The image deeply affected me. Never before had I found it so difficult to hear “died young”.
“After that,” he continued, “Mateo stopped sleeping alone. He would wake up screaming. He would vomit during thunderstorms. If he heard the transformer, he would freeze. He couldn’t breathe.”
“I took him to psychiatrists, psychologists, priests, homeopaths, everyone who was recommended to me. They treated him. They studied him. They gave him a name: trauma, anxiety, attachment, everything. But I…”, she swallowed, “I was broken too.”
Mateo kept looking at me.
I felt a little sorry for her. Just a little. Enough to make me hate her even more.
“And then you made it your refuge,” I said.
Elea closed her eyes.
– Yeah.
There was a pause.
“He would lie down with me when he was scared,” she said. “And then when I was scared. I would hug him to comfort him, but also to comfort myself.”
I kept telling him that he was all I had left, that only he understood me, that if he left me alone, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I had placed a burden on him that wasn’t his to bear.
I leaned back in the chair because I couldn’t breathe properly.
– He was a child.
– I know.
For the first time, her voice trembled.
“But people would look at us and say how sweet we were. What a good son. What a loving mother. Nobody told me I was ruining their lives.”
Matthew finally spoke.
—You shouldn’t have told me that, Mom. You already knew.
Elea looked at him again.
– Not like that. Not entirely.
“Of course,” she said, harshly for the first time. “Every time I wanted to go on a date with someone, you got sick.”
Every time I wanted to go on a trip, you cried. When I went on exchange for a semester, you called me three times a day and told me you couldn’t breathe.
I felt something inside me beginning to take shape in a monstrous way.
It wasn’t what I imagined at midnight.
And yet, it was just as devastating.
“I’ve had girlfriends,” Mateo began, looking at me. “In high school, in college. It always ended the same way. Panic attacks, guilt, pain.”
I wanted to get closer to them, but I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like I was betraying someone. Like by choosing another woman, I was betraying you.
He looked at his mother.
Elea began to cry silently.
I looked at her with a touch of tenderness.
“So why did you marry me?” I asked.
Mateo did not respond immediately.
“Because with you I thought I could overcome it. I thought that if I got married, if I took that big step, everything else would be resolved. I thought marriage would cure me.”
I laughed once. A dry, sad, almost humiliating laugh.
—And what was the plan? Am I your cure?
Matthew lowered his head.
He did not respond.
And this silence was worse than any explanation.
“When we got engaged,” she later said, “I started going to therapy in secret.”
The psychologist told me something that infuriated me: that I wasn’t building a life with you, but trying to escape a painful devotion. I stopped going. I thought I was overreacting. I believed I could handle it on my own.
—And you dragged me along with you—I said.
– Yeah.
No one hit. No one tried to soften the blow.
Elea took a step towards me.
“I asked you to live here because I thought your presence would help him break free from me. I thought that if he saw you every day, if you became part of his routine, he would learn to be a husband.”
I looked at her with disgust, with such purity that even she lowered her gaze.
“You didn’t want a prostitute,” I told him. “You wanted a substitute. A decent woman to do the job you didn’t dare to do.”
Mateo suddenly raised his head.
– Camel…
– No. Let me speak.
My voice was already trembling.
— For three years I doubted my body, my face, my worth, thinking that something was wrong with me.
For three years I felt rejected in my own bed while you two endured this illness as if it were love. And now you tell me about it as if I’m supposed to understand?
The silence fell like a stone.
Mateo looked at me with eyes filled with something worse than guilt: clarity.
“Yes, I desired you,” he said suddenly. “That was the problem. Yes, I desired you, and that frightened me. On our wedding night, I saw you sitting on the edge of the bed and I panicked.”
It wasn’t disgust. It was panic. As if touching you meant crossing a line I didn’t know how to cross without destroying everything.
This honesty hurt me more than any lie.
Because it was true.
And because it arrived too late.
I walked away from him.
“I don’t know what makes me angrier,” I muttered. “What they did to you or what you did to me.”
Mateo closed his eyes.
– Me too.
Elea covered her face with both hands. And for the first time in years, she no longer looked like the perfect lady who gave orders in this house. She looked old. Broken. Even pathetic. But even so, I felt sorry for her.
I thought everything had already been said.
PART 3
Mateo entered the room just as I was still trying to process what Elea had just confessed. His shirt was wet from the rain, and his face reflected the tension of a man who knows it’s too late to stop something.
He saw us both standing, face to face.
And it froze.
“Have you told him yet?” he asked, without looking at me.
Elea pursed her lips.
— It’s just begun.
Mateo placed the keys on the console and exhaled. He didn’t seem angry. He seemed exhausted. As if he had spent years preparing for this moment and still didn’t know how to face it.
—Sit down, Camila—he told me.
— I don’t want to sit down. I want to know what’s going on in this house.
No one answered right away. Outside, it was still raining. The sound of the water hitting the flowerpots in the yard sounded like a countdown. Elea went to the window and stood with her back to us.
“Your father-in-law died when Mateo was fourteen,” she said without turning around. “Not from an illness or an accident. He was electrocuted at a construction site. And it was Mateo who found him.”
The image deeply affected me. Never before had I found it so difficult to hear “died young”.
“After that,” he continued, “Mateo stopped sleeping alone. He would wake up screaming. He would vomit during thunderstorms. If he heard the transformer, he would freeze. He couldn’t breathe.”
“I took him to psychiatrists, psychologists, priests, homeopaths, everyone who was recommended to me. They treated him. They studied him. They gave him a name: trauma, anxiety, attachment, everything. But I…”, she swallowed, “I was broken too.”
Mateo kept looking at me.
I felt a little sorry for her. Just a little. Enough to make me hate her even more.
“And then you made it your refuge,” I said.
Elea closed her eyes.
– Yeah.
There was a pause.
“He would lie down with me when he was scared,” she said. “And then when I was scared. I would hug him to comfort him, but also to comfort myself.”
I kept telling him that he was all I had left, that only he understood me, that if he left me alone, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I had placed a burden on him that wasn’t his to bear.
I leaned back in the chair because I couldn’t breathe properly.
– He was a child.
– I know.
For the first time, her voice trembled.
“But people would look at us and say how sweet we were. What a good son. What a loving mother. Nobody told me I was ruining their lives.”
Matthew finally spoke.
—You shouldn’t have told me that, Mom. You already knew.
Elea looked at him again.
– Not like that. Not entirely.
“Of course,” she said, harshly for the first time. “Every time I wanted to go on a date with someone, you got sick.”
Every time I wanted to go on a trip, you cried. When I went on exchange for a semester, you called me three times a day and told me you couldn’t breathe.
I felt something inside me beginning to take shape in a monstrous way.
It wasn’t what I imagined at midnight.
And yet, it was just as devastating.
“I’ve had girlfriends,” Mateo began, looking at me. “In high school, in college. It always ended the same way. Panic attacks, guilt, pain.”
I wanted to get closer to them, but I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like I was betraying someone. Like by choosing another woman, I was betraying you.
He looked at his mother.
Elea began to cry silently.
I looked at her with a touch of tenderness.
“So why did you marry me?” I asked.
Mateo did not respond immediately.
“Because with you I thought I could overcome it. I thought that if I got married, if I took that big step, everything else would be resolved. I thought marriage would cure me.”
I laughed once. A dry, sad, almost humiliating laugh.
—And what was the plan? Am I your cure?
Matthew lowered his head.
He did not respond.
And this silence was worse than any explanation.
“When we got engaged,” she later said, “I started going to therapy in secret.”
The psychologist told me something that infuriated me: that I wasn’t building a life with you, but trying to escape a painful devotion. I stopped going. I thought I was overreacting. I believed I could handle it on my own.
—And you dragged me along with you—I said.
– Yeah.
No one hit. No one tried to soften the blow.
Elea took a step towards me.
“I asked you to live here because I thought your presence would help him break free from me. I thought that if he saw you every day, if you became part of his routine, he would learn to be a husband.”
I looked at her with disgust, with such purity that even she lowered her gaze.
“You didn’t want a prostitute,” I told him. “You wanted a substitute. A decent woman to do the job you didn’t dare to do.”
Mateo suddenly raised his head.
– Camel…
– No. Let me speak.
My voice was already trembling.
— For three years I doubted my body, my face, my worth, thinking that something was wrong with me.
For three years I felt rejected in my own bed while you two endured this illness as if it were love. And now you tell me about it as if I’m supposed to understand?
The silence fell like a stone.
Mateo looked at me with eyes filled with something worse than guilt: clarity.
“Yes, I desired you,” he said suddenly. “That was the problem. Yes, I desired you, and that frightened me. On our wedding night, I saw you sitting on the edge of the bed and I panicked.”
It wasn’t disgust. It was panic. As if touching you meant crossing a line I didn’t know how to cross without destroying everything.
This honesty hurt me more than any lie.
Because it was true.
And because it arrived too late.
I walked away from him.
“I don’t know what makes me angrier,” I muttered. “What they did to you or what you did to me.”
Mateo closed his eyes.
– Me too.
Elea covered her face with both hands. And for the first time in years, she no longer looked like the perfect lady who gave orders in this house. She looked old. Broken. Even pathetic. But even so, I felt sorry for her.
I thought everything had already been said.
PART 3
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