thing

that was true, right dad?