A review by kenfoxley
Mixed Feelings by Abraham Rodriguez

emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Absolutely heartbroken. This beautiful work of poetry nearly brought me to tears, opened my eyes and it was like looking in a mirror of despair of my past self. This book absolutely shattered me and shook me to my core. 

This work of poetry is seeing the ups and downs of a relationship, a very hard and emotional relationship at its very core and feeling the tense emotion and sadness that fills the page. Abraham Rodriguez poured his heart out onto the page when he wrote this book and I found myself reading the words on the page as if they were written for me. 

The raw feelings put into this book almost had me in tears because I related to it so much in the things that he talked about and the way the photographs in the book reflected on what he was saying in verse. The black and white photos really did something to the book as well, it was almost as if you could just see his broken heart in these photos as you read along. 

I did not post this part in with my Goodreads review because it’s a little too heavy for your average review, but the words Rodriguez wrote in this book made me open my eyes to the trauma and abuse I was put through at such a young age. I highlighted several quotes because like I said before, it really felt like this book was written for me or about me, as unimportant as I am. It makes me feel less alone, that I’m not the only one who’s been through things like this, that another person’s actions affected them so deeply that they are scarred forever. 

One quote that stood out to me above the rest was:

“You blame your mistakes and failures on the way you were brought up. You try to convince yourself that your daddy issues are the reason you’re so messed up.” 

I read this quote and immediately my mind started buzzing back to the past. I will not go into deep depths of what this meant to me, I don’t want to talk too much about my personal life here, but I’ve basically said this exact thing before in conversation to what happened to me at a very young age. People make excuses for the way they are, and sometimes, yeah it does make sense that certain issues like childhood trauma/generational trauma can cause you to make some not so nice mistakes or say some not so nice things. But that still does not excuse your actions. They may be the cause of your actions, but only you are responsible for ending generational trauma through help like therapy and counseling. You don’t mess up another person because that’s just how you were raised, you commit to changing yourself and trying to be better than those before you and better than how you were raised.

This book is so deserving of five stars because the power of the emotion on the page is astronomical, I get choked up by poetry anyway, but as I said, this was personal. I got an advanced readers copy through NetGalley but I absolutely want to buy this book when it hits the shelves, that’s how much it meant to me.