Daniel Alarcón: A warning: this episode contains descriptions of child abuse and substance abuse.It is not suitable for children.
This is a traveling radio from NPR, I'm Daniel Alarcón.
Almost every day we get proposals from Latin America stories.But on April 23, 2021 we came a slightly different proposal than we normally received.A very personal.It seemed rather a letter, sent from an Argentine city.
The first line said:
"Hello!I can't believe I am writing this mail.My name is Carla and I live in Argentina ... ”.
Carla: I grew up as my alcoholic and narcotic mother.Arriving from the school to find her on the floor passed out by the mixture of muscle relaxants with her vodka.
Alarcón: I will not count now everything Carla told us in her letter, she will do that.But I can tell them that everyone in the team struck her sincerity and lucidity with which she analyzed what she had lived ... Also her courage to want to tell him.
Carla: And I lived a lot of violence, abuse and abuse of both her part and her surroundings.The situation reached such an extreme that after years of trying to get away and not being able, and the pain that caused me, I managed to leave definitely.
Alarcón: However, at the end of his letter, Carla told us something that surprised us.That, a few months before, he had decided to talk to her again.She wanted to understand why.Why alcohol, why violence.Why so much pain.
Carla needed to understand what happened, and also her feelings towards her mother.She needed to know, above all, if she would be possible to forgive her.
Carla: Many people don't understand it, they judge me to relate to who violated me for years.I did it at first.
Alarcón: And that is going to treat this story: the limits of forgiveness and reconciliation.Can you heal a relationship between two people - a daughter and a mother - who have lived things that seem irreparable?Can anyone who has been violent, change?
We accompany Carla to find out.
A brief pause and return.
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Alarcón: We are back on Radio Ambulante, Fernanda Guzmán and Nicolás Alonso investigated this story.Fernanda continues to tell us.
Fernanda Guzmán: When I read Carla's letter, I felt something strange: I also have a very difficult story with my mother, and, in a way, it was like being reading an alternative version of my life.With its big differences, of course.But I could perfectly understand those feelings I described, those questions.I had made them many times.
Immediately, I knew it was a story that I wanted to produce.Above all, because it plays one of the great common places that we repeat daily: "Mother there is only one", "there is nothing stronger than the love of a mother."It is something that cannot be questioned, which seems automatic: the mother must be loved, no matter what.You have to be next to her.Whatever happens.It is a message that comes from us everywhere.
But for many people the relationship with their mothers is something much more complex than that.And for Carla it was like that since she was a girl.In her first years, she saw very little to her mother.She worked until too late, at a gas plant.
But still, he made efforts to be present in his life.
Carla: I realized that she arrived super tired ... but in spite of everything, she arrived, did dinner and told us a story ... I told us the whole story until we slept.And like that was the moment she showed us that she was there.
Guzmán: Her father was always very distant, both with her and her older brother.But her mother had those details of affection that were being recorded in her memory.A long time later, when Carla tried to understand how everything had collapsed, she would remember them again.
Carla: In general super affectionate, super.Like everything I have received with physical love has been for her.So far my mother was in all fine.
Guzmán: Carla wouldn't know how to say exactly when her mother stopped being well.But she is sure of something: that when she was about ten years old, she began to have the strange feeling that her mother was no longer with her.Not at all.
I felt it on the nights they sat down to watch family television.
Carla: And my mother was simply there.But her look was the TV ... but it was like nothing.And I remember that she stared at her sometimes because I was surprised ... as well as I don't know why I looked at my mother a lot when she was a girl.
Guzmán: He looked at her, watched her face, eyes.
Carla: As I wanted ... I don't know how to look for her.And precisely for wanting to look for her, she realized that her eyes was not.
Guzmán: But that was not all.
Carla: When you ... let's say, let's say, as it connected again, I shouted at me.And she bothered him very much.“What will you look at me?Don't look at me. ”
Guzmán: Carla didn't know what to answer.Sometimes, she seemed as if her mother had several personalities.And for a ten -year -old girl, there was only one explanation for those abrupt changes.
I wrote it all the time.
Carla: My mother is crazy, mom is crazy, my mother is crazy.In all my books there is "my mother is crazy" because she sometimes had this super tender personality and well so mom, mom.But other times it was like: "I left here and you don't talk to me and I don't want to know anything with you ..."
Guzmán: Nor could he find refuge in his father, sick with diabetes and sometimes also aggressive with her.He irritated him to speak or make noise.She was in the department trying not to wake him up from the nap, not to bother her mother in the kitchen.Do not cross with anyone.
Carla: I always felt a nuisance, that I was a hindrance, that I was bothering all the time, and I say good: why, then, I'm here?
Guzmán: The day his dad was hospitalized in intensive therapy, after suffering a heart attack due to the seriousness of his diabetes, the situation became even worse.From that moment on, the silence of the house began to become thicker, loaded with anguish.Her father was almost two weeks admitted to the hospital.Her older brother spent all day on the street.He only had his mother.
But she saw her getting further from this world.
Carla: The few times that my mother saw her was as more lost than normal, more in crisis and was reasonable.It was understandable, the whole situation was very stressful.
Guzmán: It was understandable that it was like that ... in addition to the house, the children, it was upday through.
But for Carla, stress did not come only from her family.She had just changed to a new school.She had no friends, the subjects were heavy ... when she was there, all she wanted was to return to her house.But when she came back, she wanted to run to any other place.
One afternoon, when he returned from school, Carla opened the door and found her mother lying on the floor.
Carla: At that moment I thought dead and desperate me.So she was running and saw that around her she had like a puddle, that at that time I thought it was water.A puddle near her head.
Guzmán: Scared, she tried to make her mother react.
Carla: And ... and there start slapping her ... to shake her, trying to see if she woke up or if there was a way to revive.Because I thought she was dead, because she didn't feel her or breathe.And suddenly, when she woke up she ... the first thing she told me: "I hate you, I should have aborted."
Guzmán: That scene became something everyday: return from school and find his mother fainted.And also the insults.
Carla: I ... as I had no other way, he said: "Yes, ma, you're right. Yes, well, but that's it. You're right, I don't do it anymore."Or things like that, how to admit a guilt, of something that nothing to do with what ... that I was doing.
Guzmán: When he said those things, his mother seemed to calm down.Then Carla took advantage of her and dragged her down the hall to her room.She harshly managed to sleep her in bed, covered her and let her sleep.
I asked Carla if she remembered what she used to think at that time, after leaving her mother sleeping, while the afternoon passed.What explanation she gave her, at ten years old, for those fainting and for the fury she followed.
Carla: that I was possessed, I had never seen anything like what I saw in it: that it was leaving, that it was another ... her face completely changed, her gaze towards me changed.She didn't look at me like a daughter, nor did she treat me like a daughter.She looked at me like one ... one, I don't know ... I don't know, like an unknown, an enemy.
Guzmán: But when he woke up ... he was, again, his mother.
Carla: At that time I understood as if he had already gone the ... demon rkk he had.That what was needed was sleeping and the demon was leaving, and she got up to the bathroom and spoke to me as normal ... as well as tired ... as well as with a headache, it showed, because thehead.And as if nothing had happened, that made me worse.She didn't chat ... It didn't talk.
Guzmán: although his mother did say something: that he never told any of this to his grandparents or anyone who visited them.Carla just thought about one thing.
Carla: My head at that time was nothing else that I had to save and put it well.
Guzmán: As Carla told us in her letter, the roles between them were changing.Although she was just a girl, she had to start being, in some way, the mother.She tried to protect her, to make her feel good.But, over time, she understood her better what happened to her mother: she began to realize that, when she picked her up, she could not walk well.That she said meaningless things, she tripped ...
Carla: From children we know how a drunk person is because we see him all the time.We know how it moves, how it speaks, we more or less know what a drunk is.So like I saw her like this but at the same time I did not identify well.And then I began to give an account, obviously because of that, because I realized that it was alcohol what I had.But I didn't understand why so much, why so.
Guzmán: Over time, he found some mechanisms to survive what was happening to him.Get to blame her, to go to her mother, wait for her to be again, again, she.But one day, at 11, that was no longer enough.
Her mother, drunk, took a kitchen knife and began to threaten to kill and hurt her.
Carla: And I remember shouting at him: "Maaaaaaa!"Thus, but with a ... a cry so my throat of despair was torn.And I remember that I even fell from the force that my body made.I don't know, when I shout, I fell to the floor.
Guzmán: And the scream seemed to get his mother out of the trance.
Carla: It was: "Carla, Carla, Carla!"And she approached like that she hugged me, hugged me and said: "That's, that's, that's it. Sorry, it was a joke, it was a joke, it was a joke."Just like she came back, her eyes returned like a few seconds and after a while she went again.
Guzmán: But those seconds did not reach to release the knife.And, immediately, he threatened Carla again with hurting her.
She ran to call her brother.
Carla: I said: "I come please, that the mother is doing such a thing."And I don't know how, but he arrived in, nothing, a matter of minutes.
Guzmán: His brother was able to quickly remove the knife.Carla slept that night.And the next night and many more, for years.
I think it does not make much sense to keep in detail everything Carla suffered in her adolescence, while her mother continued to descend in a spiral of alcohol and violence from which she never, never thought she would return.And of which she never understood the reasons.
He is enough to say that at 18, while saving to leave home, the time came when he understood that he could not delay his departure from there.One morning, after returning from the place where he worked, she found the usual: alcohol, screams.Her mother threw himself on her and, once again, she Carla thought she was going to die.When she finally managed to let go, she not only called her brother, but also the police, who soon arrived at the apartment to see what was happening.
That night, his dad was hospitalized again.Her brother convinced her not to put charges against her mother, but it was an end point.
Carla: And she woke up the next day and: "How are you Carlita? How did it go yesterday at work?"No ... I looked at her like this, with fear, I couldn't believe her.And I remember that she approached a little more, she tells me: "What's wrong with you?"And I like this: "No, you don't get closer, you don't get closer."Thus, dead of fear.There, that's how the urgent need to leave my house was marked much more.My house was never a home.
Guzmán: He started looking for where to leave.But, still, Carla kept worrying about her mother.She told her that it was going to be the best for both, she tried to involve her in her move.She didn't have much money, but she reached him to lease something small.She was afraid that her mother had a great crisis for her departure, but she didn't feel that she had another option either.At that point, it was already a matter of survival.When she arrived at the new apartment of her, small and almost without furniture, she felt, for the first time in a long time, in a safe place.
Carla: I didn't want more misery, or more sadness.So much color in my house.Pure incense, pure incense, pure sahumerio.And music, all the time playing my music.And there I also realized that I did not know who I was and that was like Wow!I did not know who I was in basic things, as I don't know ... how I was with other people, or how was I thinking what I want.That was very crazy for me: to think about me, because my life had really been all the time to think about my mother.
Guzmán: The day Carla left, her mother felt more lost than ever.She had a strong disconnection with the world around her years ago.She barely remembered what she had done in the days, in the weeks, in the previous months.But she knew that Carla was gone, and that he had done it to get away from her.
Jaquelina: A anguish and despair.The world came down me down, but I could not tell my daughter that she did not leave her, because I know the hell she was living here.
Guzmán: This is Jaquelina, Carla's mother.
When I started producing this story, I asked Carla if she seemed good to talk to her mother.She told me that she did, and she gave me the number of her detail.It seemed important to understand at what time Jaquelina had begun to twist.
I wrote on WhatsApp and told me to call her on Thursday afternoon.When we connected, one of the things she explained to me was that, at a given time, she already took until disappearing.
Jaquelina: I arrived at a point where I was happening, I got up, I was eating, I was used to it because I was drunk all day, I got up, to dinner, I went back to bed and that was.It was my whole life ...
Guzmán: According to Jaquelina, alcohol became a problem after being left without work, when Carla was a girl, with her sick husband and an anguish that began to grow in her as a force.
Although, in reality, his anguish came long before.When Jaquelina was born, her mother was 18 years old.The following year, her first sister was born, with cerebral palsy.Then six more would come.
Jaquelina: And I had to be the ... the older sister, the one who took care of the others and so on.And my mother was always pregnant, having children, having children.And with a very violent man.
Guzmán: Jaquelina told us about her father's violence against her mother and ... well, an childhood like the one she had leaves her scars.
She tried to protect her brothers from what she lived at home.
When his sister with cerebral palsy died, at age 8, her mother fell into a depression she would no longer come out.She spent whole days in bed and Jaquelina had to take care of everything: clean the house, cook, take care of her brothers.When she occupied that new role, as a replacement of her mother, she also inherited her father's beatings.
Already, then, Jaquelina began to replicate that violence.
Jaquelina: I had problems of ... that it was violent.That is, it was to hit the boys on the street.I had to take care of my own brothers, so I could also hit them.They hit me, so I hit my brothers.And so it was a chain ... permanent.
Guzmán: When he turned 14, her parents took her with a psychiatrist who prescribed Lexotanil, a strong anxiolytic who began to take regularly.Thus she began her relationship with the narcotics.
Jaquelina: A moment came that already for any little thing ... I medicated me ...
Guzmán: He began to take pills uncontrollably, as he got used to making mom of his brothers and his own mother.She felt that she had to protect them, but, at the same time, she was increasingly aggressive.
At 23, when she was pregnant with her first child, she decided that she would raise him alone.Her father had no interest in being present, nor did she want her to be.She had the feeling that so, alone with the baby, she was going to be able to give her what she did not have.A healthy childhood, without violence.
Jaquelina: And I said: “My son never in life will see me depressive as I have seen my mother.My son will never see such a thing. ”And after the years, he looks at what happened to me, falling into an addiction so deep that he not only saw me depressive, he saw me in very worse, more painful situations.
Guzmán: Almost two years later, she met who her husband would be and forgot her plan to live alone with her son.She decided to form a family and, for a while, that life seemed to work.She Jaqueina felt that she had never been so happy.
Jaquelina: I started to know, see that ... that there was another way of living.That were not screams and fights and discussions all the time and all that violence that was lived in my house.
Guzmán: It soon gets pregnant.Then Carla arrived.
Jaquelina: And pregnancy was beautiful because my husband was next to me, because we were waiting for her.We were all happy.
Guzmán: That happiness made several years.The point at which she began to be evident for her that her family fell apart, was when they hospitalized her husband in 2006.
But she already came badly, from the moment they fired her from her work at the plant ... it was the beginning of the 2000, and the strongest economic crisis in the history of Argentina began to deploy.
Jaquelina went out early to the street to look for a job, but she stayed all day sitting in a corner, alone.She doesn't know how to explain well why.Only she was panicked to go to the interviews.And at that time it was that she began to take ...
Jaquelina: I gradually started, which was for lunch and relax.
Guzmán: He had never liked alcohol, but he felt that something in that little ritual reassured her.Over time, she began to need it more and more.
Jaquelina: I never thought I was not going to be able to handle it, he said: "Well, tomorrow I take less," and so on.And she didn't leave him.And it was a despair to arrive and take.
Guzmán: she got some jobs to join some money that would allow her to pay her husband's medical expenses, school supplies and buy food.But she was getting more money on alcohol every time.When she managed to stay sober, she fell all the blame.
Jaquelina: shame, depression.A lot of anguish.That everyone was angry with me, my children, my husband ... I ... I became very bad, but that led me to take again.
Guzmán: The bottles hid them in corners of the house where it seemed to him that Carla and her brother were never going to check.And she tried not to talk much, so she didn't feel the smell.In the morning she managed to hide it, but in the afternoon, when she Carla returned from school, she was already fainted.Jaquelina desperate her own smell.
Jaquelina: You have that smell of alcohol that comes out of the pores, which is a very particular smell when you already have alcoholism time.That no matter how much you bathe, no matter how much you do ... you perfume and everything, that is mixed and is a smell that remains in memory.I have it recorded: it is the smell of decay, the smell of sadness.The pity you feel.
Guzmán: He tried to convince himself that Carla, being so small, did not notice anything.But we already know that Carla did notice.
When Carla left her home, at 19, she did not completely cut her relationship with Jaquelina.She kept going to visit her, from time to time.She realized that her mother was not better, but at least she now she could go if she felt in danger.
Carla paid her department working in Call Centers, gathering to get to the end of the month.Jaquelina tried to convince her to return;She told her that she was afraid of her something to be alone for being alone, but she did not want.In fact, she wanted to get away from her more and more.That feeling was growing during those years.Go away from her family, from her city, from her country.Far from everything.
Carla: I was looking for a home.I think I grew up looking for a home, always.
Guzmán: When he turned 24, he finally decided: he was going to look for his home in Santiago, Chile, a capital where nobody was going to meet her and could start a new life.But things did not go as she expected.When she was already about to leave, a friend joined the plan and she did not know how to say no.They rent two rooms in the center of Santiago, which Carla began paying for both.They sold sweets on the street, but, a few months later, they barely had to eat.Then her friend told him that she would return to Argentina to send her the money she owed him.
Carla was waiting for her, but never returned.At that point, she had gone down a lot of weight and felt so weak that she was dizzy in the middle of the street.
Desperate, he had to ask for help.A friend of her paid a passage by plane to return to Argentina, and her parents told her that she could live again with them.At least for a while, until she settled and she could find a job again.When she got off the plane, she saw her parents waiting for her among the people.She approached her mother.
And there he felt the smell.
Carla: After not seeing me for a lot of time, completely drunk.So it was like welcome to your life ... to your life!To this hole that you cannot leave more.
Guzmán: But Carla was no longer a girl and I wouldn't endure much in the hole.
One night, they were preparing ravioli with Jaquelina, and his mother told him that he had to go out to see a client of the work.
Carla immediately sensed what it was.
Carla: That day I got tired because I was already what the boluda was done, and is how, are you teaching me?
Jaquelina: And my daughter followed me.
Carla: And in another situation I would not have followed her, but that day I felt like not, because it gave me anger.So I waited for her.
Jaquelina: When he saw that I was buying alcohol and was taking it.And she looked at me as telling me: I knew you were doing this.
Carla: And when I saw me I just saw her with the beer can and I said: wasn't you going to see a client?
Jaquelina: I got angry with her: “Why do you get into my life, why, what do you have to chase me?Pendeja, what do you have to do ...? "
Guzmán: Carla left her mother shouting and ran to the department.She felt different from her other times, more wounded, especially since that afternoon they had had a great time together.He had felt that they had, again, a special connection.
Carla: It has always been what I have wanted to have: that contact, that connection with my mother.And ... and like it ... it hurt a lot.
Guzmán: Jaquelina arrived shortly after and the fight continued at home.But this time it was Carla who was furious.
Carla: Like she managed to touch me, because I was pushing her.And in my head something did.In a microsecondo, Mini Segundo she click, that I heard myself tell me: "No, this will not happen again."
Guzmán: Like a flash, Carla was coming the image of that night, at age 18, when he had to call the police.
Carla: And something in my head told me: "No, I'm going to defend myself. This time I'm going to defend myself. I'm not going to allow it."And it was like ... that ... that thought, that memory, all that happened in that second, completely took me out of my boxes.And then I started hitting.
Guzmán: To hit his mother, the walls, everything that was close.Carla still has trouble understanding how she reacted that day.
Carla: I can't recognize myself.I really felt that if I had left my body and it was something that I was no longer.My body moved alone, it was something that I completely ceased.
Guzmán: It was the only time his father got to separate them.Carla she had a strange sensation: as if she had finally received a violent heritage that she, for years, she had not been able to touch her.
Carla: So trembling, feeling super bad, because it was like ... something had taken over me and me ... even at the same time I was afraid.Because I: "What happened? What did I do? Why did I do all this?"
Guzmán: Scared, Carla began to pack all her things.She closed the apartment door when leaving her, and she told herself that it was the last time.
He would never put again, never in his life, one foot there.
She settled at her boyfriend's house, who also lived with her parents.She felt in shock, but little by little she was taking up her life.Jaquelina and her dad blocked them from all social networks.She did not call them again or write them.And when she called her, she didn't answer.
He had decided to get them out of his life forever, but the city where he lived was not so great either.She was so afraid to see them again, that she took different paths to go and return from his work.
But it was clear that, sooner or later, he was going to find them.And a day passed when he went to a march on an environmental theme of his city ...
Carla: And I realized that they were following me, that ... that they passed close to me, onwards.And he was very threatening because even my dad stood in front of me and began to read the poster that I had and I was frozen with fear ... and he kept walking.And for me it was worse because they didn't even face me, I was stalking.
Guzmán: He decided to go to court and put an order so that his parents could not approach her.She had to tell everything, again and again: drunkenness, screams, threats.The officials could not believe that she was putting a restriction order to her mother.She questioned him why she hadn't done it before, why now, how she could do that.
They still notified his parents.
Jaquelina: I arrive at my house one day and under the door they had left the order.At that moment I got so angry, so much, so much.She was furious.
Guzmán: According to Jaquelina, the reason why they went to the march that day was because they knew that Carla would be there, they had heard that there could be disturbances and wanted to make sure nothing happened to him.
That's why he got so angry when the order came.
Jaquelina: I was so furious in some moments that ... that I said ... if my sisters asked me: "And Carla?""I have a single child."
Guzmán: Carla learned of relatives that her mother said that and hurt.On the one hand, she had decided to erase her from her life and she knew it was the best.But, on the other, she could not stop thinking about how much her mother had changed for her addiction to alcohol and how different she had been before that.
Thus almost two years passed without knowing anything about her again.
Until the pandemic arrived and with it the confinement.Carla was still living with her boyfriend, but the relationship had deteriorated a lot.She was getting more possessive and violent every time.It was as if her life was a circle.Again, she had to keep escaping.Of another house, from another person.
In a last attempt to take refuge, he went to the house of some aunts and then, something more applied, to a shared department he saw in a Facebook ad.She just started the month of October 2020 and, although she did not understand why, she thought more and more about her mother.In everything she had always wanted to tell her.
One day, without stopping too much, he took the computer and started writing.To write to her.He did not know if it was a letter or something that would be there, forever on her hard drive, but three pages directed to her mother came out.
Carla: I remember that she was very trembling.She was like super nervous.
Guzmán: But at the same time it was a catharsis ...
Carla: As released because, for the first time, I had no taps in saying anything.As I said everything without thinking: "Oh, no, but if I tell him this he can cause a relapse. Or, if I tell him this, there makes him enter a crisis and I don't know what ..."
Guzmán: What he wanted was to get everything he had suffocated for years.In the end, she added a last line ...
Carla: "This is your chance so that things change seriously, but seriously. That is, there will really be no other chance."
Guzmán: He attached the document in an email, wrote the mail of Jaquelina and without giving time to repent, he squeezed "send."
Carla: Then I sent her the mail and waited a little while and wrote him by WhatsApp: "I sent your mail such a thing. Please read it."
Alarcón: Carla knew that they could be her last words for her mother.If Jaquelina did not say something that changed her things, that he began to repair everything he had made her suffer, he would never talk to her again.
A pause and return.
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— Jac Goudsmit Sun Nov 18 07:30:25 +0000 2018
Reveal: The disappearance of 43 students shocked all of Mexico in 2014. In their new research, Reveal presents so far unknown details of this story.Listen after Ayotzinapa, the new reveal series.
Alarcón: Before the pause, we listened to how Carla decided to give her mother a last chance, Jaqueina, almost two years after putting a restriction order.She wrote everything she had never told her, about her alcoholism and her aggressions, and she was waiting for her.
Fernanda Guzmán continues to tell us.
Guzmán: When Carla's message entered Jaquelina's phone, she was sitting, half light, in her sewing workshop.It had been a difficult day, like many others.Or more difficult: she had been fighting for not taking.
He had his cell phone in his hand because every afternoon, for months, he connected by WhatsApp with a group of anonymous alcoholics who told him his experiences.How, because of that disease, they had run out of work, without family, without friends.And how they fought daily to try to recover something of everything they had lost.
And Jaquelina also told her story: how she lost her daughter.
Jaquelina: And the first times, the only thing that happened to me, which happens to many, is that we want to talk and cry.I am not very crying, but I got there and it was crying and crying and crying and crying all the time.And sometimes I could speak and sometimes not.
Guzmán: That day, after more than a year without drinking alcohol, he had been closer than ever to fall.Carla's absence hurt more and more.But she knew that she had to resist, and the only thing that calmed her was to connect with the group of alcoholics anonymous of her.
At the beginning of 2019, after Carla's disappearance, Jaquelina had begun, little by little, to get out of her hell.
JAQUELINA: For me it was to play background and feel that I was losing what I loved most in the world.That she is my daughter and that ... and all the damage she had ... she had made her.
Guzmán: It's not that he reacted immediately when Carla left.She was about six months more sunk in alcohol, locking up alone in her basement, where she had all the bottles of her.She distressed, taking until losing consciousness.Until one morning, without warning, something felt different.
JAQUELINA: I got up one day and said: "No, I don't want this anymore." It's like a click, I don't want to fall into the spiritual, but I think it was ... it was a miracle, because I woke up with thatIdea: "I don't want this for me anymore."
Guzmán: He was surprised to feel that strength, which he had lost so much.
Jaquelina: I thought I was never going to be able to leave because I did not imagine my life in another way.I woke up and told my husband that I was lying next to me, I say: “I'm going to AA.No, I'm not going to follow anymore. ”And my husband, who had already asked me for several times: "Well, I accompany you."He accompanied me and that was that I said: "Well, enough."
Guzmán: And there began his process to leave 20 years of alcoholism.
Jaquelina: He went and came back, went and returned.She tried a few days of ... being well and fell again and then every time relapses are worse.At first it is all as if it were a maelstrom, fighting every day to ... so, so involved in: "for 24 hours I will not take, for 12 hours I will not take" and so, that ...I couldn't see anything else.
Guzmán: Thus, every day, for months.In the group of Alcoholics Anonymous they contained her and warned her that it was normal for her to feel worse than ever, not only because of the abstinence syndrome.When stopping taking after years, many alcoholics begin to have real awareness, for the first time, of the damage that their disease generated around it.
Jaquelina began to force himself to do things to get her out of there: to take care of her grandchildren, Carla's brother, who had never been able to leave him before.To get into online self -help courses, to read.
Jaquelina: And then when, already as blood is cleaned and also your head, you start having a life that you already know what you are talking about, you already know the things that are happening.
Guzmán: As we said before, the day Carla wrote to him his mail telling him everything he had never told him, Jaquelina had been feeling an anxiety that he had not long ago.At the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting she had not been able to speak.
She felt sad, tired, angry.She had told her many times that the objective of her process could not be to recover her daughter, because that was something she was not in her hands.Something that could lead to a relapse.
She said yes, because she knew it was true.But she couldn't help it.She almost every day she thought about whether she could recover Carla.
It was 9 at night when the message came to his WhatsApp.
Carla: “I sent your mail such a thing.Please read it".
Words that exploded it in tears.
Jaquelina: I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it.It was ... it was what always ... what she was waiting for so much ... and she had given herself at the moment that I was worse, there she gave her she contacted me and ...
Carla: And he said: "Well daughter, now ... right now I get."
Guzmán: At first, Jaquelina didn't even respond anything else.She ran out, to the screams, to let Carla's dad.Then she took a few minutes to read what her daughter had written.
Carla, meanwhile, kept seeing her mother "online."
Carla: Again anxiety, again, huh, nerves to wait for what he will tell me.Because I told her very strong things and things like I knew that she thought I wouldn't remember ...
Guzmán: Carla didn't know how much Jaquelina had changed in those almost two years.She didn't even know that she didn't drink alcohol anymore.She didn't know what to expect.Maybe an aggressive reaction, like so many others in the past, but she received something very different.
Carla: There are a series of audios.She answered me as crying, her trembling voice was heard and everything.Oh!She answered me as well as: "Daughter, you're right, I apologize."
Guzmán: Those audios have been lost, but in them, Jaquelina told him all about his years of silence.
Carla: And I heard it as different, as more down to land.He didn't remember her, in fact, like that.And there she started telling me, that she was going to ... Alcoholics Anonymous.And that she was helping her a lot, that she had been going for a long time.
Guzmán: They stayed like this, without wanting to finish the conversation.
Jaquelina: until 1:30 in the morning, I think, sending us audios one to each other telling us what we had done, as if ... I don't know, as if nothing had happened.
Guzmán: Before saying goodbye, Jaquelina told her daughter one more thing: yes, she wanted to take the opportunity, her last chance, to recover her.Carla still remembers the words that her mother told her:
Carla: "Our relationship is in intensive therapy, but we are going to see, that between the two we will cure it and we will heal it."It seemed as it is.
Guzmán: But Jaquelina was not the only one who had changed in those two years.That night, Carla also told her all the things that were different in her life.That her relationship with her boyfriend had ended badly but she had gone on time, that she now lived with friends, that she had other interests, other tastes.And, also, other rules.If she wanted to try to resume the relationship, she told her mother, they were going to go little by little, going together to therapy and talking, for a while, just by phone.If things were going well, they could see each other.
Carla: It is also like I had to put many limits that she understood that I was not going to do everything suddenly, I couldn't and should not.
Jaquelina: I ... I wanted to accept any ... Whatever she asked me would have accepted it because what I wanted was to see her.And that night I remember that I went to bed and I think I slept without ... almost ... like a baby I slept.
Guzmán: But a few days later, it would be Carla who would break her own rules.At that time, she worked as a saleswoman and received a request from someone who lived right next to her mother's department.She could not resist.
Carla: I said: "I have to do such a thing and spend just close to your home. Do you want me to go down and we greet each other?"
Guzmán: Jaquelina ran out and got on the elevator.
Jaquelina: I went slowly, I had never lowered so slowly ...
When I arrived and I see her come on the bicycle, when I went down ... Oh for God, I wanted to hug her, I wanted to kiss her.I didn't care about the Covid, neither the infection nor anything ...
Guzmán: Carla left her bike lying and received the hug.
Jaquelina: A strong, strong hug.It seemed to me that ... that I had to grab her strong so that I was not going to escape.He looked at her everywhere, she looked at her hands ... she told her fingers from her, as when she was born, like this, just like when she was born.
Guzmán: When they managed to let go, Jaquelina convinced Carla to climb to lunch with family, for the first time in a lot of time.It was noon on a Saturday and her brother was just visiting.
JAQUELINA: We made a lunch like that improvised that was the best of my life ...
Guzmán: Carla could barely believe that the person he saw was his mother.
Carla: I felt like she was finally acting as a mother.At the same time I understand today what to say that is like, well ... how does a mother act?Actually each mother acts as she comes out, because mothers are also women and are people and good ... but acting like what I expected from a mother.
Guzmán: When I heard Carla say that, I recognized that for a long time I also waited that my mother had that way of being with me.And I wondered how many women cannot fulfill the pressure of being an ideal mother: protect, care, to be affectionate.And many times they do not ask for help, because they believe that this is their role and are forced to face it alone.To what extent loading with that can take them to darker places, from which they are more difficult to leave.
It is something that I had thought about my own mother, and that helped me understand my relationship with her a little better.
But let's go back to Carla.
That day he had broken his first rule to heal the relationship with Jaquelina, and it soon breaks them all.He wanted to recover the time they had lost, and her mother swore that everything would be different, so a month later he made the decision to live with her again.
It was February 2021. Carla told me that, from the beginning, things were totally different.They saw series together, sometimes they cooked, talked about their lives and personal problems for hours.
And they talked about the past, although they did not deepen so much.It was as if they feared that, to talk a lot, it came true again.But that made Carla feel uncomfortable.It seemed to him that if they did not face him, a part of her could never really forgive her.
It was something I thought all the time.
Carla: I knew that one day, when I was ready I was going to tell him about going to a park, to a specific place ... that is I already had everything planned and I knew the things he was going to tell him.
Guzmán: although the idea of that conversation also scared it ...
Carla: The greatest fear at that time for me was to hurt her.Make her open a ... a dark door, like this ... towards remembering everything she did and everything she did not do.And I didn't want her to think I was claiming her.
Guzmán: And that could cause a relapse ... but I felt it was something that had to do, even if it was difficult.
It was for those days, in April 2021, when he sent us the letter in which his story told us.And he told us, when we started talking to her, that he wanted to have a conversation with her mother.One that will help her repair the wounds, the silences, everything she could not finish closing.
When we proposed to do it for this episode, Carla asked Jaquelina if she would be arranged.After thinking about it a little they decided to do it and we set a date and time.When the day arrived, Carla and Jaquelina prepared coffee and sat at the kitchen table.They wanted to feel that it was an afternoon like any other that passed together.
Then the conversation began.
Carla: Are you ready?
Jaquelina: Yes.
Carla: Do you feel like?(laughs)
Jaquelina: Yes. Estoy lista.
Carla: Are you sure you want to do this?
Jaquelina: Yes
Carla: To tell the story and all that?
Jaquelina: Yes, yes, no problem.
Carla: Well.
Guzmán: What they will listen to are fragments of a conversation that lasted almost two hours.One in which Carla no question was kept.
And Jaquelina no answer.
One of the first things that Carla wanted to know was what he had thought about his letter.What had she surprised her.And she Jaquelina told her only one thing: that she thought she did not love her, that she would have hated her so much.
But he also told him that he understood it, because addictions work like this: you hurt yourself, but all those around are.And what Jaquelina felt, at that time, was anger with the world.
Carla: And you know why you were angry with the world?
Jaquelina: huh ... yes.Because I felt alone, because I was afraid.Because the serious problems of mine, for example, come for fears.Fear of not being able to get out of a situation, of ... of feeling with too many things that I am responsible and not being able to handle them.And well and not ... I couldn't with everything.Moreover, I remember exactly the day I started taking.I made homemade cannelloni, and I say: "I'm going to drink them with a wine."The worst moment of my life and it was very bad idea to start lunch with wine and always looking for excuses ...
Carla: And how old were we?We were re guys then, if you were doing that.
Jaquelina: I was 34 years old, and you had six, right?No, that is, it is not that I started there already ...
Carla: But you remember it as the moment ...
Jaquelina: Of course, because at the time I said: Well, I'm going to take a glass of wine and then I'm going to take another and so ... when I wanted to remember that I already took it later, because I needed to sleep or because I needed to relax, or what do I know.When I wanted to agree, it was already uncontrollable, and I don't know at what time it was the morning until night and all the time ...
Carla: HMM
Jaquelina: no matter how much I ... what did you say: "Don't love me, how can you hate me so much?"It is not that I hate you, it's not that I hate you.Addiction was much stronger.It was like in horror movies when you are possessed.
Carla: Well, it's the same as I thought with you.
Jaquelina: For me alcohol was that.I was possessed.
Carla: I thought exactly the same.What do you feel you changed?
Jaquelina: I changed ... I changed everything, my life changed.I think, I enjoy.I did not enjoy because it was a terrible anxiety.I was nowhere, I was never anywhere.I was here, I was there, but my head was pointing to a bottle.That fear, that tension, that ... that anxiety, I don't have that anymore.And that for me is paradise.Hey…
Carla: Because you have nothing to hide.
Jaquelina: Because I have nothing to hide.That is, I feel clean, clean.I am this.Be able to feel love.I can feel the love I feel for you when I hug you, when I kiss you, I can feel it.You don't know the amount of people I want, but I really want it.And I don't know where there was so much love inside me, because I was totally numb.
Guzmán: Carla told her that she did remember that love.The one she had felt when she was a girl.Although that, remember, did not make it less painful.
Carla: Whenever I entered a very big anguish crisis, as I said: “It can't be, because I swear I know that person.I know we had a special connection. ”
JAQUELINA: Yes ...
Carla: That later I learned thanks to the groups of family and friends, that it is very normal for you to have very confused messages, because you have a person who on the one hand can be tremendous mom ... I remember that I always told me to fight for meDreams, I remember that I always supported me and things like that.And, at the same time, he is the same person who seemed that he got up with the aim of hurting me to say "What the fuck, then what, it is me?"And there the first ... the worst mistake.Because if that person was good and suddenly it began to be shit with me, it is because I am the problem.Well, then I learned no, but that took me a million years, a lot of time.
Guzmán: Jaquelina listened to her daughter carefully.Several times in the conversation they talked about how difficult it is to deal with such feelings, understand what is generated in you when someone who loved you hurt you.Or she loves you.And what is the minimum that is needed to forgive.Carla, at one time, believed to find an answer:
Carla: In you we see that effort that you don't have to come and tell you: ma, you did this to me, this.You already knew you were doing something wrong.I mean you always had ... that made you so guilty and everything.For me that is the difference that makes you want to approach a person.For me, speaking of forgiveness ... that's like one of the main things.The first thing someone has to do for me is that: show you that you recognize your pain, minimally.From then on, well you'll see.It is not enough with that.But may the other person say: I know what ... I am aware.Because that's what hurts the most.That is what hurt me the most.I didn't need you to come and tell me forgiveness, sorry, sorry, as you always did to me.I needed that Real would show me that you were able to understand and empathize with what you had done.
Guzmán: Carla recognized that in Jaquelina.And that was the reason that allowed him to approach her, try to understand her, meet again.
And I also wanted to know what Jaquelina thought of the new relationship they were building.
Carla: What can you do now at this time that everything we spend, despite all that, so much pain and so many things, just now we are better?
Jaquelina: You love me a lot, God has blessed me with you, because if not others had kicked me.
Carla: We kicked you.
Jaquelina: Yes.
Carla: But then we said: Well, no.
Love, then.
Jaquelina: Love.
Carla: But it's mutual, because you showed us your essence.Because yes ... it is what I told you before, if you had always been a bad ... then for what, it is much easier.You can't want what is not known.
Jaquelina: The love I felt since you were born.Thus, the same love, the same deep, deep love.That you are my baby.
Carla: Well ... you're going to make me cry.
Guzmán: During the conversation, Carla was moved several times with Jaquelina's words.With the love she now was able to express her.
Although he had asked him for this conversation, it was, in part, because he felt that not everything was fine.They had recovered the relationship, yes, and lived in a way they had never achieved before.But sometimes, when Jaquelina approached to hug her, a part of Carla felt a strong rejection.She couldn't help it.And she knew that Jaquelina realized.
Therefore, there was a question that had been asking since he lived again with his mother.One of which she herself doubted the answer.
Carla: Do you feel that I have forgiven you like this?
JAQUELINA: No.
Carla: How easy it came out!(Laughter).
JAQUELINA: (laugh) No.
Carla: Ah, well.And because?
Jaquelina: huh ... because I feel that it has been so much damage ... but I can't change it in the past and I have that clear.I can change what I am now, now in more.And now in more I am your mother who protects you, even if you are 26 years old, it protects you and takes care of you.I am that mom, now.If I screw myself with the past I will be stagnant and ... and I will have a relapse I do not know what ... even in the same mistakes, because it is not just alcohol.Alcohol is not the ... the real problem.Behind alcohol there are a lot of things.
Carla: But grab my hand.(Laughter).
Guzmán: Carla had asked her mother everything she had never dared, and had managed to find answers.But when the conversation was already reaching its end, she still did not tell her everything.She until she finally did it.
Carla: is that ... I realized very recently.But I thought I had forgiven you, that everything was fine, and over time I realized that I had not forgiven you.
Jaquelina: I already know, you will not forgive me at all and ...
Carla: But I do not do it intentional.
Jaquelina: No, I understand you.
Carla: So, I do not want to be like that, idiot, sometimes.I don't want to answer badly, I don't want you to get closer to me and reject me.I do not do it on purpose and it makes me feel bad to feel like that.
Jaquelina: I understand you.
Carla: But it makes me feel bad.I don't like it because I am not like that.I am not an arisca person or so, but there are no days, that I do not do it intentional.My body rejects that.You come and you get a lot and I don't do it on purpose.But my mind is still to process that ... you were on topAnd convince that that person is approaching ... and that yet ... and I can't do it, sometimes I can't do it.
Jaquelina: But I know that is that and you have your times and I am not going to press you.
Carla: Well, but equal to me ... I'm going to see how ... but for me it was very important to ask you all these questions that I am asking you now.
Jaquelina: Forgiveness is something very laborious, it is not that one day you said I lift me and I will forgive.No, because there are still memories in your head.
Carla: While you are the memory of all the beautiful ones I am living and everything we achieved, you are also the memory of all the ugly things that happened to me.So it's difficult.It is a lot of work.There is a part of me that is a girl who is afraid because I often trusted you and many times things happen again and I could never trust, which is something that all my life remained.
Jaquelina: You have to forgive you too for feeling those things.It is not bad, it is a process and it will cost and it is a process.And the time is going to come when you already realize, that is going to go.
Carla: I hope ... I hope yes, I guess yes.
Jaquelina: I want you to feel like this: I'm always going to protect you and I'm always going to be with you.You will always be able to count on me, whatever happens you will be able to count on me always, unconditional.
Carla: Well, I hope I can also believe that.
Guzmán: When he told her that, and he saw that Jaquelina understood her - who, from the beginning, had understood - felt released.As if something that had been separating them for months, she finally began to give in.Even if it was a little.
Carla: What things we are living up now as in our new life, do you like?
Jaquelina: See you every morning in my house.
Carla: Aaay, how tender (they kiss).
Jaquelina: With your mate, you're going and you come.
Carla: Is there anything that you would like to ask me or to say?
JAQUELINA: No.
Carla: Well.
JAQUELINA: What do you want to ask me?!(laughs)
Carla: No, nothing (laugh).Kisses ... hugs ... I have to translate what is happening.Okay.Well ... then there is nothing more to say ... and this helped me a lot.
Alarcón: Carla and Jaquelina continue to live together, working in their relationship one day at the same time.
Jaquelina still attends Alcoholics Anonymous, and has, for the first time, a group of friends.She says that, with them, she feels as if she were, again, a 13 -year -old girl.
Carla plans to become independent as soon as possible, and this time her mother is happy with that plan.She says wherever they are, they will continue together.
This story was produced by Fernanda Guzmán and Nicolás Alonso.Fernanda is a production assistant and lives in Mexico City.Nicolás is editor and lives in Santiago, Chile.
This episode was edited by Camila Segura and me.Desirée Yépez did the Fact-Checking.The music and sound design are by Andrés Azpiri.
The rest of the Ambulante radio team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Aneris Casassus, Emilia Erbetta, Xochitl Fabián, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Ana Pais, Laura Rojas Aponte, Barbara Sawhill, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa and Luis Fernando Vargas.
Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.
Radio Ambulante is a podcast of Ambulant Studies, it is produced and mixed in the Hindenburg Pro program.
Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America.I am Daniel Alarcón.Thanks for listening.
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