Tag: love

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Nostalgia: I met her in a movie theater somewhere in coral gables under the half-moon sky and with tears pouring down my eyes.

I saw her again in the lies of a lover, the deceit in our love; its eternal manifestation.

I let her stream through my ears via the words of great artists that I can’t call or text, even e-mail if it was still a transactionless mode of conversation.

I had coffee with her in a make-a-wish version of a Parisian cafe as we bonded over existentialism and emotional ruptures birthed generations before mine.

When I came face to face with her, all I could ask myself was why she was withholding tears from her eyes when the truth we came to know deep within poured out into realness.

When I’d seen her before, all I wanted to do was get lost in her, ask her the questions I couldn’t answer about my past, present, and future, and let myself seep in the emptiness of answers.

But this time, this time I felt her far away from my feelings and tribulations.

Have I forgotten? Am I this numb to it all? Did I really give up my consent to move on when she knocked on my doors and closed my windows?

When she questioned herself in front of me in regard to her morality and looked for a bite I could not produce, all I could do is question mine for thinking about the fact that I have not thought or felt this much distance between my thoughts and her aforementioned facts before this reunion.

How could I forget to remember, to feel the same pains that grew inside me even if just for a few hours, months, a year? A mirage of what life could’ve been with the liar, the ghost, the fool, and the null.

I love them all the same, but differently now. Even when I’m sitting here, having coffee with the same nostalgia that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

I wish I could just see it, hear it, feel how much they flinch when they hear my name, remember my soul, pay homage to my body.

All the possessions I always owned but was willing to grow in tandem with theirs.

Yet here I am, still alone, forgiving her for leaving me again.

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My first love was invisible.

I fell in love with someone who made me believe in love again. Someone who wore their mind on their sleeve but kept their heart locked up in the safeguards of isolation. Someone who promised to tell the truth about who they were and what they’ve been through but used their leverage over my emotions to get what they wanted and skip over the rest. I fell in love with an illusion of what I now know I want the next person I love to be like, and what I know I’ve loved for years. I fell in love with a trap, a disguise, a magic trick.

To you, my love, I dedicate this letter. I doubt that you’ll ever know the truth; not because I’m afraid or incapable of telling you, but rather because you “told me so”, and thus I’ve decided that you don’t deserve it.

When we met it was like I had felt myself again, like I believed in who I was and what I believed in like you believe in your convictions and your beliefs. Since we met, we’ve had small periods of time to spare and get to know each other, and I guess quickly we vaguely did. I had never met someone who was foundationally unafraid to show me their intentions, share their feelings, and find existential meaning in words like you did. You could tie a bar to a memory, a recollection of feelings, a gut-wrenching anger for those who suffer. Yet you could also wallow in your privileged guilt and humble yourself to fire your passion for helping others with the opportunities you were given.

When I met you, my mind couldn’t stop thinking, processing, wanting you. Every meeting was filled with questions, concerns, doubts, but nonetheless passion. I was passionate about learning about you, who you like (or don’t like), what you deal and how you deal, why you believe and why you do not; in everything and anything. I had become the girl that went along, thought twice about letting fears and insecurities seep in, became less cautious and more outgoing. I became someone who pushed and showed interest in what I wanted.

Yet, when I made a move you sat there, gawking. Seeing me like I’ve never been exposed before, showing you the symbols buried in my skin.  I took you as a sign and accepted your distance. Timing and distance weren’t in our favor, and now I know the reason.

I stayed thinking, listening, supporting, and helping you believe in yourself. Even today, I stand beside you selflessly and relentlessly fighting to believe in the one inch of courage I have to believe that my love for you was true, honest, REAL.

But I cannot, you see. I can’t believe your story, your words, your denial and rejection of me and us and you and me because when we were the most intimate, you were there with me. On the same frequency, on the same team, in the same room, on the same bed.

I never pushed you to care. Rather, I masked your intentions to use me and morphed them into what I wanted you/them to be; sincere interest, concern, maybe love. But it couldn’t have ever grown because with you I let myself fall. Fall behind on being critical about our relationship, about my feelings for you, about who you really are. So, since the last time I saw you, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

You’re selfish, you are mean, you lied to me, you betrayed me. You played me like you told me you have done to others, like you said you didn’t want to play me, like you said I shouldn’t be treated. You prescribed all the symptoms just as they occurred. Except I’m not who they were prescribed for, I’m seeing that now.

Even though I wanted to be everything, now I know I was nothing.

Maybe you’ll know who you are and hate me. Maybe you already do. Maybe we’ll never speak again. I’d wonder if I could.

 

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Your eyes are deceiving,

craving a reaction to spark a contraction

an infatuation with being wanted but wanting not,

raiding the feelings established to fall no more

crumbling them into manipulation,

a mere deception of who you really want to give in to temptation

it’s you again, you again

just you, more you, and no “I”

 

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How long has it been? a month? two? another birthday?

It’s odd to come back here to the cloud of thoughts that linger in written works about identity and self. I think the strongest reason why I haven’t been able to write a single word down in the past 2 months has been the inaudibility of my thoughts as I tried to learn what my next step of growth is. From the beginning, the whole point of getting away from the noise was to come back to a place of complete and utter solitude that didn’t frighten me like it did in Miami. Being alone had become the cancer to my being as it sparked constant pain, confusion, panic attacks, and a black hole of sadness.

But why? Why did I always feel like being alone was the end? Why did not spending a day doing something with someone feel like being asphyxiated by time and being diluted into a morphine dose? Why did I feel as drugged when I was alone as I did when I was drugged when dying? These are all the questions that continue to haunt me every day. Even when some answers become clear.

As I arrived in Ecuador I chose to travel with my family to my home town of Guayaquil and spend a weekend there to see my grand aunt (more like gma) and other family that I had lost touch with. But even saying that is bleak to the reality I was walking into. A couple years back, when my Dad left my house after assaulting my mother, there was a fall out with my dad’s side of the family. Ever since my father sat me down and blamed his mental illness and struggles on me, the words that were repeated by family blood have been reproduced and internalized as I deal with my depression. I received several calls from family members (I wish I had the energy to be petty and call them out one by one but honestly I have accepted they’re not worth it) calling me to tell me what a huge mistake I had made by speaking out about the violence and abuse that I experienced at home and throughout my life. I was called names, insulted, threatened, and once again blamed for having destroyed my father’s life and reminded how hurt he was by my actions. This cycle lasted for about 3 months until me and my mom decided to leave behind our phone numbers and take security measures against anyone who actively harassed us. However, through the years I’ve analyzed my relationships with “family” and thought a lot about the people I grew up with and who meant something to me; those who were more than just forced interactions.

There were a few people that I had loved and rooted for my whole life which I had contacted some months or years after my father left my house and my life because I was lost and lonely. These people turned their backs on me and ignored me, as if we hadn’t lived the moments we did, as if we hadn’t shared our lives and sorrows together, as if the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and it was okay to still ignore the fact that domestic violence is rampant in our family. I was hurt and felt alone after trying to reach out to the people I loved and had been rejected for whatever narrative my family or my father fed to them, rather than the truth.

Being on a 10-12 hour bus to Guayaquil, sitting there next to the window on the right side in the 10th row, I went back to remembering my childhood, whatever memories I hadn’t suppressed, remembering the people that brought happiness in times of peril, remembering the locations that had weaved love into my soul at a young age and I, again, started to feel alone, isolated, unwanted, crazy, y como dicen por ahi.. “la vaca negra de la familia.”

Arriving in Guayaquil also translated into fear for me once I knew my father was staying in my family home in the center of the city; the house I’ve mentioned before, the walls that raised me. I was afraid to run into the person that destroyed me, the person that broke me, and disconnected me from society, the truth, myself, emotions, trust, love, and most of all having a father. I was afraid to see myself in him and to forget what these 4 years taught me about myself. That I was worthy of happiness, love, and that I wasn’t a waste in the world.

I spent time with my mom’s family the whole weekend feeling loved and appreciated and having the opportunity to see people I thought I’d never see again. This mended all the other doubts and demons that hid in my conscience until I could escape again to another location that didn’t remind me of people that left me behind as I passed each and every street corner I remembered walking through as a small child. And then came Quito….

Quito to me meant liberation and emancipation. It was the true first time I’d have my own apartment and space, have the liberty to travel (alone or accompanied) the country when I wanted and where I wanted, I’d be close enough to family so that I’d see them often but far enough to be alone, like I knew I needed to be. It meant growth; personal and spiritual. Yet, I adequately used this newfound freedom and space to throw myself into a tank of transformations on and off for the two months I stopped writing. I started going out often, traveling every weekend, and seeing what I could be capable of as I left behind fear after fear every week. I would say the peak time for me was traveling to Cotopaxi and Baños in September. In Cotopaxi, one of the largest volcanoes here in Ecuador, I conquered my fear of heights while conquering my health with it. The elevation in Cotopaxi is close to 5,000 feet high. Thus, making it hard to breathe and hike up the volcano as easily as other mountains would come. However, arriving in Cotopaxi that weekend my mission was to prove to myself that my health wasn’t going to determine my next steps in life and whatever they entailed. It was much more about how much I could push myself and break the worries implanted into me by doctors who think they know everything about me and my medical condition, than about simple adventure and exploration. And I’m glad to say that I proved that and more.

Being sick is something that I close to never disclose to others, let alone the greater public. I can count with my fingers the people that know about what I went through and it’s not to say that I’m proud of hiding it like a secret that must be taken to the grave and incinerated with my ashes, it’s just that I’m often ashamed and scared of the reactions that it produces from those who sit and listen.

I think that for some, asking about what happened out of curiosity fulfills their need to confirm or deny whatever assumptions they have about what happened to me by looking at my scars and fixating on the way I speak. For the longest time, whenever people would do this I would replay a memory from my days in the hospital when my mom would sit by my bedside and use my iPod to play Maroon 5’s “She will be loved” and mumble the lyrics in broken English until the song approached the chorus and she could sing

“look at the girl with the broken smile,

ask her if she wants to stay a while”.

This would initially make me angry because I was that girl, with the infinite broken smile and a lifetime of trauma to get through. But eventually, it made me happy because even though I couldn’t hide the scars (no matter how hard I tried to) I could at least choose to keep people wondering and pondering as the ones who stared didn’t deserve to know the truth.

Climbing mountains and trekking to hidden waterfalls and forests though…. that was just a new level of intimacy reached with myself and the outside world. I’ve built such a strong connection with nature that sometimes and most days I refuse to leave my bed in the mornings because I’m too entertained with dreaming about nature and being outside in it, lost somewhere in the jungle or the Andes, talking to the trees and the shrubs and the rocks that hold life together. It showed me how much I need a space where this part of my identity can grow and flourish, a space in which I can walk for miles up and down a mountain to get to the next one behind it. It’s become part of the way I’m shaping my future and where I want to live it.

Baños was yet another personal test.. but more about moving on from the past than it was superficially about heights. I used to love heights as a child and adore climbing things up and down and around. However, after getting sick and a few other life crises, I somehow grew terrified of them and any fun activity attached to higher elevations. Baños is a small town settled under huge mountains and my favorite part of Baños is the swing at the end of the world which is all the way at the top of the mountain that hugs the town. Baños has a bunch of other attractions and waterfalls that lie over grand settlements of rock or in between bodies of water. I wanted to try doing canopy, canyoning, rafting, and anything along the lines of adventurous water/air activities that would help me loose my fear, as well as to go back to the swing at the end of the world and swing away my fear of heights. And I did, I went back petrified, got on the swing with the help of an amazing helper who was swinging people who got on it, and SWUNG. I asked to go again for a second time and swung as hard and far as it went for as long as I could and it would.

As far as the canopy goes, I chickened out on doing it but went on this swinging ball of destruction that repelled off a cliff and into practically the abyss of air above a small rocky river that flowed under a bridge.  I was scared shitless and screamed like a child for the first 5 seconds until my gut and my brain turned on their fight or flight mode and adrenaline came running rampant through veins and arteries all over my body. Then came the victory screams of happiness and the nonstop laughing as we were spun around while being swung into nothingness. That is one of my proudest moments, truly.

After my friends did canopy and we went on to explore the largest and (in my opinion) most beautiful waterfall in Ecuador; El Pailon del Diablo, we decided to have lunch and then look for a service that would take us rafting. However, we fell upon a service that offered Canyoning for a fair price for an hour after we arrived at their office to sign up for some activities. We decided this would be the best idea for all of us and we paid the fee and then ran back to the hostel to get changed before the next adventure unraveled. Canyoning is kind of climbing down a waterfall through the middle of the waterfall as water falls on your face and you slip (and sometimes fall) downwards. It was hands down my favorite activity in Baños although I didn’t end up conquering any fears by it.

As we wrapped up our trip we also went back to the “Casa del Arbol” where the swing at the end of the world is located for one more swing before leaving. When we arrived, we sort of walked around like we hadn’t gotten the chance to do the first day there as it was too late, and we did other swings and activities available around the main attraction. As I was walking around I saw one of my family members from Guayaquil and hugged her like I hadn’t seen her some weeks previously. She had brought her family on vacation before her girls started school and was so happy and excited to see me again in the most spontaneous way possible. That little encounter left me as happy as I could be that day and sad to be leaving as we made our way back to our hostel and then to our bus.

All in all, these first 2 months narrated happened so fast that I could barely catch my breath between each travel and each encounter. The month of October has been the only real break since I got here in which I settled more into my home, Quito, and engaged with the culture here as I continue to connect with my heritage and it’s place within my identity. However, that also was the hardest month so far in terms of nostalgia and drama that introduced itself onto my life thanks to someone’s jealousy and another’s ploy of forgiveness. I feel I’m still processing and dwelling on these memories but most recently and importantly I’m leaving my inclusion in these problematic relationships behind. I’ve decided to isolate myself from people who don’t deserve my investment in their means of attention and to go back to that place and mission I wanted for myself which was to learn to be and cope alone and to put myself first above other people who take so much away and never give anything back.

It’s safe to say that leaving people sucks and it’s hard and tempestuous but I’ll never get tired of remembering how lucky I am to have people like my best friends at home who support and supplement my life like family does, like love does. Having people that respect and appreciate you as a whole is the clearest reminder that hardships will pass and that I, truthfully, am not alone.

 

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Energy, it’s such a deadly force. It is because it cannot be created or destroyed that it sticks like the plague.

A connection is so hard to trust, to experience, to acknowledge. When you know the end will come before the beggining, it all feels like a dream, a fantasy.

He is patient and kind. He is passionate, compassionate, and emotive. He seeks truth in exchange for conviction, he argues for decency and respect. He stands by honesty and doesn’t lie.

The truth is all that they haven’t taken from him, so he fights for it

He understands what it is like to struggle, he lives it, breathes it.

He wakes up every morning to the sound of footsteps that press the canvas he sleeps on.

He looks down when the power of those above us beats down our tolerance. When we both asphyxiate from the bullshit of bureaucratic dominance. But I see his heart above his head, beating in resistance when his arms can’t hold up any longer.

He met me at a weird time in my life and I completely missed him. I didn’t notice. And now that I have, it ended before starting. Timing and distance, like all tragic heartbreak.

At the same time, this is nothing. It wasn’t created to be more than shared energy. Good energy. And while I’ll miss the feeling, I’m leaving it all behind me.

This is the end. Who is this ‘we’? who am I?