Palace of Delusion – The TikTok Trigger Incident
In late 2024, I made the mistake of laughing at something on TikTok and thinking that it would be a hoot to share it with my mother. I’ve been paying for it ever since. Before I share the TikTok in question, I have to explain something about my mother. She cares entirely too much about what other people think about her. She is OBSESSED with what other people may or may not be saying about her. She believes that other people are always talking about her behind her back, and that it’s always to criticize her because they are envious of her or jealous. And no, this isn’t one of those Haters Gonna Hate, women’s empowerment opportunities. Ha! I wish.
No, she is the victim, always being persecuted by others. BUT if there is a situation where she can orchestrate and control the way she is perceived by others to guarantee that others think she is perfect, then all is well. Otherwise, she’s the victim. It is EXHAUSTING. And it’s also a key indicator that she has narcissistic qualities.
It’s gotten worse as time passes. Or maybe I have been more aware of her manipulations and in turn become less tolerant of her behavior. She wants me to play an active role in her victimhood and I draw a hard line in the sand at that nonsense game.
Back to the TikTok. Watch the video now:
I thought it was hilarious. And this was for someone who hasn’t lived in Guatemala most of her life, but has been around her Guatemalan family members and seen the firsthand evidence that this is, in fact, true. Guatemalans love to call other people serote because it is rude and mean. Hey, I dig it.
Spiraling out of control
However, when I first sent the TikTok to my mom — let’s say it was a Tuesday. That night, she laughed about it. I went to work the next day and forgot about it. By Thursday afternoon, I had ten text messages and five missed calls from my mother. I was at work, so I purposely waited till I got home to call her back. I was like what is the goddamned emergency? I mean, she wasn’t leaving voicemails (not that I was going to listen to them), and she wasn’t saying anything in the texts other than I needed to call her. So how important could it have actually been?
Anyway, she was like, you know that video you sent me? I was like yeah, what about it? She then spun some tale about the video hacking her phone and how she had to get my brother to delete it from her phone, and she had to convince him to delete it from her phone. (Now to convince me.) That I shouldn’t share it with anyone else because it will infect their phone. And the creator of the video was rude and the video was malicious and that it was an attack and that I should remove it from my phone. Spoiler Alert: I did not remove it from my phone.
I was like whatever mom. In the months after that, she has slyly referred to that video a few times, checking in with me to see if I still had it, if I had shown it to anyone else. Why was she so obsessed with this fucking TikTok? The only times I thought about it was when she brought it up. Fact is she probably spent the entire night talking about it with my brother and in their echo chamber life. Likely they spun it into some grandiose conspiracy theory and personalized attack where I was somehow manipulated into singling her out to send the video. In fact, I am convinced this is what happened.
What lies beneath
But the true culprit is her internalized racism. The video was funny because it was an accurate caricature. However, it was also aimed to make Guatemalans seem a little less “cultured” than the other countries called out in the video like Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Not surprising — Guatemala gets shit on by a lot of other Hispanic countries for so many reasons. That’s a whole other post. The point here is that she was obsessed with that video for the exact reason I sent it to her. Because she does in fact call everyone serote because it is rude and she is doing it to be rude. She claims she doesn’t swear. Bitch, it still counts if it’s in Spanish.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
Back again in Guatemala and my mother is proving just how mentally unhinged she is. My son and I live in the constant vigilance of living with someone barely hanging onto reality. I do not know when she is planning on leaving since she has not given me that information, and I feel like it is something that she is keeping very secret because she wants to maintain control.
The internet incident
Today, I had Claro (local telecom company) come and install internet service. I don’t feel the need to watch service workers every minute they are working in my home. I am happy enough when they start, and then observing them when and if I have any questions. I mean, there’s having trust issues and then there’s having control issues.
Not my mother. She wants to be up their ass and is not happy if everyone else isn’t living under the same level of hyper-paranoia that comes from thinking everyone else is a suspect and out to get you somehow.
She got mad because I wasn’t watching him. At which point she felt she had to take over where I was apparently falling short and started asking him random and useless questions to disguise that she wanted to monitor what he was doing. Which was not helpful since she didn’t understand what he was doing to begin with. She wouldn’t know a router from her asshole if it connected and made the old school internet connecting sounds.
Things took a strange turn
Things went quickly downhill when the internet was installed and he was about to leave. There’s a step where he has to call in to close the ticket and confirm active service. He had it on speaker phone and the lady on the phone read out only my middle name and last name. I have to add a sidenote with context of why this was a non-issue issue. In Guatemala they issue IDs that citizens have to use for everything. The IDs have four names connected: First – Middle – Paternal Last Name – Maternal Last Name.
I happen to have the same first name as my mother. Her maiden last name is the last of the four names on my ID. So when the agent on the end of the phone confirmed my “account name” with my middle name and my maternal last name — my mother flipped out.
She positively lost it and started shouting at me and the technician that they had gotten my name wrong. I knew it wasn’t wrong because every phone call I received to confirm the visit, the agents had read out my full name in its entirety — AS IT APPEARED ON MY ACCOUNT. So what if there was an agent who wanted to shortcut and call me by my middle name?
Not worth the price of admission
So the technician was subjected to her unhinged yelling and posturing as she demanded that he get the phone agent back on the line and make her read out my full legal name out loud. All this hysteria was triggered by a situation that I still don’t fully understand — where supposedly “someone” had changed the name on the water bill to this house in Guatemala and had misspelled her actual first name, which allegedly caused her all kinds of grief. Allegedly. Because later, when I asked her for more information, she couldn’t produce any actual evidence.
I think she got mad that they were calling me by my middle name. She was really salty about that. Super pissed that they weren’t calling me by my whole name, and more specifically, using my paternal last name. Except that the second time the tech called, the agent called me by my first and paternal last name — but that wasn’t good enough either.
Because at that point she was shouting that, according to her, my father had tried to open accounts in his name at this house, even though he doesn’t live here. That doesn’t sound like something that happened because I hadn’t heard this version of events before. She was scarily hysterical, eyes wide and jaw shaking like a rabid animal.
I was embarrassed for her and felt incredibly sorry for the man who was just doing his job and doing his best to get the hell out of dodge. Sorry man. Sure don’t think he knew his day was going to end up that way when she showed up at noon. I had to secretly record the incident on my phone because, give it a couple of days, she will have no recollection of acting this way. She will claim it never happened. Not my first rodeo.
For some reason, Guatemalans seem to find my first name difficult to pronounce when combined with my very English surname. Like they don’t know if it should be pronounced in Spanish or some other way. I am simultaneously frustrated and empathetic of their confusion.
I don’t enjoy that my mother gave me an abbreviated version of her middle name as my first name. Especially since she has always preferred to be called by my first name — which is HER nickname. What the fuck. It’s another layer in the confusing game where I feel she wants to pretend that she is me and that she is living my life. Super unhinged.
I chose to return to using my middle name shortly after we got to Guatemala. Mostly because I realized that she was taking advantage when I used my first name by then actually pretending to be me when my name was called out. Like at restaurants, in waiting areas that we were in together. But why though? There’s too much to unpack there. So I put a lid on it and returned to the name of my youth. Seemed to confuse the local populace, including her, less. I can’t even with her.
Pattern recognition
Predictably, about an hour after the technician had left, and after several glasses from her not-so-hidden stash of merlot, she was sniffling and crying in the kitchen. I did not give in to the bait of asking her what was wrong. It was her typical response to the regret of being perceived as anything other than perfect. Woe is her.
But I ignored it. She made lunch. After lunch she was back to feeling self-righteous again and continued muttering to herself about the “serote hombre” who was supposedly conspiring to ruin her life, who was secretly hacking her information, who was going around accessing her accounts and whatnot.
Then it was the muttering about the water service in this house — yes, there is an issue with the water. And that reminder set her off some more about so and so and how they are lying to her and did something to the water. I think she meant the neighbor with whom she seems to have some longstanding beef. Old people. SMH.
She scoffed when I suggested that it could be related to the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the last several months, and that the house has a porcelain/ceramic water tank on the roof. Preposterous — absolutely not. Not related in the least. Everything with her is always a massive conspiracy where someone is trying to ruin her and her things. I’d blame it on the ravages of old age if she hadn’t always been like that.
My mother, the pretend medium
Most unsettling was that about two hours after the incident had passed, she was talking about how my grandmother — her dead mother — was channeling through her to “protect me” and that is why she acted out like she did. That I was meeting the spirit of her mother and that it wasn’t her at all. It was the spirit of my grandmother wanting to protect her grandkids and great-grandkids from harm. For real? That’s the story we’re going with? OMG. Sure mom. That is what it was. Not your pathological rudeness and paranoid delusions that the world is out to get you.
If it wasn’t for the newly installed WiFi, I would have probably felt worse, but I was able to connect my TV and drown her out with the comforting sounds of the movie Predator. If only I could cloak myself in visual camouflage and hide from her for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I can do this with her.
TL;DR — my mother does not like anything that proves that she is who she is and not who she pretends to be.
