CNF: My Mother and Disneyland

    I began to write my personal statement for college applications for the second time (second time’s a charm, right?). Stuck on what I should write about, I decide to take a break. I think and try to come up with some idea that will make me stand out among the thousands of other applicants, I look to the only photo album that hasn’t been taken from me. Flipping through the pages I try to look for something to light a spark in my head so I can start writing. I came across a picture I usually try to avoid, but for some reason it stands out. I stop to study it. My mother and I standing next to Minnie Mouse at Disneyland around Christmas time, the first and only time I’d been there. The three of us are standing in front of a dark teal souvenir shop. The window filled with Santa Claus hats with eeyore spelt in cursive along their rims and a lit chandelier in the background. My mother has a short pixie haircut that makes her look like a boy, she’s looking straight into the camera smiling, ignoring the phobia she knew I had. No worries about what’s going through my mind.
    I stand between her and Minnie looking off to the side, my arms dead at my side, my feet pointed inward in that position you know someone is uncomfortable. Trying to hold in a look of terror, panic, in attempt to not let anyone know what I was really feeling. That moment in time was not the first my mother forced me in front of one of my phobias. But back then I didn’t understand why my mom was like that, why she would make me do something she knew I was terrified and uncomfortable with. She always said her kids were her life; she’d never live the life her mother lived. From the stories she told me, my grandma and her were like two identical roses, except my mother was a rose loosing its petals. My grandma was in an abusive relationship. She devoted her life to raising her kids even after having 5 miscarriages. Her husband, hitting and verbally assaulting her, had another family, the one he’d later abandon my grandma for. My mother would watch this all unfold, while being taken care of by her older brother, who would go on and have a successful career as a principal, die at a young age and have a school named after him.  This brother is the only one out of the 6 siblings, to push my mother and convince her to go after a better life. He’s the one that paid for to come to the US, where she would meet my dad and the chaos of their lives would begin. She would get pregnant, forcing my dad to marry her. They stay together even though my dad’s family doesn’t approve, and have 3 kids, my older brother, my younger brother and me. My mother mental instability makes her believe that she should live for free with no responsibilities or work. She holds a stable job for a few years, then gets injured and never works again. The surgery she has on her shoulder will be the excuse she uses to not work for the next 8 years. She manipulated and tangled mine and my brothers minds against our own dad, until it drive us away and ends in a cycle of filing for divorce, backing out then filing again until my dad realized enough is enough and we deserve better.
    I look back at the photograph and the smirk my mother has on her face makes me cringe. It’s the same look she has when she accomplishes something in her benefit. I glance at the empty word document that will become my personal statement. And I realize I just found the perfect topic. “Thanks mom you finally helped me. took you long enough.”