The Haunting of Alejandra

by V. Castro

We must listen to the women who came before us. We change the future by unloading the sorrow of the past. We sever the cord of generational curses. Some cords are meant to shrivel to blackened dead flesh. They are our blood, but we are not them. We do not have to accept it. None of it.

For years she abandoned herself to be a willing sacrifice to please everyone around her, and now nothing existed within her anymore. Even her own hand was not a hand at all, but a blade she used to carve her heart for anyone who asked her for it.

Sometimes her knees threatened to buckle when she thought of how she didn’t own a single thing in the world. She had no money of her own. No job. Her name was not even on any of the bills. Half her life lived as a shadow.

Women with nothing to lose are dangerous.

I watched my husband achieve his dreams while I sat at home wanting to die, forgetting any dreams of my own.

How could wrongdoing be corrected by more wrongdoing? How could you learn about love from someone who gave you nothing but pain?

You don’t have to be the woman anyone else wants you to be or tells you you should be to make them more comfortable in their own existence.

Sometimes in life we have to endure the death of others and the death of parts of ourselves. But it is just transformation.

I’m lost. I’ve been lost for a very long time, but I want to return to myself. I want to be whole.

The unholy trinity of pain made her do it: The guilt of not wanting children. The belief that this was her only source of worth or power. And her envy of men who could do whatever they pleased with very few consequences. It made her want to destroy them all.