“These are the memories I want to keep: my mother, exhausted but happy, how carefree she was, how beautiful. How for those moments, before we knew that she was sick, the whole world seemed possible. How when I looked at her, I hoped that one day,  I would be exactly like her. (pg 90)”

While reading about Diaz’s relationship with her mother and father, I came to a realization that everyone’s life is completely different, even if we are similar in some ways, we will always be different because we don’t go through the same experiences. Not only that but also, it was shocking to me how messed up it was that no matter what Diaz’s mother did, her father never really cared. He was in his own world and when Diaz’s mother threatened to take away his children, he never said anything about it. The way Diaz explained how different her mother was before she was sick felt very real. She described how happy her mother was before she was sick, running around chasing each other laughing, and how she felt like she could accomplish anything. She looked up to her mother and hoped to be like her one day. But after her addiction to drugs, Diaz’s greatest fear was becoming her mother. She didn’t want to grow up like her mother even though she had admired her for so long.