I don’t know how or when I decided to let this one go, but recently it’s been haunting me. I don’t particularly care to revisit my past, but when the ghosts arrive, there’s no ignoring them.

I must have been thirty years old. I remember that much because I had just started dating my partner. So this happened in 2008, about 18 years ago.

Just before this, I was in a relationship with another man. We had been together for three years, and I truly thought I’d spend the rest of my life with him. I was always that way, completely loyal, until I wasn’t.

But this story isn’t about my relationship with that or this man. It’s about the most toxic relationship I’ve ever been in, the one with my mother.

So, back to 2008. I have two Tías who live in Miami, and we had all taken turns caring for mi abuelo who was visiting from Honduras. If I remember correctly, I had him with me the longest. It was a magical time. He spoke perfect English, and we had many funny, interesting, and sometimes controversial conversations. He was the stereotypical Latino. He had twelve children with my grandmother, and who knows how many out of wedlock. He demanded loyalty and respect, although he rarely reciprocated.

But I loved him, and he loved me. He knew I’d do just about anything he asked me to do. I suppose I felt like his little girl again, like the little girl he helped raise from the time I was an infant to five years old.

While he stayed with me, I asked him many questions about his childhood, about how he met mi abuela. He taught me about plants and trees, about the simplicity of taking care of oneself through diet and exercise. We took a lot of walks, just the two of us. Above all, he wanted to start his life all over again. At eighty-something years old, he was looking for a girlfriend, someone my age, someone he could marry and start another family with. I struggled with the severity of his plans and the comedy of it all, but he was dead serious.

Unfortunately, the happy times soon came to an end. While mi abuelo was staying with one of my Tías, he became very ill and wanted to return to Honduras. My Tías needed help. They are nervous by nature and were worried sick about him. I knew they needed someone calm and focused to help them, so I offered to go with them to Honduras.

At the time, my mother and all of her siblings had been fighting over mi abuelo’s property. I was about to find out just how bad the fighting was.

It was ugly. It was downright shameful.

My new man offered to take us to the airport. Mi abuelo was so sick he couldn’t even lift himself in. My man carried mi abuelo into his truck like a baby. The plane ride from Miami to Tegucigalpa was painful for mi abuelo. It was nothing compared to the five-hour car ride from the capital city to Tela. He screamed in pain, begging for us to make it stop. Before we made it to Tela, we had to stop at a medical clinic. A doctor there prescribed medicine that had to be injected. My Tías decided that I should be the one to administer it since they were both too nervous.

Before this, I had never injected myself or anyone else, but I had no choice. I was there to help, and aside from driving, I was now in charge of giving mi abuelo the injections.

Once we reached my uncle’s house in Tela, we tried to make mi abuelo as comfortable as possible. The injections seemed to ease his pain. We stayed in Honduras a few nights and hoped for the best.

I don’t remember exactly when or how, but word got back to my mother in New Orleans that I was giving mi abuelo injections. Before I knew it, my mother was accusing me of killing him so I could take their land.

I tell no lies.

The whole experience feels blurry to me now. I wonder if that’s how I was able to forgive, by forcing myself to forget.

It got so bad that my mother was texting and leaving messages saying she was calling Interpol and the FBI on me. I’d be arrested as soon as I landed in the United States. The same would happen to my Tías since they were my accomplices. I was a murderer. A thief. The barrage of messages we received was nasty and hateful.

My Tías and I were in shock. Here we were, getting mi abuelo home like he wanted, finding the pain medicine he cried out for, caring for him while he stayed at my uncle’s house trying to recover.

But all my mother could see was pure evil. It makes me really sad now that I write this.

What kind of mother thinks so low and poorly of her child?

I’m no saint, and I’ve never claimed, nor wanted to be one. But I’m certainly not a bad person. I’m the first to give and the last to take. I’ve always been that way.

I am left to wonder why she always treated me this way.

How she could think that of me.

If she ever loved me at all.

I am left to wonder if I will ever stop caring.

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As much as I try to bury the past, I cannot control the ghosts. This is one of many stories that sometimes seem unreal, but then I fight back a tear and I know it happened. I survived this. Mi abuelo lived for a while after this incident, but it took me seventeen years to return to my homeland. And I still have a lifetime to learn to live with my ghosts.