I peer into those jade eyes I've stared into many times before, my whole life really, and the most harrowing of truths becomes dreadfully clear.
I am exactly like my mother.

I force myself to break eye-contact and watch as crumbs of bread sprinkle down onto the white plate in front of me. The wooden table is decorated with floral carvings that match the small town café's aesthetic. I pick at the bread of the uneaten sandwich: a cold structure of chicken, lettuce, and tomato. I prefer to focus on the pale raindrops of dough rather than the silent words that muffle past my mother's lips.

I drown out every word she utters, but I can still hear the honeyed voice that has displaced my own.

It was not some immense moment that triggered my sudden realization. A truth that was masked for nineteen years. Today was a day of routine, a simple drive, the ringing of my cell phone, followed by a photo that flaunted my mother's face. It was a blink—a sudden grasp in my heart—when I saw the truth concealed and the cosmic voids of my subconscious for so long.

I crumble the remaining clumps of bread, and then I pick up a fry. I feel the salt grains between my thumb and index. I begin to pick it apart.

Why are you treating your food like a damn toy?

I can't help it, the urge to crumble. To pull apart. Better this french fry than myself.
My attention shifts from the remaining hill of fries to her margarita glass imprinted with the stain of her wine lipstick, to those jade eyes that I can't help but look up to again and again. I want nothing more than to figure out how to shatter the inevitability of genetics. If it is genetics.

How is it possible for one to become another?

On the walk from my car to the café, I once would have noticed the beauty of the trees and flowers in bloom. Now, I wonder at the wreckage hidden behind each stranger I pass.

"It's all in your head," rings my mother's voice.

All I can think of are her words.

"It's harder to lose weight than it is to gain. Remember that fat becomes uglier with age. Think about that before you go eating again."

Now, I find myself unable to eat.

She gives me her spiel about my brother's new therapy and how it's a waste of time and money. All I return is a smile and a nod. In the past—before I became her—I would've argued against her views, her hopelessness, and her criticism. But now, I don't know how to fight her because I don't disagree with her.

I flick away the bit of fry from my fingers. I pick up another one, and repeat the process. My phone vibrates against the table, that damn photo appearing in front of me again. I flip the phone over, but the photo remains in my mind.

It's the same picture I've had since the day it was taken—parents' weekend on campus two years ago. One of those festivals my university hosts, the two of us stumbling through. My first time drinking with her. There's a smile etched on my face, I must be happy. But all I hear are her words after the photo was taken.

"Love, you're looking a bit homely in those clothes. I don't want you posting these, they may give off the wrong impression."

Conveniently, she never mentioned the traces of alcohol down her shirt. Or her bloodshot eyes from all the drinking.

I don't know if she was right about my clothes, but I never did post that photo. Nor did I wear that outfit again.

My gaze trains onto the crumb covered plate, my reflection staring back at me.

I even look like her.

At least according to my grandmother, my extended family, my friends, her friends, my high school English teacher, the random stranger who took our order at In-N-Out. The waitress who brought us our drinks couldn't help but comment on our resemblance.

"Oh, how you two look so much alike, such beautiful girls. You're so lucky to have such a beautiful momma."

I can't blame strangers for comparing us. Yet as I peer down at the plate, I try hard not to see what they see. Pure blonde hair versus dyed-crimson. Jade eyes in contrast to what my grandmother calls my "miel de sol." The same blood runs in our veins, but the sun casts different shadows upon us: her ghostly skin, my natural tan.

My hands run along the mask of scars she etched into my skin. She'll never have the same scar on top of her eyelid. She'll never have the bald spot I can feel if I run my fingers where she pulled out my hair. Her hands will never have the same defensive wounds mine have. She'll always deny such things, and makeup seems to blind her to all she inflicted.

Despite all the differences, the face that looks back at me from across the table is the same. The averting motion of my eyes resumes. French fries, her fourth glass, strangers strolling by, back to her eyes. Damn it. Yet as I linger back onto her jade green, I notice a restive movement of her own pupils.

I see her. I see someone who is just as uneasy being here. Someone who will also look anywhere and everywhere, even at the most menial of objects.

She taps her fingers against the side of the recently emptied glass, beckoning the passing waitress. Her nail chimes against the stained glass, an impatient song ringing through the still air.

"Another?" She asks — a single note, laced with slur. "With a bit of extra fun in there as well."

Her plastered smile hardly hides the fact that she's already had one drink too many. That with this next one will come more wounding words about things she hadn't noticed with her last glass. Her eyes scan our surroundings before going back to mine.

"Why are you treating your food like a damn toy?"

I break up another fry as the waitress sets down the full margarita.

Focus on something else. My hands, the crumbs that were once food.

Don't stare at the plate again. A dog walks across the street, it looks like mine.

"You are so lucky to have the food you have, yet here you are wasting it. You can't be that fucking picky. Wasting an entire meal, what makes you think you can do that? Especially not here, it's too expensive."

She doesn't try to hide her scolding from the world anymore.

Listen, there's a song blaring from that car's window. Play the melody in the corners of your mind. Let the lyrics muffle her voice.

The car's windows are up, there's a person sitting alone inside on his phone. Perhaps someone broke his heart right now at one of these other tables not so long ago and he's trying to make himself deaf with the wails of a guitar.

Pick up another fry. Shit, I really want a drink. I really want her margarita. One with some of the extra fun inside. Perhaps a bit more than extra.

Her voice amplifies as the car drives away, embracing me again in the cruelty of her words.

"-He recommended it for you too. I can't imagine what your brother was thinking telling me to pass the message along to you, or what reasoning he would have to associate you with therapy in the first place. I mean, seriously, there's nothing in your life that calls for therapy? You have your phases, but come on, that's being dramatic now. Suck it up, whatever emotions you think you're going through, and stop being so lazy, maybe then..."

On and on she goes, her voice a wind that beats harder with each passing second.

"Are you listening to me?"

Her words grate against my ears and peel back the walls I have built to protect myself from her. Anyone who's ever said that damn sticks and stones line has never had lunch with my mother.

"You're so fucking disrespectful. You answer someone when they are talking to you. Look at you, you can't even look into my eyes when I'm speaking."

Stop. Please, make everything stop. Take a break. Just make everything...

"Stop!" My hands beat down onto the table so hard they make it shake.

The white glass plate crashes to the ground near my feet. The crumbs of fries and bread are now spread all over the table and concrete, the leftovers of the deconstructed sandwich are scattered near my mother's spilled margarita.

My knuckles press into the grain of the wood so hard that my fingernails pierce my skin and blood rushes into my palms.

Take a breath.

Then all I see is her, and for once, she sees me.

"Enough, don't make a scene. You are acting exactly like your father."

The life around me comes to a halt. A clock ticks in the distance, but the time never changes.

"Mom."

That's all I can say. Yet despite the desire to make myself as small as humanly possible, I push through my clenched jaw and say the words buried inside.

"I don't want to be you, Mom. I love you. But I don't want to be you."

That's all I can get out. I want to see how she responds before I say anything else. For once, she is speechless. Her jade eyes are frozen in time, frozen on mine, and for once, I'm the one who gets to speak.

"In my life, you have not only been my biggest supporter, you have been my biggest abuser."

That last word trips off of my tongue, though it has been one spoken a million times in my mind.

"You are the person who taught me to fight for those I love. Who taught me to show strength when I'm at my weakest, and to stand when everything around has fallen. To be honest with who I am. That's the problem. I don't know who I am anymore. No, that's not true. I'm you."

Tears swell but never fall. If they did, she'd criticize me for not being able to hold down my emotions at a moment like this.

"To know you've left a mark on me more painful than any knife or bullet terrifies me. To know that one day I will be too drunk to differentiate if I'm looking at a photo of you or a mirror. And that one day I will hold such a weight in my heart I will want to bring down those around. Perhaps going so far that I'd want to cause the same trauma on myself that you have done to me. That, should I ever have a daughter, she will become the targeted victim of my own pain."

The way daughters go to their mothers for comfort when they are afraid, I can't help but do the same. She's never helped me escape the monsters under my bed. Why would she help me get rid of the one she put inside my head? But despite it all, she is my mother.

"Mom, I am scared, more than anything, to be you." Yet here we are. More words strain to escape, but there is nothing left for me to say. Rather, I'm not strong enough to have any more to say.

With one last sigh for relief, I grab the seat from behind and sit down once again, silent. From one blink to the next, life resumes.

Yet no one seems to be staring at my mother and me for the disruptive chaos I created. Their day is still their own to live, not a care for my world that crashes here. Turning back towards my mother, uneasy for what her reaction may be, I tune in to hear that the words that she utters are not the apologies I was hoping for. Nor are they questions or a "how dare you talk back to me in public" scolding, but rather the continued berating of my brother's recommended therapy.

The margarita is not spilled, and the glass plate still rests casually, sprinkled with bread and fry crumbs. The words inside of me are still buried, still locked away somewhere deep inside.

Those unspoken words are all I have left of who I am—and that is the reason why they shall remain unspoken.