Para mi Luz, que siempre alumbra mi camino, 

aun en los pasajes más oscuros de mi vida.

 

To my Luz, who always illuminates my path,

even in the darkest passages of my life.

 

 

My mother says that when I was born, it was one of the most beautiful days of her life. She tells me that upon seeing me and holding me in her arms, all she wanted to do was cry, cry with all her strength, as she had never experienced such happiness. 

 

She recounts that she longed to kiss the person who had been growing inside her for so many months, the one to whom she whispered words of love, with whom she shared everything. We accompanied each other everywhere. From that day on, she dreamed of my future, made plans for me.

 

 I believe that neither of us could have imagined everything I would have to live through until now. I must acknowledge that many things in my life have been beautiful, to the extent that I share my achievements and joys with everyone, and they feel them as their own. But what about everything that society doesn't want to see? What about the pain I have experienced in my twenty-eight years, the violence I have suffered?

 

When I was little, I saw my mother, and her smile, which I perceived as so beautiful, gave me tranquility. At that age, the dangers of life seemed insignificant. In my mind, I played and imagined that all the colors of the world had been created from the flowers of her dress, and that the stars, which I saw in the distance at night, were little lights delicately placed to watch over me.

 

 Truth be told, I saw her cry very few times; she resisted and still resists everything. Like her mother, like my great-grandmother, like all the women in the infinite thread that accompanies me. Now that I am a woman, I realize that we have much more in common than I could perceive or talk about because our voices have always been condemned to silence.

 

 In families, there are things that are kept silent, things that no one wants to talk about because they are tainted with shame, a shame that does not belong to us, that was imposed on us. They want us to feel shame so that our silence becomes their accomplice; they ask me to be silent, demand that I keep silent, not to say who, how, or where I was violated.

 

 They want to subdue me, making me feel guilty, telling me that what happened was because I trusted. I trusted a beast because when the prince reveals himself, when he humiliates us, violates us, and turns into a beast, it seems like everyone already knew. They want to make us believe that as long as the princess remains in the castle, everything will be fine. That the women who disappear, the women who are murdered, those who fall victim to femicide were at fault, that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

 

What they don't want to tell us is the truth. 

The truth that we live in a world that hates us because we represent what they have never been able to capture. What they have never been able to have. What they have never been able to buy. 

 

That's why they want to subdue us. They use fear, terror, horror to disarm us.

 

 Now that I am a woman, I realize that we have much more in common than I could perceive. 

 

She resisted and still resists everything. 

 

I resisted and still resist everything.

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Mar Rivera