Chapter 3: Mother and Daughter: Together Forever

Can I have a hug?

"If you know anything about what it means to have someone so important in your life that you will risk everything to be with them, then maybe you can understand my dilemma. 

"Our love is heard in the stories we tell and the laughs we share. Our love is imprinted in every photo we have taken together. Our love is witnessed in the sacrifices we have taken to be together. 

I made many difficult choices so I could be with the man I love.

My marriage was difficult before it even began. I endured intense scrutiny from my family. They all selfishly wanted me to fulfill their own desires. 

When I told my parents I was getting married, both of them began a dialogue of, "She HAS to..." They were convinced that my marriage was ruining my life. Every dream I ever had was being demolished. They never considered that dreams change, or that I could still accomplish my dreams. They had forgotten that my dreams were my own. They had selfishly taken on my dreams, and didn't want to let them go. They expected me to fulfill their dreams.

Robyn Floren (Affidavit for Immigration 2011): "Within  a year Alia began to establish the future she envisioned for herself and  determined the path in which she planned to make these dreams a reality. Her plan to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry was to be complemented  with entering the Peace Corps with the possibility of continuing her education  after the Peace Corps to achieve a master's degree."

This continued on my wedding day. My mother attempted to make every decision.  She even told me that the wedding wasn't for me, it was for her. She was again trying to use me to accomplish her own dreams, and this hurt me.

My parents were suspicious of my husband. My father verbally assaulted him on our wedding day, by asking him questions in attempt to expose him as an awful person. My mother did the same thing just a week later, by telling him that she would not accept her grandchildren being born outside of the US, and even asking if he was going to put a veil on me. 

Robyn Floren (Affidavit 2011): "In the event of Javier and my daughter not returning to the United  States, the possibility of my grandchildren being born on the other side of the  world would cause hardships on my daughter and our family. The financial and  time constraints in my life would not allow for me to be there with my daughter  when my grandchildren are born. Not being with her to offer support and help, as  well as the personal hardship this would place on me, would change the family  ideals my daughter was raised with. Alia would be left to begin life as a new  mother without the family and friends she would need for support and for sharing  the joyous event of raising children together."  

My parents went crazy when I got married, and while this may be understandable to some point, the lack of restraint they used is not.

My wedding day was a very happy day for me. When I look at the photos, I remember how happy I was.  But, I also see my parents, and it makes me sad that they couldn't enjoy my happiness.  

My husband had to leave very soon after we were married, and I was left alone in Montana. I can remember the day I left him in Seattle.  We sat on the curb outside my friends house, not knowing how long it would be until we saw each other again. I could barely stand it as I watched him in the rearview mirror of my car as I drove away. I struggled the next eight hours to make it back to Montana, where I finally broke down and cried. 

The next months were lonely, but we were still hopeful that something would work out with immigration.  I worked for the Forest Service, trying hard to keep going without my husband.  Near the end of the summer, I finally could not stand it any more, and had to leave the country to see him.  I spent one week in Cancun, Mexico with my husband.  Sitting on the beach, making sand castles, cooking food in hostels.  This was our honeymoon.  

Going to Cancun made it even harder for me when I got back.  Having a taste of what it was like; remembering the feeling of being with that one person that meant more to me than anything. I had a hard time those next couple weeks.  School had started, and I was working on my last year of forestry studies.  But, I couldn't focus, and I wasn't able to get my work done efficiently.  All I could do was think about being with my husband.

I was in a bind. I couldn't stand being away from my husband, but I couldn't imagine withdrawing from school.  But, eventually, it became too much, and I made the very difficult decision of leaving my studies.  Once again, I was under intense scrutiny from my family. My father was the worst, and I still have nightmares about the way he spoke to me.  I was an utter failure to him, and he treated me like I had just commited the worst crime ever.  Again, this was because I was not fulfilling his dreams. It was not his decision, and he hurt me very badly. I barely spoke to him before I left the country for good."

It's not easy to live in a world that you can't adequately interact with, and my husband understood that.  He did all he could to inform me of what people were saying, and to include me, but he could only do so much.  I appreciate everything my husband has done, but unfortunately he couldn't always help.

From the beginning, my marriage was stressful and troubling.  But, this was not because of the relationship itself. My husband and I are tight.

Javier and I are both simple people. We don't watch TV, we are both very stingy with money, and we enjoy the simplicities in life. We love to cook together. Cooking together is how we fell in love. We also love to dance, and while I am the better dancer, I would say that neither of us is very good at it. We are often laughing and joking, and we really like to tease each other. We are very happy people.

I was enamored with him immediately. He is funny, charming, helpful, and completely harmless. I thought he was a little strange, and that is one of the things I grew to love so much about him.

I love my husband, and I can tell you, that he loves me too. This man has comforted me through all the stress of being away from home, in an unfamiliar setting, without the ability to communicate. We share stories of our travels, but we also share dreams for our future. We are in this together.

I will do anything to prove that my marriage is bonafide and true. I know you have told me not to come back to Montana for the interview, but I'll tell you now, that if it will make a difference for me to come and demonstrate the validity of my marriage, I will still come back."  

My wife wrote in 2011 these lines to Immigration in order to emphatically explain, that our marriage had been bonafide. Little did she know that eventually she would succumb to her parents pressure and end up absorbing the idea that she deserved much more than a half-blind guy. Indeed, in 2016, Alia mentally broke down after being conquered by South African asshole womanizer Gary Rhenda (she tried to commit suicide and  was later diagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). That became the opportunity my mother-in-law had been patiently waiting for since we married, to tear us apart; to manipulate and poison Alia against me to finally fullfill her life-long obsession to forever keep "her child" tied to her.

Since the days Alia was a baby and her biological father committed suicide, Robyn has been telling her daughter, they will be together forever. Robyn did not even hesitate to use drugs to tie her daughter to her, to the point that mother and her teenage daughter doing drugs together was absorbed as a "great bonding experience" for both of them. Since very early, Robyn taught Alia she would always be right, she could always do whatever she felt like and always get her way, as long as she stays Robyn's little child. Alia got so into drugs at the early age of 11 and, being a brilliant student, dropped out of school when she was 14. Robyn was cool with all that, because "more than mother and daughter, they were best friends" and her concern was not the wellbeing of her daughter, but the wellbeing of the relationship with her. Alia is missing as many as 8 teeth in her mouth. It is really heartbreaking to listen at her explain so very embarrassed, they had to extract those teeth, even before they had started coming out, because there was no space for them. She is then so ashamed to admit she continued sucking her thumb until so late in her childhood, that her jaws eventually got deformed, to the point there was not enough space for all of her adult teeth. She is so very embarrassed about it, but, fact of the matter is, nobody ever told her it was about time she stops sucking her thumb. Robyn certainly had never any interest in risking a conflict with her daughter by correcting her in anything.     

Alia's writings show how Robyn deeply ingrained in Alia's mind the conviction Robyn had been an awesome mother and her parenting deserved quite a lot of credit for Alia being so intelligent. Robyn very cleverly sweetened the message to make it really seductive to Alia: Robyn had been an awesome mother and thanks to her great parenting Alia had grown to be so intelligent, and since Alia was so intelligent, she always knew what she was doing and, therefore, everybody had to respect her decisions; even if those were to start doing drugs at 11 or drop out of school at 14. It was, however, unfortunate Robyn was really never honest believing in her own dogma: she never quite respected Alia's decision to marry me...

It was really weird to observed Alia so passionately argue she was living proof of her mother's parenting theories' success, at the same time she showed to be deeply ashamed of her "childish and escapist use of drugs" and she was admitting to be "a very disturbed person" who "has spent years angry, depressed and suicidal". It is yet a bit more perturbing to hear Robyn brag about her parenting. Indeed, when Robyn indoctinated Alia to assume her way was always the right way and she only needed to make a trantum to get her way, Robyn cursed Alia to fail in any relationship she may ever try to establish with any other person, because nobody would ever be ready to put up with her teenage daughter's tantrums for a long enough time. As a matter of fact, throughout her emails, Alia repeatedly admitted she could not help getting mad at me whenever I expressed an opinion conflicting with hers. She was embarrassed about it and pledged to work on it (See Alia's emails Sep. 7 2010, Jan. 9 2011). She was so good that what her mother had never tried to teach her, she was able to figure out by herself.  .

Indeed, Alia was a beautiful soul and  deep inside she was able to realize, the life Robyn had designed for her (a life dragging her mother always around; whereever she went, whatever she did, her mother would always be with her) was not quite the best for her and certainly not what she wanted. Alia has always had the best memories of her childhood. She enjoyed explaining how she was not only a single child, but, for many years, the only grandchild in the family as well. She, therefore, not only had all the love of her mother, but was also the center of attention for the entire family. That was all so wonderful until she reached puberty. Then, as for any other teenager, your parents home and your parents love become way to small and way to little for all what you want in life. As a teenager you are ready to conquer the world and you need the whole world to love you. Alia wanted so badly to be popular, but, fact of the matter was, she was not; she was just one more among millions. Robyn always loved to brag about how cool it was that mother and daughter would get along so well together that they would go out, hang out and party together. However, Robyn has never wanted to understand that no guy would ever want to date a girl, if her mother is constantly sitting next to her. Yeah, it would certainly help the mother to perhaps pick up som naive toyboy, but it would definitely not help the daughter. Alia always complained she had no friends; nobody would ever call her; her childhood friends or her classmates would organize a party, but nobody would call her to invite her. Alia was perceived as an arrogant person (and her emails also transpire a bit of it). Her mother has always told her she is awesome and she is always right, so that it became impossible for Alia not to believe so. Alia wanted everybody to love her and really needed friends, but nobody would ever have any interest in getting close to her, as that space was already completely taken by her mother. When Robyn told her daughter they will always be together, Alia thought she would love to be her mother's center of attention, but she did not realize that what Robyn really wanted is to keep her daughter orbiting around her, for the rest of her life. Robyn, indeed, kept demanding she should also be her daughter's center of attention.

"Robyn is officially a bitch again.  Somehow we reconciled, but now we're back to a stand-off situation where both of us are extremely tense around each other.  It started earlier when she came downstairs after coming home from school.  She walked in while I was considering my packing for the next months, and I was not in an incredibly talkative mood.  This was, obviously, not what she wanted.  She most likely wanted me to ask her endless questions about her day, and listen silently whilst she blabbered on and on.  I did ask how her day was, but just didn't give uninterrupted attention, so I was apparently rude." 

"I've also been trying to organize some sort of birthday surprise for Robyn.  I'm leaving one week before her birthday, and knowing her, there is no excuse for not having some sort of celebration.  I know that bitch would get sour if I didn't do something for her.  There have been many hurdles that I've had to jump, but I think I know what will work." 

Alia certainly loved her mother and wanted Robyn to continue loving her. However, now, as a teenager, she also needed to find some love outside her home. With her mother's support, she started doing drugs as early as 11 years old, hoping that would make her look cool. However, that did not help her popularity and only made her feel like a fool. The drugs affected Alia's mind and mood and, deep inside, she was aware of it. Alia started hating herself and the world around her. As part of all that process, some feeling of resentment and rejection against her mother slowly started growing deep inside her. Alia started thinking what her mother wanted was not really what she wanted. Her mother kept pointing her towards a path of drugs and alcohol but that was definitely not what Alia thought was best for her. As much as she loved her mother, Alia slowly started perceiving Robyn more like an obstacle than of any help in pursuing her goals and dreams in life. That also caused a very big conflict in Alia's mind and heart: now she was starting to hate the very person who had always meant everything to her: her mother. 

As much as at a first glance she seemed an intelligent, healthy, strong and mature girl, deep inside she felt lost in anger and depression. Her life had just begun, but she already felt like a total failure; like her biological father, she started having suicidal thoughts. Alia, however, had quite a few, very important qualities by her side: she was intelligent and had an enormous strength of will. Alia was so good that, against Robyn's misguidance, she was able to figure out by herself what was good for her and was ready to put as much effort as needed to accomplish her goals and dreams.