Tag Archives: adult

Human

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They were Sons.

They were Daughters.

They were Fathers.

They were Mothers.

They were Godmothers.

They were Godfathers.

They were Uncles.

They were Aunts.

They were Cousins.

They were Husbands.

They were Wives.

They were Friends.

They were Colleagues.

They were Girlfriends .

They were Boyfriends.

They were Acquaintances

They were People that you stood in line with in the supermarket.

They were Creative.

They were at the most basic level Human.

Now they do not exist.

They do not exist in Orlando.

They do not exist in Sandy Hook.

They do not exist in Aurora.

 

All of the others they do not exist.

My heart is heavy for the people left behind, the collateral damage.  We grieve each of those people and we sit with heavy hearts as their deaths are politicized and turned into meaningless arguments for people who care only about their own agendas.

That is not happening here.  We hear you and in a comparatively, infinitesimally small way feel you, you the collateral damage, you who are left behind to pick up the pieces, you who had those who died in your phone books, on your mantles and in your hearts.

I carry you with me when I look at my children.  You are in the back of my throat as I try to find an explanation for these acts, because there is no explanation.  I look at my babies and I hope that as I kiss them goodbye I get to see them again at the end of the day.   When I do, I feel lucky and I hope that by continuing to love them and by continuing to live and trying to make lives better, I in some way am honoring those you lost.  Those we lost.

The most important label each person who died had, the only one that really matters is one…Human.

I Will Not Be Silent Anymore.  I am who I am.

 

Holy Social Media Hell!

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Oh Social Media and the ability to contact anyone at anytime.  It’s grand isn’t it.  You find old friends, check out old boyfriends to see if they are fat and have lost their hair…oh and your allegedly ex-drug trafficking Dad (step) finds you after 25 years of 0 contact.  That was fun!  Here is how that conversation went(without names to protect the innocent) I will translate below the first message as he thought Spanish was the first way to reach out to me:
HIM:
Hola xxxx…espero que t encuentres bien….Tal vez no t recuerdes de mi; pero yo si de ti…Solamente deseo saber que estas bien y que sepas que nunca t he olvidado…. xxxx….
[Hi xxxx…I hope this finds you well…Perhaps you don’t remember me; but I remember you…I only wish to know that you are well and to let you know that I never forgot you…..xxxx]
ME:
Seriously!!!!
ME:
Why now?

HIM:

I know that it sounds weird but the truth is that because of all my mistakes I had to go to federal prison for almost 20 years…the last time I saw you in Cancun…5 months later I went to Miami as I usually did to buy stuff for the hotel I had in Cancun and the restaurant and I was followed by the FBI and had to flight to Colombia, I didn’t see my daughter and son and my exwife for months but later on they caught me in Dominican Republic and got arrested….the rest is history….

HIM:

Tell me about you…how you’re doing…I see to nice beautiful girls…tell me they are yours…they are beautiful…how’s your mom and XXXX…if I’m not mistaken…your mom has a hair salon in XXXXXXX…I’m really glad that she’s is fine..

HIM:

Are you married?…where are you at?….
ME:
I don’t even know where to begin. Surely you haven’t lost that con-man approach that made you so successful…I’m a little dissapointed that your in was to ask if I remembered you. You raised me, how would I not remember you. I called you Papi, lest you forget. I have a lot of memories, many more than what you wish I had. You left me. Maybe you were too high to remember that too, then you came back and you left again, then I found you thru your aunt and yes went to see you in Cancun and you had a new family. Did you abandon them too? I don’t really want to know. In my last communication with you, you said the only reason I wanted you in my life was to ask you for money…remember. I spent that night crying on my friends lap, the next two weeks in bed and then I was done. I released you.
In your wake you left a path of pain and destruction that apparently you think has gone away. You left my family in shambles, the FBI and the DEA didn’t just come after you. For a long time they had my mom under surveillance and brought her in for questioning too. I was a minor and they couldn’t touch me. My Uncle, as you well know was caught in Spain trying to smuggle your shit and when he was finally released and extradited to Colombia he was placed under permanent restriction to leave the country. I don’t speak to him either.
You think that you paid for your mistakes in jail. Ok. Please live your life and do something good. But I think that your type of tiger doesn’t change their stripes.
I have an amazing family of my own. Yes. But you don’t get to share them with me, I don’t want that life to touch this one. It’s to good and pure. I don’t know what your angle is or what you really want…but I don’t want it.
If you are making amends, good for you. I hope you find your peace. I wish you success and a good life…what’s left of it. I have many good memories of growing up with you, unfortunately they are also attached to many bad and horrific memories. I hope that you have those good memories too. I ask that if you have anything left in your heart for me you respect that I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want you to be but a ghost in my past for my family when they see you in pictures. Don’t reach out to my moms family either they don’t want to talk to you.
This is not an invitation to open a dialogue with you but a way to close a final chapter in a book. Never to be opened again. I wish you the best. XXXX
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I probably shouldn’t have engaged him at all but I couldn’t help myself.  I won’t lie I was at an outing in a beautiful location when I sat 20150905_150411down by myself with my beer to enjoy the weather and the view and looked at my social media and saw the message and immediately went hot and cold.  I think I sat in disbelief for what seemed like an hour but I returned my glass to the bar and got my car from valet and drove home crying.  In a weird cloud then slept the rest of the day.
Now, I am not feeling so fragile.  I think it was shock really.  He hasn’t factored in my life for so long and I’m so glad.  He was bad news, he was almost as bad as if she had married Pablo Escobar himself without knowing it, my poor Mom.  I told her.  Maybe I shouldn’t have but I don’t want it to slip later.  I’m not a good liar and to her this is massive news.
Now, this piece of work is not my biological father, he was my Step Dad, from age 2 to 11, then he left and came back when I was 12, then left again until I was 17.  Came back tried to buy back my love, showering me with jewelry and a car.  Then disappearing again until I found him in Mexico.  He was my Dad, that’s who I pictured when anyone said father.  The pain of feeling abandoned, the lack of trust,  the anger issues I had as a teenager, being a commitment-phobe until I met my husband at 30.  All stems back to this guy.

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Second Post Ever “Everything to Everyone”

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I often say that if you want to get something done you have to ask a busy person, but I wonder if that is really and truly true. Does it fall under the heading you can’t be everything to everyone? Probably. But that has never stopped me.

We, the brethren of the why do when you can overdo order, know what I’m talking about. Why go out and buy ready made Valentine’s Day cards when you can make them and decorate them yourself from scratch…oooh it wil be a fun project with your kid. How about this one, why get a cake from the store when you can stay up until 2am making your own cupcakes with homemade candy fairy wings on them, they’ll be so much more special. Or, don’t worry I’ll pick up the dogs’ pills after I drop the kids off at school before I go to work on my way to Target to get toilet paper and mouthwash and don’t worry about dinner I’m making homemade pot stickers. I can’t be alone, male and female we all do it, maybe its a disease like OCD or bulimia.

I fall into my predicament with good reason, at least that is what my conscious brain keeps blathering to me. I’m not a people pleaser, I don’t act because I get high of off someone elses happiness or because I can’t stand to upset them. I don’t take praise particularly well and I listen carefully to critical advice. I have become the everything to everyone person out of necessity. I do because I have to. If I don’t do it no one else will.

I’m not complaining. No one is holding a gun to my head and making me take on another project. I figured it out though, I need to be needed, everyone does. Some of us just have an unrealistic way of trying to make that happen. Like me, I make myself needed by doing so much people naturally assume I’ll take care of it or them and then I have to because it is expected and they won’t do it. Of course I’m writing this as my fantastic husband is tackling a build up of laundry and feeding the dog. I just wish the help would happen a little more often, but as I said before, I did it to myself. Again, Im not complaining.

If I’m being honest I’m falling short. I’m exhausted. So does it take a bigger person than me to say I can’t do that? The simple answer is I don’t know, but I’m starting to feel like a cliche. I’m spreading myself to thin, got too many balls in the air, my plate is full, my cup is running over……At this point I don’t think I can come up with another real reason as to why I haven’t finished something on time or forgotten to pay a bill. So suffice it to say that I think I am in good company, many women I know feel like they aren’t doing enough well enough. Guess what? You’re right.

So what is the trick to not becoming me. Say no and set flexible realistic time lines for what you are taking on. Get a calendar and write everything down, so you don’t miss deadlines and get a grip for what you are doing on a daily basis.

I began revising my calendar and giving myself real time lines. I’m no good with walking away from commitments I’ve already made, so, am I making significant enough changes so that I don’t feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions. I have to. I can say with some certainty that I am on the road to recovery.

The answer to my question is no you can’t be everything to everyone. At the end of the day, the only thing I’m 100% sure about is that even when I’m tired, cranky, running late, drinking too much coffee, staying up way too late to finish things I needed yesterday and making no apologies, I am who I am.

First post ever…..I am Who I am.

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I am Who I am.

I  am a mom. A wife. A daughter.

I am a Mom. If you had told me 10 years ago that I was going to be a mother of 2, I would have laughed you out of the room. Seriously, I was dedicated to my job, I loved my freedom, and cherished my solitude. There were no ties to anything, I could go as I pleased and curse like a truck driver. I wasn’t worried about upsetting anyone with my opinion or what family politics I needed to play. Take me as I am or don’t take me at all was my motto. This was the blow that burst the me-me-me bubble. I became a breeder. To my surprise I wouldn’t change a moment of the whole mom career. I’m still that person save the freedom, cursing, family politics….anyway I still don’t care what people think of my opinions.

I am a wife. I had a serious aversion to the confines of marriage. I never believed that because you signed a piece of paper and some guy in a funny hat said you were married that you were married. I never believed that I was meant to have a partner for life. I was happy right where I was. In the me-me-me bubble, where if its meant to be its meant to be. I, ofcourse, undeniably fell head over heels in love with a man who 7 years later continues to set a standard impossible to reach by anyone. He is my partner, he takes me as I am.

I am a daughter. I was the single child of a single mother. My step-dad left when I was 10 and my mother brought me up alone and without any help. I had everything I ever needed and then some. My mother is the very example of a strong independent woman, with an extraordinary talent for choosing poor partners. She has been married 3 times and divorced 3 times. And I judged her. I always judged her. A woman whose sole purpose in life was to take care of me without ever thinking about herself and when she did I judged her. After I wiped the stupid from my eyes I saw who she really was. My mother. A woman. With weaknesses, dreams and hopes. Someone that in anyone elses eyes has lived through the best and worst of times and has done so with dignity. Most impressively has kept her heart open and maintained a smile on her face. I hope that I have an ounce of the strength in my heart that she has modeled for me in her life. She is my Mami, she takes me as I am.

Tie it up with a little bow and call me a woman. We are expected to be so many things to so many people, it’s a wonder that we don’t end up in the loony bin more often. We are all flawed and those flaws make us whole. Im going to explore those flaws in myself and see how they fit into the roles that define me. My opinion is that you need to make sure that you know your most important roles, they define you.

I hope you take that journey with me, maybe you’ll learn something about you. Perhaps you will teach me something about me. No matter were we end up don’t forget, I am who I am.