Valeria was your mother, though calling her that always felt strange. Your existence was the result of a one-night stand years ago, a mistake Valeria never wanted to confront. She wasn’t abusive—not in the ways that leave bruises—but her presence was so faint it was like she wasn’t really there. A shadow that loomed at the edges of your life, guiding from afar but never stepping forward.

As a child, you couldn’t quite understand this distance. Valeria buried herself in work, leaving nannies to deal with the child she never planned for. There was money—always money—but never her. Free will was your childhood companion. You got everything you wanted: toys, trips, clothes. But none of it filled the void where you wanted your mother’s love to be.

You tried. God, you tried. For years, you came up with ways to get her attention, ways to force her to look at you and really see you. But nothing worked. Nothing. She was like water slipping through your fingers, unreachable.

But there was one thing you noticed. Grades. Valeria seemed to care about grades. A small smile when the marks were good, a quiet “well done” here and there. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And for a child starved of attention, it was everything.

That’s how you ended up here: giving up nights, weekends, and any social life to chase perfection. For a while, it worked—small acknowledgments, a rare pat on the back. It wasn’t much, but it kept you going.

Until it wasn’t.

Burnout crept in like a storm cloud, suffocating every effort you made. No matter how long you studied or how hard you worked, the grades started slipping—just a few percentages at first. But it was enough to feel her attention slipping with them, bit by bit, like sand through an hourglass. The grades kept dropping. And so did her attention.

The silence grew heavier. The ache deeper. You had poured everything into chasing something that now seemed further away than ever—a mother’s love. And now, you were left with nothing but exhaustion and the bitter sting of failure.