Depleted Momentum • The Art of Weaponized Truth

Everytime the phone rings lately and it’s my mother on the other end, I think back to the times when she was not a phone call away but instead all in my face and in my personal space. I do not wish those days back.

La Llorona lingered in the country for two months. The first month we handled her official business, we submitted the paperwork she needed to finalize some family stuff. However, that last month? Nothing more than her wanting to control every aspect of my life, including my everyday activities. She didn’t need to still be here.

There is a reason I cannot and will not live with my mother, and have not since I turned 18. Not because she doesn’t want me to live with her. If she had things her way, I would never leave home, and I would be trapped under her thumb, imprisoned for the rest of her life.

It is a miracle I did not smother her in her sleep. Trust me, the struggle was real because she reminded me in a million little ways exactly why I did not like her.

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Monday, December 1, 2025

What part of her personality is it when she decides to give me the silent treatment? It’s very manipulative because she still talks to me – or at me, rather. It’s in outbursts like someone with Tourette’s. She will curse and swear at me, or about me, or about some other unknown entities — the serotes in her life that she apparently has to battle all the time in her head.

I am not allowed to respond, not that I do. I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself and that there is nothing to be gained in engaging her in a battle of wills. You can’t argue with stupid, and she is the epitome of dumb stubbornness. It has definitely gotten worse.

A dementor in disguise

My son is mad at me, and I don’t blame him. I certainly downplayed the length of my mother’s stay here in Guatemala. It has been a month, and a miserable one at that.

Every day fucking drags as I fight for the will to find some purpose to my stay here. Her presence makes me feel like I am in a state of arrested development because she treats me like a child. I am almost 50 goddamned years old, and she treats me like I am 5 years old. Although when it suits her, I am old enough to do stuff, but not without constant supervision.

Being around her so much is draining every ounce of joy I should be feeling while being in Guatemala. She complains about everything. She complains that I don’t join her on her crusade to hate the neighbors, the tenants, the food, the traffic, the weather, and the state of the country in general. What the fuck does she know about anything? She likes to complain, but she also won’t lift a finger to do anything.

I got into it with her today because I had finally had it. There was no agenda for today, but I was preparing to sit at my computer and write.

I regret everything

I don’t know why I told her that I came to Guatemala to write, and I regret doing so because I’ve been waiting for her to use it against me. I know better, yet now that fact is out there for her to talk about with condescension.

Sure enough, she brought up my writing two days ago. She said – because we were watching Knives Out, and the dead guy is a writer, and I knew she was going to ask me about it – “I thought you said you were going to write while you were here?”

But when do I have the fucking time? She monopolizes every spare second that I have awake with pointless activity. Everything takes for fucking ever to complete. One, because she is old, and two, because if there is an easier way to accomplish it, she won’t do it if it involves using her phone, depending on technology, or paying a bill online.

Truth is, that in my attempt to avoid having to deal with her, I have been reading books. Reading allows me to escape her, and it is relaxing, necessary after having to put up with her shenanigans all day.

I replied that yes, that was what I wanted to do when I got here, but when have I had time to sit down uninterrupted? I have been waiting for her to leave.

It is clear that the date of her departure is either unknown or a state secret. Either way, I am tired of being in a state of limbo, putting my own needs and wants on pause, waiting on her to fucking get out of the country and leave me the fuck alone.

So yesterday I concluded that I have put myself on pause long enough, and I was going to write something, no matter what. Easier said than done, I mean, even getting to write this had to wait until she went to sleep.

Adding insult to injury

There was no side quest this day. I rolled out of bed around 11ish. I made myself some coffee. I was going to make breakfast, but I opted not to, figuring that it was just another delay keeping me from working on my writing. So I got to the computer, and was about to load my software when the internet was not connecting to the desktop, which distracted me.

And in she walks into the room and sees me on the computer and proceeds to start monologuing about this and that and how she wants to show me these knick-knacks she thinks I can sell and blah blah. What the fuck?

She sees me at the computer. And of course, she immediately finds something and is like, come look at this. Fucking hell. You see I am doing something, woman. I tell her, Put it on the boxes in the middle of the room. I will look at them when I get a chance —later. Oh no. That was unacceptable. She was like you’re not doing anything. And I lost it.

Bitch – this is like my childhood and teenage years all over again. You don’t know what I am doing, but even when you do, nothing is important if you decide that you want something. Because nothing I do is ever important enough to be prioritized higher than your wants at the time. It is rude.

I shouted, You don’t know what I am doing. She was like, ” You’re not working.” Oh? You just decided that, and what? Nothing I could have going on could be more important to me? Fuck you.

And I couldn’t even concentrate on what I was doing because she just hung out in the room doing who knows what — but actively not talking to me, but talking at me about me. Calling me names and other passive-aggressive bullshit under her breath.

If I tried to respond or ask her to stop, she would be like don’t talk to me. Or tell me that she wasn’t talking to me, or that she doesn’t want to hear it because I’m rude and disgraceful. She also refused to leave the room.

What the fuck ever. So I got dressed and took myself to the mercado. I had to use the ATM anyway.

When I got back, she pretended shit was fine and tried to bribe me into, I don’t know, being on her side? By buying junk food from the corner store and having it delivered. But really, I was just through.

Her silent treatment. It’s fucking manipulation and passive aggression. If I could roll my eyes any harder, I’d probably dislocate them.

I took a shower and sat down tonight to write. Finally back on my computer after having to deal with her tantrum. I put my noise-canceling headphones on. At some point, I moved them to put lotion on my face, and I am pretty sure I heard some sniffling noises like she was crying or some bullshit.

Feeling sorry for herself? Probably. Trying to manipulate me into asking if she was okay or to talk to her, and then she would have launched into some tirade about how I was an ungrateful daughter and desgraciada, and worthless, and all the great things that she always says about me. Most definitely.

Hopefully, she has gone to sleep because I don’t have the patience to listen to any more bullshit from her tonight. Her behavior is triggering.

This has been the longest stretch of time that I have spent with my mother, and I am reaching my wits’ end. She is just fucking toxic and abusive and gaslighting. She is delusional, narcissistic, and self-absorbed.

She has outgrown her usefulness. She needs to fly back to the US already. Thanks, but no thanks.

Depleted momentum

The first thing I felt when she was gone was tired. A month later, I was left more depleted than any corporate job had ever left me, with nothing to show for it. No output. No writing. 30 days wasted just to reset to a baseline that isn’t even close to where I was at the end of October.

It will never end with her. When I see her name on the phone now I think two things only: What does she want and what’s the fastest way to make her go away?