*Ahem*
I come from a large Mexican family. From the days where it was common to have twelve children and live in a one bedroom house. Luckily my grandmother on my mother’s side only had eight! The immigrated to the U.S. in the late seventies when my mother was in her late twenties.
I’ve never met my father. The story of the romance between my parents is a long, complicated, and harsh reality that I choose not to speak about voluntarily, but don’t mind doing so if it’s brought up.
My ancestors, as is common with most Mexicans, are both Spanish and Native Mexican. This mix and match is still visible generations later. For example, my siblings both are fair of skin and have green eyes. I on the other hand am a mix with yellow skin and small brown eyes that make me look more Philipino than Mexican. On the other side of the spectrum are the cousins who still hold on to more ethnic looking features.
I currently live with my mother and my two younger siblings. My mother and I are by no means best friends. We simply manage to co-exist in the same household somehow. I do love my mother, I just don’t like her much. I hold her in high regard for having raised us as a single mother while struggling to make ends meet the whole time. However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that she held us back a lot by not being more ambitious. I don’t mean that we could have been millionaires. What I’m saying is that she pretty much settled with the hardships life gave her and never really did anything about it. She became totally dependent on family alone and trusted nobody outside of it. She depended on me to be her voice since I was about 6 (and not totally fluent in English myself), and was too lazy to learn any English, which turned out to be another mistake since I wasn’t going to be her voice forever. She’s very paranoid of the world and she’s passed this trait to my siblings and me.
It has become somewhat bearable to live under the same roof recently. For years I had to fight her for my freedom. I haven’t completely accomplished this task and I doubt one is ever really free from their parents grasp, but I’m each day a step closer to living on my own. It’s very hard to take a step away ones family, especially mine. I understand that all their hopes and dreams are placed on us, their children. But they seem to forget that we have needs different from what they did when they were our age.
So far I’m ahead as far as leading this family down a better path. My sister a not so distant second will soon (upon graduating from High School) have to share this weight that is placed on my shoulders. Though it’s a pain in the butt, I know it’ll be worth it in the end. The future is something to look forward to.
written on 2004-02-04 at 9:10 a.m.
tired / of lying