Nightmares of youth keeps haunting her. She takes great pain to be aware that she is unseparable from her mother: her mother is the torturer in her recurring nightmares of youth, and she could only see herself through her mother.
Since she was a teenage girl, she had nowhere to hide but to see her mother going naked around the house, who would laugh disdainfully at Teresa's bashfulness, before the drawn curtains and open windows. Teresa was never allowed to latch the door and she was in constant fear that her mother would take the liberty to break into the bathroom while she was peeing or taking a shower. She was told that her body was just the same as anyone's else and worthless for respect and shame. There was no such thing as 'self' in their world and Teresa's Self has ever since been subdued in the depths of her stomach and bowel, which is filled with blasphemous filth and gases.
However, Teresa's Self is tied to her mother like an umbilical cord tied to the mother's uterus, through which she had sucked the nutrients. She could not get away from the past to see herself at the present, as if the present would not exist without the existence of the past. Everytime when Teresa looks at her beautiful features in the mirror, her hidden Self struggles to emerge from her stomach, trying to tear away the umbilical cord from within.
If we have never been tied by the umbilical cord to our mother, will we be less attached to the maternal being? As if we are raised in a test tube and some kind of chemical tanks give us nutrients before our lungs grow to the size to breath, we will be as parentless, seeking the blood relationship as though we need a lab test.
If we are only the product of the parents; if God has never created the Self which carries a character and thoughts, will there be sheer happiness? Does the Self makes us happy? It seems that all questions arise from the Self.
The Girl who Drew Herself (courtesy of siuding.com)
Is it confidence of beauty and youth or just easy unconcern in the girl in the drawing? The easy facial expression and the solid density of the triangle give a hint. She seems saying 'what does it matter that we are covered up or exposed, if it does not to myself?'
