The days bled into each other, a relentless cycle of feeding, changing, rocking, and an ache that started somewhere deep in my bones and radiated outward, encompassing my entire existence. I loved our baby more than words could say, a fierce, primal love that made me forget sleep, hunger, even who I was before. But that love, that all-consuming devotion, was also an isolating force.
I was drowning.Every night was a negotiation with exhaustion. Every cry pierced through the fragile silence of our home, and through me. I’d stumble out of bed, my body heavy, my mind a fog, to soothe, to feed, to simply exist for this tiny, perfect human.My partner, though. He was… different.
At first, he’d tried. He’d hold the baby for a few minutes, coo, and then hand them back with a polite smile, as if completing a duty. As the weeks turned into months, his participation dwindled to almost nothing. He’d retreat to his games, his work, his sleep. Our once vibrant connection, built on shared dreams and late-night talks, was now a barren landscape, punctuated only by my baby’s cries and my own silent pleas for help.
Un vestido de novia | Fuente: Midjourney
I tried to talk to him. I begged. I reasoned. I cried. Each attempt met with a blank stare, a dismissive wave of the hand, or a curt, “You knew what you were signing up for.”
Did I? Did I really know I was signing up for this solitary confinement of motherhood?
The resentment simmered, a bitter brew in my gut. I watched him sleep, undisturbed, while I paced the floors, my baby nestled against my chest, feeling more alone than I ever had in my life. He’d started going to bed earlier, proclaiming his need for “proper rest.” Meanwhile, my proper rest had become a relic of a past life.
His mother had been around, a lot. She was usually a whirlwind of well-meaning advice and unsolicited commentary, but lately, she’d been… quieter. Observing. Sometimes, I’d catch her watching us – me with the baby, him engrossed in his phone – with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher. A mixture of pity, perhaps, or something heavier, something I didn’t want to think about.
Una mujer caminando por un callejón | Fuente: Midjourney
One particularly brutal night, the baby was inconsolable. Colic, maybe. Or just one of those nights where nothing worked. I’d been up for hours, swaying, singing, rocking, my own body trembling with fatigue. He’d gone to bed at 9 PM, early even for him.
Around 2 AM, the baby let out a piercing wail that even my exhausted ears couldn’t filter out. I heard him stir in bed, a rustle of sheets. Hope, foolish and fragile, flickered within me. Maybe he’ll help. Maybe tonight.
But then, his voice, sharp and laced with irritation, cut through the darkness from the bedroom.
“CAN YOU PLEASE MAKE IT STOP?!”
My heart sank. My eyes burned with tears. I walked to the doorway, clutching our crying baby tighter.
“I’m trying,” I whispered, my voice raw. “I’ve been trying for hours. Can you just… hold them for a minute? I just need to lie down.”
He sat up, his silhouette framed by the faint glow of the streetlights outside. He looked utterly enraged, not tired, not concerned, but just furious at the interruption.
Erika Buenfil y su hijo Nicolás Buenfil posan para la foto, durante la alfombra roja y estreno de la película “Mamá Inventada” el 6 de mayo de 2025 en la Ciudad de México, México. | Fuente: Getty Images.
“My bedtime is 11 PM,” he snapped, his voice dangerously low. “It’s 2 AM. If the baby wakes up, that’s your problem. Not mine. I need my sleep.”
It was a punch to the gut. The coldest, most heartless thing he’d ever said. My breath hitched. All the love, all the hope, all the fragile threads of our shared life seemed to snap in that instant. I stared at him, unable to form words, just holding our crying baby, feeling utterly, irreparably broken.
And then, I heard a creak from behind me. His mother. She must have woken up too, perhaps to get a drink of water. She was standing in the hallway, silhouetted against the dim nightlight, witnessing the entire horrific exchange.
My partner just glared at us, then flopped back down, pulling the covers over his head. Dismissed.
I stood there, tears finally overflowing, streaming silently down my face, the baby’s cries echoing my own internal scream. This is it. This is my life now.
His mother slowly walked past me, into the living room, not saying a word. My gaze followed her, numbly. I expected her to perhaps comfort me, or at least scold him. But she did neither.
Erika Buenfil posa durante la alfombra roja de los “MTV MIAW 2023” en el Pepsi Center WTC el 04 de agosto de 2023 en la Ciudad de México, México. | Fuente: Getty Images.
Instead, she walked over to the antique dresser against the far wall, where a collection of framed family photos stood. One particular frame, an ornate silver one, held a picture of my partner as a chubby-cheeked toddler, beaming at the camera. A portrait of innocent joy.
Without a word, without a sound other than the rustle of her nightgown, she picked up that framed photograph. Her hands were trembling slightly. She looked at it for a long moment, a strange, haunted look on her face. Then, with a sudden, sharp intake of breath, she raised her arm.
And she threw it.
THE SILVER FRAME SHATTERED AGAINST THE WALL with a deafening CRASH, glass spraying across the rug.
I GASPED.
It wasn’t just the sound, or the shock of the broken glass. It was the sheer, unexpected violence of the act from this usually composed woman. Her chest was heaving. She didn’t look angry at him, not exactly. She looked… devastated. And utterly, utterly defeated.
Erika Buenfil asiste a una conferencia en el Hotel Bel Air el 26 de junio de 2024 en la Ciudad de México, México. | Fuente: Getty Images.
My partner stirred in the bedroom, letting out a frustrated groan. “WHAT WAS THAT?!” he yelled, clearly not wanting to be disturbed.
His mother didn’t answer him. She turned slowly to me, her eyes wide, filled with a pain so profound it stole my breath.
“He’s right,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the baby’s cries and my own pounding heart. “He’s always been this way. Cold. Detached. He never really knew how to love.”
What was she talking about? I stared at her, still clutching my baby, my mind reeling from the broken glass and her cryptic words.
She took a shaky step towards me, then another. “You deserve to know,” she said, her voice cracking. “You deserve better than this… than him.” She gestured vaguely towards the closed bedroom door, a look of abject horror on her face.
“He’s not my son.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than any silence I’d ever known. Not her son? My brain couldn’t process it. My partner. The man I married. My baby’s father.
Erika Buenfil y Nicolas Buenfil durante la alfombra roja de los “MTV MIAW 2023” en el Pepsi Center WTC el 04 de agosto de 2023 en la Ciudad de México, México. | Fuente: Getty Images.
“He never was,” she continued, a torrent of confession erupting from her. “My sister… she was much older than me. There was a scandal. A terrible, forbidden affair with a man who was… violent. She got pregnant. She couldn’t keep him. The family, my parents, they were so ashamed. They made me promise. They said I had to take him, raise him as my own, to save face. To hide the shame.”
She was sobbing now, great, wracking sobs. “I was just a girl myself. I was barely out of my teens. They forced me. They told everyone he was mine. My husband… he went along with it. For the family. But we both knew. He knew. We all knew. He was a constant reminder of the lie, the deceit, the damage done to our family name. I tried to love him. God, I tried. But he always felt… alien. A secret. A burden.”
Nicolás Buenfil y Erika Buenfil posan para una foto durante la inauguración del restaurante del comediante Juan José Mendoza el 4 de octubre de 2023 en México. | Fuente: Getty Images.
She knelt amidst the shattered glass, seemingly oblivious to it. Her voice dropped to a choked whisper. “His birth mother… she abandoned him. His biological father… he was a monster. He was never truly loved, because he was born of a lie. And I was too young, too broken by the betrayal of my own family to give him what he needed. I just… I resented him for existing. I hated the constant deception. And now, he’s just… a hollow echo of the past. A cycle repeating itself, just as heartless, just as cold.”
I stared at her, then at the closed bedroom door, then down at the innocent face of my sleeping baby. The truth, raw and brutal, settled over me. My husband wasn’t just a selfish man; he was a product of a decades-long lie, a child raised by a woman forced to pretend he was her own, burdened by a secret he never knew and yet manifested in every cold, distant part of his being.
My beautiful, innocent baby. He was sleeping peacefully in my arms. And his father, the man I loved, the man I married, was a ghost of a family secret, a broken boy who had never known true, unconditional love. And now, that cycle of heartbreak, of distant resentment, was threatening to consume us all. The confession echoed in my ears: “He was never truly loved.” And in that moment, clutching my baby, I understood with a shattering clarity: He didn’t know how to love because he’d never been given it himself. And that, in itself, was the most heartbreaking twist of all.
