I Found My Mother’s Diary and Read About Her Rebirth

My name is Tobías, and I’ve lived with my mom for as long as I can remember. Her name is Renata, she’s thirty-four, and this story is hers, even though I’m the one telling it. I watched her fall all the way to the bottom with my own eyes. Then she told me about it, half crying, half laughing, when she finally came back to herself. And I read the rest in her diary one afternoon, when I found it open on the bed while she was at the club.

I didn’t open it out of morbid curiosity. I opened it because I needed to understand how a woman who looked dead inside could suddenly come back to life. And there it all was, in her shaky handwriting, the pages smeared with ink. What follows is pieced together from what I saw, what she confessed to me, and what she wrote in her own hand. It’s long, it’s raw, but it’s true.

Renata is five foot eight. Long legs, firm thighs from years of professional volleyball, a narrow waist, and an abdomen that only barely shows when she stretches. Her skin is always golden from training outdoors, her hair is chestnut brown in waves, her green eyes shifting from tenderness to something wild in a second. She’s still the captain of her team, the one the others respect like a queen. But six months ago, everything collapsed for her.

My father died when I was six. After that she married a rich guy who treated her like a trophy on a shelf. The divorce was signed four months ago. She signed it on a Monday, and by Tuesday she wasn’t getting out of bed anymore. I heard her crying in the shower. I saw her staring into nothing while a full plate went cold in front of her.

—I’m broken, Tobías —she told me one night—. No one’s going to want a divorced woman with a body that’s not twenty anymore.

Lie. Her body was still a masterpiece. But she couldn’t see it.

***

Two months after the divorce, he appeared. It was at a book presentation in a bookstore downtown. Mom had gone because she always took refuge in novels. There was Emilio Vance, the writer everyone talked about: forty-seven years old, tall, in a dark jacket, with a deep, measured voice that turned heads across half the room. He signed her book and said something in her ear that made her laugh for the first time in weeks. Then he handed her his card.

—Call me, Renata. I’d like to know the real story behind that sad smile.

They started slowly. Very slowly. First a coffee. Then a walk by the river. Then dinners where he talked to her about poetry and about how women like her deserved to be adored. He sent her messages at three in the morning: “I think about your eyes and I can’t sleep.” He read her fragments of his next book dedicated to “a warrior from the court who stole my breath.”

—He’s a gentleman —she told me—. He treats me like I’m made of glass.

In the diary she told it more bluntly:

July 5. Emilio kissed me today for the first time. Slowly, his lips barely brushing mine and then his tongue slipped in, asking permission. I got soaked through. I haven’t felt anything down there in months and today everything started beating again like when I was a teenager. But he stopped. He left me at the door with a kiss on the forehead and a “you deserve to be courted.” How badly I want him. And I like that he’s taking it slow. It makes me feel alive.

I could see it. Mom smiled more. She went back to training hard. She started wearing pretty lingerie under her jeans. One night I heard her touching herself in her room, moaning his name softly.

***

Three weeks went by like that. Kisses that got more and more intense, hands that dared to reach her waist and nothing more. He invited her to his apartment, cooked for her, read poems into her ear, but didn’t touch her beyond her clothes. Mom was on the edge.

July 12. Last night he kissed me against the wall. I felt him hard against my stomach. I rubbed myself against him like a desperate woman, but he pulled back smiling: “Not yet, my queen. I want you to want it.” I’m losing my mind. I think about him all day and touching myself isn’t enough.

One afternoon I accidentally left the bathroom door slightly open and saw her: sitting on the edge of the bathtub, legs spread, two fingers inside herself, biting her lip and whispering Emilio’s name. I closed it slowly and went back to my room with my heart pounding. My mother had started wanting again, and that, even though I shouldn’t have looked, comforted me like nothing had in months.

***

Dinner was on July twentieth. At home. She invited him.

—I want you to meet my son, but I also want it to be a special night —she told him on the phone.

She made roast beef, wine, candles. I ate with them and went to my room early, leaving them alone in the living room. I heard laughter, soft music, then silence, then other sounds. What happened that night I knew because she told me the next day and because the diary preserved it in full.

July 20. When Tobías went to sleep, Emilio looked at me steadily and said: “Tonight the waiting ends.” He kissed me differently. He grabbed my hair, pulled my head back, and kissed me deeply. His hands went straight down and squeezed me hard. “I’m going to take you like an animal, my queen.” I got wet instantly.

He lifted my skirt, tore off my underwear in one yank, and sat me on the dining table. He got on his knees and ate me out slowly, then hungrily, until I came in less than a minute, trembling, yanking his hair. When he stood up and took his clothes off I thought I wasn’t going to make it. He put himself in my mouth without asking, I took him all the way, tears fell down my face and I kept going. Then he turned me around, put me on all fours on the table, and thrust in with one single shove.

He fucked me hard, deep, one hand on each tit, biting my neck. “Now you’re mine.” He turned me over ten times. Against the wall, on the couch, back on the table. I came three more times. In the end he put me on my knees and finished in my mouth, looking at me with that same gentleman’s smile. “My queen, I adore you.” He cleaned me up carefully, took me to bed, and held me all night.

I saw part of it. From the hallway, through the crack in the door. I saw him lean her over the table, heard the moans, the wet sound, the bed creaking afterward. I saw my mother arch her back and scream in a way I’d never heard before. Then silence. And the next day she woke up different.

She got up singing. She trained like in her best years. She hugged me hard and said:

—Son, Emilio came at just the right time.

I didn’t tell her I knew. But I asked for details. She blushed and told me only the essentials.

—He’s romantic on the outside and an animal in bed. That double side drives me crazy.

***

They didn’t stop there. The diary goes on, each encounter more intense.

July 25. Emilio took me to a hotel. He tied my wrists to the headboard with his tie. He ate me out until I begged him. He flipped me over and took me from behind for the first time, slow at first, then with no brakes. I came like that, with his fingers on my clit.

August 2. At his apartment he made me read one of his chapters out loud while he took me from behind. Every time I stumbled, a slap on my ass. I ended up wrecked and he told me I was the most desirable woman he had ever imagined for his novels.

I noticed it. Mom wasn’t crying anymore. She was winning matches. She came home smelling like expensive perfume and told me pieces.

—Last night he went on for hours, Tobías. He left me exhausted and happy.

I pretended to be surprised, even though I had already read it.

***

The strongest night wasn’t the first or the one at the hotel. It was November fifteenth, when they already knew every inch of each other’s bodies. That night I couldn’t sleep. I heard everything from my room, and the next day I found the diary open on the page, written in trembling handwriting.

Mom had played a key match that afternoon. They won, and she scored the winning point in the last minute. She came home euphoric, her body still hot from the effort. Emilio was waiting in the living room with a bottle of wine and a smile that promised trouble.

—Today you deserve to be completely ruined, my queen —he told her at the door.

She laughed, but I saw her nipples harden under the team shirt. They showered together first. I heard them from the hallway: water falling, muffled moans, bodies hitting the tiles.

—Come on, Emilio, don’t make me wait —she was saying.

They came out wrapped in towels. Mom put on only one of my old T-shirts, barely covering her. He, in boxers, already hard. They ate quickly, almost without talking, exchanging looks that burned. Then he grabbed her by the waist and dragged her into the bedroom. They closed the door, but not with a lock. I came closer, as always. The crack showed everything.

Renata threw herself onto the bed on her back, legs open.

—Give me the worst you’ve got today —she said in the hoarse voice of someone who has just won.

He gave a low laugh, took off his boxers, and dragged her to the edge of the bed. He put her legs over his shoulders.

—Hold on to the sheets, because you won’t be able to walk tomorrow.

He drove in with one shove. Mom let out a scream that froze my blood.

—More! —she begged anyway, driving her heels in—. Harder!

He started hammering in deep, each thrust bouncing the bed against the wall. He changed her position without coming out, put her on all fours and yanked her hair like a rein. Mom moaned nonstop, her back soaked in sweat, the wet sound filling the room.

—Yes, like that, don’t stop! —she kept saying.

She came trembling all over and he didn’t stop. He kept going through her orgasm until he threw her onto the rug, face down, and went in again from behind. He gave her one slap after another and she kept asking for more. When he couldn’t hold out anymore, he pulled out and finished on her back, and then went back in for the last thrusts. Mom moaned softly, exhausted.

—You destroyed me —she whispered.

They stayed like that for a while, him still on top of her, kissing the nape of her neck, slipping back into gentleman mode.

—I love you, Renata. You’re amazing.

—And you’re impossible in bed —she laughed—. But you give me what I was missing.

The next day she could barely sit at breakfast. She walked funny. She looked at me and smiled, guilty.

—Last night was intense, son.

I pretended I knew nothing. But that afternoon I read the page:

November 15. The strongest night of my life. Emilio dismantled me and rebuilt me with every thrust. I screamed like never before. He left marks on me and yet I’ve never felt more alive. Romantic by day, savage by night. I want him forever.

***

And that’s how it was. That night marked a before and after. Every time Mom came home euphoric from a match, Emilio knew exactly what to do to celebrate and remind her that she was still a goddess.

The months passed. Renata became who she had been before, stronger, more alive. They called her up for the national team again. All thanks to that double face: the writer who sent her love letters and the man who drove her wild at night.

One day I read the diary’s last page:

September 10. I’m not broken anymore. Emilio saved me. His tenderness lifts me up and his desire rebuilds me. I’m happy. My son looks at me and smiles. He doesn’t know everything… or maybe he does. But it doesn’t matter. I’m alive again.

I closed the notebook and left it where it was. Mom came in that afternoon, hugged me, and whispered in my ear:

—Thank you for always being there, Tobías. Now I’m happy.

I hugged her back and thought about everything I had read. Because my mother had come back. And her story, the one I put together from what I saw, what she told me, and what I read, ends here. Or maybe it’s only just beginning. Because Emilio still comes by, and she still laughs every morning like I hadn’t heard her laugh in years.