How to Exorcise Your Mother – Demon Be Gone
My mother has never met a situation she couldn’t find fault with. Guatemala is no exception. She’s been gone two months now, and I’m only just now able to revisit these moments without my blood pressure spiking.
She called me the other day and asked if I had gone anywhere since she left. Even if I had, I wouldn’t tell her. So, isn’t it great that I’ve been hella boring just hanging around my house thinking? Nothing to report here. Maybe I’m burned out on seeing things, considering that she ruined the newness by being a complete pill before she left. Maybe I still feel the demon of her presence hanging over my shoulder, and until I exorcise her, I’m fine where I’m at.
Monday – October 27, 2025
My mother has difficulty keeping ties with reality. We went on a tour of the Palacio Nacional in Guatemala City, and she can’t seem to help herself but be a bitch about everything. When we showed up the first time at about 1130am, she made me ask for information about the tours. So the guy who was at the front in the booth told me the time for the next tour, and explained that citizens didn’t pay an entry fee. When she asked about registering for the tour, he explained that we could use the QR code and sign up for it now.
Lost in translation
I didn’t understand that he had meant we should sign up for it in front of him because, apparently, there was a visit code that was required to complete the form, which would be verbally given, and I was like, oh, we can fill this out while we are at lunch. And he didn’t stop me. No matter, because we had said we would return before the next tour started.
When we got to lunch at this typical Guatemalan restaurant called “Patsy’s,” I mentioned that there was a visit code needed to complete the form and that we would have to ask about it when we got back to the Palacio before the next tour. I guess she must have been all fucked up about being perceived as less than perfect in planning this tour excursion because she got mad about the guy “lying to us” and leading us astray. That he did this “a propósito” and that he was incompetent and stupid and should have known better.
I mentioned that I might have misunderstood the instructions because I was hungry and wanted to go to lunch, and there is a certain level of language barrier (like when they talk too fast or mumble). But apparently I was wrong, and it was all his fault, and he treated her badly and gave bad service. To the point that she worked herself up into a lather by the time we returned to the Palacio Nacional, and she wanted to start yelling at the ladies who were now in the booth at the entrance. I had to tell her to contain herself, and she was not happy about that. She would have preferred to keep abusing the staff.
Internalized racism
I apparently robbed her of the joy of harassing the workers, because she found other ways to do it. Like asking the question of why they split the group into two lines — AFTER the first tour guide had explained why we were split into two lines. When I pointed out that she was being combative and asking unnecessary questions, she told me that I was lying when I said it had been explained before.
My son had made the observation the day before that she didn’t seem to like being in or living in Guatemala. And given her reaction to the general public since we have been here, I am inclined to agree. She acts like she is so above everyone and everything in this (her words) “tiny place”.
When I mentioned to her during lunch that there was a group of ladies lunching together and that they seemed to be long-time friends, she got really defensive. I wasn’t accusing her of anything; I was making an observation. But she immediately needed to mention to me that the reason they were friends was that they had probably never lived anywhere else. That they had small lives. And she was different. That Guatemala never suited her, didn’t fit her, and that she enjoys being here at first, but within weeks of being in the country, she starts to feel claustrophobic and wants to get out.
I think that Guatemala just reminds her too much of her humble beginnings, and she would prefer not to be reminded that she isn’t better than anyone else, regardless of where she currently lives.
Pipe down demon
Later on, in the evening, we had a visitor. An older man who lives in the vecindad and came by to get our key fobs to the gates so he could reactivate them. I think he is a part of the neighborhood watch group or something. Anyhow, he came upstairs. I think I remember him coming by the last time I was in the country, too, in 2020. She then regaled him with her story of how she became a citizen and involved me in her tall tale about how I immediately applied for her citizenship when I became a citizen at 18.
I honestly do not remember how or when her citizenship was requested. I must have done it. Back then, she hadn’t pissed me off that much yet, so I can imagine feeling some kind of way and going about making that happen.
Either way, she kept going on about how she thought anyone who spent any time in the United States and didn’t become a citizen was just full of excuses and wasn’t really trying because look, she did it and it was so easy.
What a self-righteous bitch. I admit to not always being so gracious to others and their circumstances. I’d like to think that was one of the few positive things that I learned in my brief 8yr stint with organized Christianity. She is not gracious at all. But she hardcore pretends to be so noble and religious. Spouting out all the requisite phrases and terminology. It, frankly, makes me ill to witness as I did last night. Worse is when she involves me in her deception. Like she tried to that night.
The aftermath
My mother is baffled why I wanted to return to Guatemala, and still, two months after she left, she keeps asking me if I still like being here. She asks me if it’s what I expected. I realize now that no answer will satisfy her other than to hear that I am miserable. I tell her that it’s fine, that I’m fine, that the cats are fine, that my son is fine. The house is fine, the country is fine, the neighbors mind their business, and I mind my business. But that’s not good enough. She wants dissatisfaction; she wants drama. She wants to be right in being happy to have left.
Some part of me knows that even if I were miserable, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of being able to tell me, “I told you so.” So it’s just as well that I had zero expectations, but it’s actually been just that, fine.
I was telling my bff on the phone the other day that after she left, it took me a whole month to re-regulate my nervous system out of a constant fight-or-flight state. I was so stressed out with her here that I couldn’t even sleep through the night.
She has learned to stop asking me what I am doing. Nothing to see here. Nothing to report. I don’t care if she can’t fathom stillness as happiness. This is my reset, and I am going to enjoy it. Sometimes that means sleeping in. Setting a shorter to-do list. Taking a walk in the sunshine for no reason other than I have working arms and legs. I have nothing to prove to her. Demon, be gone.
