Valencia Maldonado Sabina, My Mirror Of Lies

MY MIRROR OF LIES

Written By Sabina Valencia Maldonado

As it happens in most Latin American territory, in Colombia there is a large and noticeable social inequity. In which the countryside has become the home to every citizen in search of adjustable life conditions and resources due to their lack of income and the meeting point for every Colombian that has suffered the absence of the government in their human right’s fulfillment. Whereby, the upper classes have established themselves in the principal cities of the country, having, as a result, large segregation between the low and high social classes of the country. Therefore, the social classes are drastically marked and as it has been taught to us, we do not mix. As it happened to me, the ones that are born inside this exclusive community are admired and liked in an easier way than the ones that just search or achieve a place in this society. However, being born in this circle adds apart from economical advantages multiple aspects to your life decisions, that demand you to achieve what is socially expected through life perfection.

As a woman of the De la Espriella family, I have married a wealthy man from a wealthy family, I have had three kids with my only husband and I am the head of the women social club. For the eyes of others, my family appears to them as the perfect family regarding economical and personal goals, they would like to achieve in life.

Growing up, I have been told and taught how to maintain my familiar social status. However, I find myself trapped in my mirror of lies, inside a marriage for convenience, without love in between and external to my child’s lives pretending I am not aware of their struggles as they think I am. Nevertheless, even if I act the opposite I know my husband has been having an affair, I know my son Esteban has issues regarding commitment, I know Julieta is seriously in love with a black man and I am so afraid for their relationship to reach another level and finally,

I know my older daughter Paloma feels lonely and afraid every single day.

As I learned from my mother, I wait every night for Roberto to arrive from work with a delicious meal and ready to fulfill his needs through intimacy, but the truth is that in the last 6 years of marriage we have never had any type of intimate moment and every time he arrives home he greets me with a kiss on the cheek —as if I was his mother—, he eats what our maid has prepared and at the end of the day, we sleep facing the opposite sides of the bed. The reality is that my marriage is more of an endless fellowship, on the basis thereof, divorce will never be an option for us. For this reason, I had to accept the possibility of Roberto having a lover that may satisfy his sexual needs but never to the eyes of others. So, in other words, I was constantly making a fool out of me, acting as if I did not notice the perfume in his suits, the mysterious late-night calls, the messages at dawn, and of course the unexpected business trips.

To my mind, I tried to keep my mind occupied so I didn’t have time to feel lonely or sorry for myself. Therefore, I founded the women’s social club to which I chair the committee, for me; to be constantly working in the planning of every charity or social event and distract myself from my pathetic life. However, a moment arrived when there was nothing I could do to stop my sorrow, and there was nothing else I could do to cover it. Yet I found my lifeline when a young boy from my support group gave me a bag of marijuana as the perfect way to bury my feelings. And so it became my salvation any time I felt stressed, depressed, or when I only wanted to feel relaxed. Though it was one of my biggest secrets and nobody could never know about it, not even my kids.

Moving forward, I felt calm and casual every day after I used my little secret and it made my life a lot easier. I became incredibly faster and logical at planning events, and so I did an

impeccable job with the organization of the “Annual fundraising event of 2018” that chose an NGO Hospital (non-governmental organization hospital) to receive the donation. I was so proud of myself during the event and I felt great my husband was by my side until a little curly-haired girl came running to Roberto’s arms and, to my surprise, I heard her calling him daddy. I wasn’t sure of what was happening until I saw my father’s former nurse chasing the little girl; In a second, a thousand ideas and images came into my mind and I remembered the jealousy I felt when the nurse Marcela lived with us when she was taking care of my father before he died. I remembered, the way Roberto looked at her and how I knew he liked her. In the next second, I realized that we needed to leave the room immediately, due to the reason it was full of press, important magazines, and our family and friends.

Once we reached the exit of the big salon Marcela said

“Oh, Ms. and Mr. De la Espriella, I’m so sorry Jennifer is only playing, I hope I didn’t ruin your night, any case we are leaving, bye…” and she tried to take the little girl out of my husband’s arm, but Jennifer stayed still and said, “No I want to stay with daddy”.

At that moment I felt a swirl inside of me, I looked to the girl and I realized she was about 10 years old, almost the time my father has been dead and I felt as if a bucket of cold water felled on me. I couldn’t look into Roberto’s eyes because I would have never imagined him having another family. But of course, I had to manage the situation and so I placed all my feelings away and told them

“We are all leaving so we could finish this conversation at home, Roberto, bring the car”. I said firmly.

During the twenty-minute ride, I pushed my thousand feelings to the deepest part of my body. In the end, I knew what I had to do, I called Marcela over and went up to grab money from

the safe box. I returned to the living room, as Marcela arrived to give her the package and I told her she had to leave the country with her daughter and never come back and never say who was her daughter’s father.

Marcela decided to accept the deal and told her daughter that they would be leaving the country as soon as possible. Jennifer abstained from leaving, she refused to leave her friends and her school. I felt a conflict coming. Marcela was furious and told her daughter that it was an end of discussion. Jennifer cried and told her mother that she wouldn’t leave the country at free will but in the end, both of them left the house with the money. After they left, I found myself in one of the biggest arguments of my marriage and even though Roberto asked me for a divorce, I shouted and told him; “Roberto, for you to make up for all your lies and mistakes, you have to stay by my side for the rest of our lives to maintain our family social status.”

Little did I know that Roberto had been keeping another secret from all of us. For as long as he can remember he had been avoiding taxes and have had close to no savings in the bank and that he was about to file for bankruptcy, despite keeping up with the idea that he was extremely rich and wealthy in his way. He had married me for nothing but my money, and with my money, he had not only been doing tax evasion but also putting it into non-ethical company starters that paid him back 300% of his inversions, and dirty money.

I found this out when Roberto got hauled off to jail one day after all these incidents, he was taken away for tax evasion and correlation with suspicious companies. This shatters to me, but I couldn’t let it bring me down socially so I covered up this terrible truth and said that Roberto had gone on a trip to Saudi Arabia to complete some business that had been pending for a while.

“I wish he hadn’t left, but I’m so glad I’ll get my Moroccan pearls after this!” I said laughingly to anyone who asked.

Even though I tried my hardest to cover this up, Marcela figured out that Roberto was actually in jail because he had been writing her letters secretly over the past months. I absolutely refused to let this trample me, and I felt as if I had a duty to myself to keep my head above the water and continue shredding on with the position that I had fought so hard to get in the society. This place hadn’t been easy to get to and I wasn’t about to lose it over my husband and his stupid decisions and his stupid affair. So after I got the worrying call from Marcela that revealed that she knew the entire truth and she would spell it out even the slightest of my movements against her, A call which I had gotten when I was at the Dentist’s getting my fixtures, I hopped in the car and thought about what I could do to solve this.

I truly didn’t know Marcela decided to leave without Jennifer, to start a new life after all of this mess had happened and Jennifer had to start working at a grocery store to sustain herself and buy food. For an entire month, she lived in her mother’s old apartment, barely paying bills and barely eating enough. She had to drop out of school to work more hours, and could never see her friends anymore. For the longest time, Jennifer felt lost. Her mother had gotten involved with the wrong people, the type of people that cared too much about the things that you own and you show off instead of the things that matter. Society had completely failed her. She loathed everybody, as well as her mother. She realizes that to so many people, money was more important than your own family.

This information came to me as a surprise, as I thought her mother had left the country with her, I finally realized that people like me, socialites who care about nothing but the way people dress and how expensive they can make their life look

had ruined the lives of so many other people, caught in the rocks of this madness, the hard-working social classes that get trampled by us. When I finally found out that Jennifer had been living on her own and sustaining herself for random months I decided to take her in. It wasn’t an easy choice, but I thought that it was the best thing to do after I participated in ruining her life, by separating her from her father and offering money to her mother and forcing her to decide between her child and financial stability, I felt completely responsible and I knew that if I took her in, it would be with a lot of love and she would get to meet her half-sisters and brothers and that it was a step in the right direction, for a better future where social classes weren’t as separated and money wasn’t the only thing on my mind, I thought this was something important that I owed Jenifer.

For the longest time, I always thought about money and my image and the way that every other person saw me, and now after seeing her situation, I realized that this was the most important thing in life, that it goes deeper than that, and also that what really matters was the love and passion for those that you have around you and for the things that you want to do, the things that you want to achieve. And that is why I decided to start making better decisions for a better future not only for myself but to my lovely children Esteban, Julieth, and Paloma, who were also the victims of this madness, to understand them better and support every decision they make in their lives that makes them happy, and also to my lovely country of Colombia, and most importantly for the rest people that still live behind the glass bubble that blinds them from the reality of the world and stop them from realizing that money won’t make you happy if you are not in the first place.