No Más Payasos: Breaking the Victim Triangle, One Puerto Rican Truth at a Time 🇵🇷
No Más Payasos: A Tribute to My Father
I personally have learned that there are no injustices in my world. Not to be confused with tu mundo, or el mundo de ellos. When I took full responsibility for my life, I stopped labeling myself as a victim. And this is a brutally hard truth. Because I was raised in victimhood. In that script, I deserved some things and didn’t deserve others.
I don’t live that way anymore. Whatever shows up, I face it. I do my best in that moment. I let the chips fall — and sometimes, those chips land 💩 deep in mierda. But I’ve learned that here on Earth 🌍, there’s a lot of caca to clean. Nobody is coming to clean up mi vida — just me. And now I’m qualified to do that.
This post is about me. As a descendant of Puerto Rican 🇵🇷 heritage and culture, I know what collective injustices feel like. I lived them. Mis padres lived them. Mis abuelos lived them. My sons and mis cinco nietos are also living them. We didn’t cause all of this — but we can choose how we respond now.
In family systems, we often rotate through three sticky roles: the victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer. That triangle is exhausting. Most of us don’t even realize we’re in it — until someone steps out. Or repeats it. Or marries it. 🌀
👩🏽🍼 I mimicked what I saw. I married someone I didn’t love, who didn’t love me back. He lied, he cheated. And I accepted it — because I had seen that done too. I suffered in silence because my soul whispered, esto no es justo. But no one around me had a map to something better. So I followed the script.
🎧 Mi Pops escuchaba esta canción una y otra vez...
“Payaso” — Raphael (1971)
A cry from the soul — enough pretending, enough clowning.
🎤 “Aunque me llames payaso...”
💪🏽 But it’s my abuela who taught me strength. When she found out my abuelo was cheating, she left. No long explanations, no dramatic exit. She left everything — the kids, the house, the whole damn country. She didn’t speak the language where she landed. She slept on the floor. She never remarried. That’s not cold — that’s clarity.
That wisdom skipped my mom. But not me.
🧼 So here I am, sponge in hand, soul-scrubbing. Sometimes it feels like I’m cleaning up everyone’s 💩 — ancestral, marital, maternal. But if not me, then who? And if not now, then when?
✨ I’ve decided to be la enmienda viviente — the living amends. Not because I’m perfect. Not because I’m woke. Because I’m awake enough to stop blaming and start breaking cycles. That’s the best apology I know how to make — to myself, to my bloodline, and to my future.
If you’re stuck in that triangle — playing the clown, the victim, or the unpaid therapist — you’re not crazy. You’re probably just repeating what you saw. And you don’t have to keep doing that. You can set down the act. 🎭
This post is my permission slip to anyone who’s tired of the triangle: You don’t owe anybody your silence. Not your ancestors, not your parents, not your abuser, not your own inner critic. We didn’t come here to suffer for sport. We came here to remember who we are, even if that means sweeping up a whole lotta legacy shit along the way 💩.
It sounds like “I’m tired,” or “I didn’t deserve that,” or “I don’t want to perform anymore.”
Today, I honored that voice. I gave it air, a shape, a place to rest —
And in doing so, I reminded my body (and maybe yours) that truth doesn’t ruin things.
It sets the table for a different kind of life.
The kind where we belong to ourselves, not the roles we had to play to survive.
Because Your Spirit Didn’t Come Here to Settle.
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