[Translated from Spanish. Reminder: IIWIARS is English only]

I feel like I had a good day today. I felt clearheaded as I reflected on the nature of my relationship with my father, which until recently had been extremely tangled—and therefore problematic.

My father lives with his partner and her daughter, and I live separately. There’s a sister I know nothing about, and my mother is a shared figure between us whom we both have essentially discarded due to her abusive behavior and controlling tendencies. My father still interacts with that whole group—except with me. Our interaction is practically nonexistent.

He lives with that pair, has to work with my mother, and I have no idea what kind of relationship he has with my sister. Essentially, my father carries a heavier family load than I do, on top of working and studying. As for me, I don’t have much of a family context. I work and explore creative outlets. In that sense, I assume I have more flexibility, though I don’t waste time either—unlike him. Our reflections come from different modes: his from contrast with a loaded family routine, and mine from being detached from such a routine. In the end, it leads us to the same thing.

My father provides financially—he pays for my housing and gives me money for small luxuries. I, on the other hand, cover my own breakfast, lunch, and dinner, house cleaning costs, snacks, and personal entertainment. In that way, we’re even.

We both stay in our own spaces—he in his academic bubble, and I in my freedom. I’ve left behind the academic setting as a symbol of discarding the past, while he reclaims it by investing in expanding his knowledge. Both of us, in our own ways, have tried to break away from the events of the past. However, things resurfaced after a long period of imposed silence.

That silence stemmed from problems with my stepmother. Contact resumed when I began expressing things I hadn’t voiced during that time. After that, my father started controlling me through opaque conditions, designed to avoid disapproval on either side and to prevent conflict. Eventually, I stopped playing by those rules, to the point of disrupting the family structure—just as he had once disrupted my principles of freedom and personal growth. That led to a kind of balance: he and I have both suffered the same, so now we can approach each other with both caution and independence. From this, I conclude that I’m safe and sound in regard to this relationship.

Being able to visualize this long-evolving dynamic in an organized way gives me the clarity to approach other relationships that I now need to study more closely.

Now, I’m approaching a young woman. She’s in a misogynistic relationship—against her will—trapped in a group dynamic that pushes her to stay, even though it benefits only her partner. He retains dominance because he hasn’t been subjected to guilt or rejection like she has. She’s had to face rejection from both families involved in the relationship, while he remained accepted by both. She reached out to me over a year ago, seeking a transition—a way out of that group and into something with me. And I believe we’re making progress. Based on my observations, that relationship is doomed to end over time. I feel hopeful, knowing she’ll be safe and free to grow. And I’ll have the honor of witnessing the evolution of a masterpiece—human freedom and diversification.

I used to think her relationship mirrored the one I had with my father. But it turns out to be the opposite. In her case, she fought hard to maintain the relationship and ended up rejected by both families. In my situation, I fought for justice against the abuse from both my mother and stepmother. I didn’t necessarily depend on my father’s support, though at times he offered some. In the first case, neither of us were accepted. In the second, I wasn’t. That part mirrors her story. But I wasn’t fighting to keep the relationship with my father—I felt that relationship was already safe. If I go deeper, in the first case I was defending my father from my mother’s abuse, which even he couldn’t justify. In the second, with my stepmother, the conflict began because I wanted to prevent her from interfering in our relationship. In that sense, the girl and I are similar.

When I reconnected with her, after her ordeal with the two families, she was conditioned into blind obedience to her partner—much like I was with my father. She expressed this openly, and like me, she got involved in activities that exercised the mind and helped her move forward. That happened with my support. With those experiences, I began to take back ground that had been dominated by her partner—just as I had done with my father. And so, she ended up under my influence, although I never ruled out the possibility of her reconnecting with her partner. So maybe it doesn’t make sense to say I helped her leave that relationship—she had already left, even if I was physically beside her.

Then, once I regained those points of influence, the only thing left for her was to stop letting her partner control those same points. But that doesn’t happen just by distancing—it takes initiative to reclaim them. That’s how autonomy is achieved. With my father, I reclaimed those points and then learned how to hold influence without using it—creating balance and empathy. With her, the goal would be for her to reclaim influence and apply it to her partner, to reach a similar empathetic point. That would create enough separation to finally end that relationship. This reclaiming process could be seen as her learning from my way of doing things.

So now the question is: When will she decide to take that step? Should I wait for her? What do I do in the meantime? Based on this reasoning, she needs to take the initiative. That’s why the question arises—and that’s why I must wait. But since I have no idea what her current situation is, I also need to assume she’s not present. So I must continue with my life as if she’s not there, because I lack the context. I don’t know when she’ll reclaim those points, or under what conditions.

At this stage in my life, I can’t factor her into the equation. I have to assume she’s no longer part of it. There’s no continuation—nothing more to do for now. Any thoughts I have about her current life would only be speculation, born from assumptions that don’t belong to me. And it’s precisely from that place that she must begin again, if she chooses to.

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