Dear Mom,

I know you’re going to read this and say I didn’t have to write it. You’ll say “I know, mijo” and change the subject because that’s what you do when feelings get too close to the surface. You redirect. You make it about something else — dinner, homework, whether I need new cleats. But I need you to not redirect this time. I need you to just read it.

You work two jobs. I know this because I hear you leave at 5:40 in the morning and I pretend to be asleep. I know this because on Thursdays you come home and sit in the car for a few minutes before coming inside, and I can see you from my window. You’re not on your phone. You’re just sitting there. I think you’re putting yourself back together before you walk through the door and become Mom again.

You drive me to practice even when you’re exhausted. You check my grades every Sunday. You make sure there’s food in the fridge even when I know — because I’m thirteen, not stupid — that money is tight. You carry everything. And the thing that makes me angry isn’t how much you carry. It’s how little credit you get for carrying it.

Dad’s family calls you “not enough.” I’ve heard them. At Christmas, Tia Rosa said you should “find a good man” like raising me alone is a failure instead of the hardest thing anyone I know has ever done. Nobody says that to dads who leave. They just leave. And somehow you’re the one who has to explain herself.

You asked me once why I never talk about my feelings. I gave you some answer about being fine. But the truth is harder than that.

The truth is, I learned it from watching everyone dismiss yours.

I watched you cry after that parent-teacher conference and then wipe your face and make dinner like nothing happened. I watched you get talked over by other parents who don’t know half of what you know. I watched you swallow anger so many times that I started to think that’s what strong people do — they swallow. They absorb. They keep going.

So when something hurts me, I swallow it too. Because that’s what you showed me survival looks like. Not because you wanted to teach me that. But because the world didn’t give you another option, and I was watching the whole time.

I’m sorry for every time I said “it’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. I just didn’t want to be one more thing you had to carry.

You’re the strongest person I know. And I’m sorry it took me thirteen years to say it out loud instead of just thinking it while pretending to be asleep at 5:40 in the morning.

Love, Marcus