carpe diem on a tuesday.

"Change your thoughts and your change your life."

"Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them."
~Paramahansa Yogananda

The first of these caught my eye while driving home yesterday. The latter popped up in my Google reader just a few moments ago. Two days, two not-so-random hints from the universe. Just as I am grappling with direction, with personal focus. What you put out is what you get back, yes?

Clearly, someone out there is trying to tell me something, and in this case, I am taking it as a much-needed reminder that only I hold the power to mold where my thoughts are going. More so, where I let them lead me.

I am taking the reigns today, getting back into the swing of things, drafting a plan. I am working on my future.

It's time these boots got to walkin'.  Or writing, whatever.

On with the show. :)


“If you’re not terrified of the next step, your eyes are still closed. A caged bird in a boundless sky.” ~Jed McKenna

dating.

Divorce has left me afraid.

My ex-husband has left me afraid.

Afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of letting someone in. Really letting someone in.

 

I want love. I love Love. But I don’t want it now, and I want it now. I don’t want it like I thought I had it. I want it how it is supposed to be, how God wants it for me, how it will be healthiest for me in the long term. How I want it for my daughter.

I suffer from amnesia. It is amnesia induced specifically by attraction, by butterflies, by that feeling we are all searching for, running after; by enthusiasm and newness and promise. The promise of a new relationship: something beautiful, and meant-to-be, out of a dream. No matter how many times I tell myself not to fall, no matter how many times I try to temper my emotions, this amnesia kicks in. The amnesia gives way to idealism and excitement and suddenly, out of nowhere, opens the trap door as I am about to take a cautious (well, let’s be honest, I don’t do much with caution. Haphazard, maybe?) step forward and BAM! I fall. I fall hard, and fast, and unexpectedly. I hit the ground running sometimes, but it never turns out the way it should. You know why? Because that trap door, I knew to look out for it.

I am idealistic, we’ve covered this. I want so much to fall. I want to fall hard, and fast, and with my whole heart. And as much as I hope that one day someone will want me to fall hard, and fast, and entirely, I don’t know that it will ever be the easiest or best thing for me. That amnesia, it not only prevents me from seeing and learning from past mistakes, it prevents me from seeing danger when it’s there. It leads me to making the wrong choices; choices fueled by impulsiveness. Choices where my heart goes and my head stays.

I’m not saying not to fall, I’m not saying not to take the next step, but what I have learned is that I can’t just forget it is coming or leap blindly. I can’t let go. Not now, not yet. I need - in order to trust and believe in myself, for my own self-preservation, for my daughter, for my heart - to watch out for that trap door, avoid it for the moment. My heart, that little girl in me that has been hurt so many times, we are working on falling in love with each other again. We are building a relationship, courting each other, and I want them to fall for me. The only way I know how to do that is to care more about fostering that trust, about nurturing that safety, between them and myself than I am able to for someone else. I have never allowed them to trust me as much as I have now, it has never been as vital as it is now. I want them to trust me, I want to trust myself, I want to believe in myself, more so than I have ever given myself permission to, and my gut is telling me that, in order to do that, I have to prioritize myself more than ever. More than I have ever.

That sometimes includes disregarding others’ advice and going out on a limb.

But, if that limb is my own intuition, my own opinion, my gut…it is about God-damned time.

It has taken me 33 years to want to take care of myself more than anyone else. And it feels scary, and self-indulgent, and simultaneously justified and deserved and just like what that little girl has been waiting her whole life to hear: that she is safe. That I am going to do my damnedest to show her I am the luckiest girl in the world to be dating her. That I will never again take her for granted. Or that at least I will try.

So, yes. Divorce has made me afraid of letting someone in. Except that it has also taught me to let in the one person who I tried so hard to shut out for so many years. It has given me the opportunity to date the person I should have been courting my entire life, for the first in a decade.

I am letting myself in again. And it feels so good.

It is about time.

Oh how I wish I were a trinity, so if I lost a part of me
I'd still have two of the same to live
But nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal, as specks of dust we're universal
To let this love survive would be the greatest gift we could give
Tell all the friends who think they're so together
That these are ghosts and mirages, these thoughts of fairer weather
Though it's storming out I feel safe within the arms of love's discovery

Indigo Girls: Love’s Recovery

a new reality.

I wrote this almost nine months ago, after dropping my little bit off for the first overnight visit with my estranged spouse.

Funny how this memory feels like a lifetime ago, but the pain of it is ever at my fingertips. It never fades.


Such is a mother's love.

 

 

 

My dearest little one,

 

I just dropped you off with your father for the very first time less than one hour ago.

 

Regardless that I realize this is the best decision for both you and I, there is no denying that my world will never be the same.

 

I have loved you more than I have loved even myself since the day I knew you were on your way. It has been 18 months, 3 weeks and one day since I have been separated from you more than just a few hours on the outside. Add pregnancy to that and it has been almost 2 ½ years.

I will never be able to explain to you how long it took me to get here, to this place where the greater good for both of us is to have you spend timely separately with both your father and I, but I trust that one day you will realize that your mami did what was best. That your mami protected you until the end of the Earth, and that she will continue to do so with an unprecedented ferocity until the end of time.

You deserve everything I have had in my life and so much more. I have already denied you a complete nuclear family, but I hope you will never understand that our was family never that, that what mami wanted so much to give you from the very beginning was always a few eggs short of a dozen.

 

What I wish for you in the future is health and happiness. You have all of my love. I hope that one day I can provide you with an example of a genuine, healthy, love-filled blended family. As much as I think that you will on more than one occasion be disappointed with your father, the goodness in me hopes that for your sake I am wrong. That maybe, just maybe, for you he will change. Unfortunately for me, I have 7 years of proof that he has not, but I can only hope that he learns how to love outside of himself, for you. Of course, this is where the human mommy side of me chirps that it will be better for me if he doesn’t, because obviously I want your deliciousness, your sweetness, your smell and smiles and straight-from-the-moon kisses all for me, but that is beside the point.

 

For you, I hope that it is different, that he is different. I hope that he learns from this.

 

I don’t know that you will ever read this. I don’t know if I can ever let you read this. I don’t ever want to be to blame for negative feelings about your father. I want you to know that you were, and are, the best thing that has ever happened to me, and that every millimeter of you is sheer and absolute perfection. Words cannot do justice for my love for you; and even now, as I know in the back, center and front of my mind that you are not here, as every cell in my body aches for you to tug at my hip saying “Uppa!”, I still  manage to look up at My So-Called Life reruns on TV and for a split second think that you are sleeping and I should turn it down.

Old habits die hard.
 

 

I love you to the ends of the Earth and back. Mami te quiero muuucho y GRAAAAANDE.

Besitos de pececito,

Mama

 

LOL

Living out loud. It belongs in all capital letters because, well, anyone who has ever felt they were happiest - meant to really - live out loud, knows that it would only befit the scenario that it belong in all capital letters. Except, of course, for those times where we are in a slightly insecure place, maybe a tad vulnerable, in those moments where we are not so sure that LOL is the right thing, the true thing, the best way for us. It is in those moments where we lol. Purposely. Intentionally lower-case lol, so as to apply somewhat of a mute button to our natural state. So as to make sure that our lol doesn’t scream at our friends, our loved ones, the public; so they will know that we are really trying not to push onto them our exaggerated LOL, but that we don’t exactly know how.

In these moments, lol is the best we can do.

 

Moving on.

 

Parents.

My parents have a way of pushing my buttons in a way that no one else in the world can. It is first and foremost due to the fact that they created those buttons, but also because they’ve gotten to know them the best over the course of a lifetime. They assisted in the harvesting and maturing of said buttons, and now know how to push them without even trying. In their sleep. And, since my parents’ sole purpose in life is to love me, and convince me that they have learned absolutely every life lesson in their combined 146 years while simultaneously passing these lessons on at inopportune and unwarranted moments, this leaves me an anxiety-ridden, yoga deep-breathing, mess of an individual LOLing throughout their visit, all the while insisting they stay longer.

 

It all involves a LOT of screaming.

And huffing. And sighing.

 

And that’s just the genetic portion. We’re Cuban. I have no inside voice.

 

Regardless, my parents were here over the holiday weekend, and each visit with them leaves me reeling with exhaustion and yearning to have them close-by.

I, however, am going through what I would call a high-conflict divorce, which makes that nearly impossible. None of the details really matter, except that it will NEVER end. Never. The conflict being thrown at me – outright, silently, passive-aggressively, in front of our child – all of it will be ongoing over the course of my life as a parent. It is tragic, really, to be faced with such a dismal outlook, but it is quite the contrary for me. It is the exact outlook I need to convince my hopeful, optimistic, self of, in order to fully free myself. The moment I truly lose hope, give up my desire, my wish, my hope that things will change, that somehow, somewhere out there (cue Linda Rondstadt), there exists a shred of reason or decency that will find its way to my estranged spouse and permeate his being, even if only for a nanosecond, is the moment that I give my conscious the right to let go of any guilt I may be holding on to for defending myself, for having an opinion different from his, for not giving in.

 

It is the moment I will truly Live.

 

So I am going into this upcoming mediation, this chance at closure, compromise, cooperation, with outwardly no hope at all. Inside, though, that Little-Engine-That-Could is huffing and puffing and I-Think-I-Can-ing away…all the while holding out the secret hope that something even remotely good could possibly, maybe, happen. It is times like these when I need my friends, my parents.

Also, wine.

I know when I come out of that conference room, that office, that building, into that vast city, that concrete parking garage, that SUV with the toddler-seat in the back.

I will break.

I will break for all of the expecting-the-worsts, for all of the no-hope scenarios I have run through, for all of the preparation I have done to convince all of me that I will leave there knowing nothing more about the future than when I went in. I will break for the part of me that wishes I had fallen in love with someone different. The part of me that still wishes she could change him, make him somehow human, empathetic. But that part of me is the part that still wants to “be married”. Doesn’t matter to who (well, let’s be honest, that’s a lie), but in order to validate myself somehow, in order to “be” a success.

And although that part of me grows smaller with the passage of time, all of these milestones, benchmarks, steps in the divorce process, whatever label you want to put on each of them, rub this healing wound the wrong way. Draw just enough fresh blood out to make it real, to remind me that the underlying hope is still there.

You know, I’m not in any way saying I want to be numb during or to this process. It is really an awakening period of self-discovery, another adolescence of sorts (equipped with much more freedom, happy hour, and the potential for much funner mistakes, really (YES, I just used the word funner)), but it has been close to one year since this process began, and over a year since I have been working through this on my own, and I am exhausted.

I am a planner. I like to know. Even if the knowing ruins things for me, which it oftentimes does. As a child, I was notorious for removing the tape from Christmas presents with such care that my parents did not suspect a thing, solely to confirm that I got that Barbie car I wanted. Or, when given the opportunity by my best friend to be told of my gift before even receiving it, I take it. I have no shame. The surprise is equally as satisfying to me. Or at least that is what I tell myself.

So. As this process, this rebirth, is happening, I am trying – don’t laugh, I wrote it in Italics for a reason, this is HARD – to change how I do things, react to things, in order to learn these valuable life lessons, these gems that God is placing in my lap with a handwritten note that says “PAY ATTENTION”.

But only to the point where it doesn’t affect my LOL.

Because that God, if I know him the way I think I do, He loves my LOL. Loves Me just as I Am. He would Never want to know that I am muting myself, subduing my reactions, emotions, and the hard-wiring that was given and designed by His very self.

 

 And He, that omnipotent spiritual powerhouse, He made me an optimist.

 

So I will continue to try and prepare myself as best as I can for what is most likely sure to be disappointment, I will warn my family, my friends, that I may need some uplifting when I inevitably feel so small that evening, so blind as to what my future holds, so tired.

 

One thing, though. One thing is for certain.

 

I will continue to Live Out Loud. Without shame, with only occasional reservation (you know, in libraries and such), and with the gift of His Grace.

 

And my future, regardless of where I am, what I do, and who I’m with, it holds Happiness.

HAPPINESS.

Now there’s something worth capitalizing.

one of those mornings.

 

Everyday. Especially today, but everyday.

God gives us only what we can handle, right?

in this moment...

This holiday season, I'm thankful for being where I am, who I am, and how I am, in this very minute. I trust that I am in the place that God wants me to be, and that His will is being carried out each day, regardless of whether I understand or am privy to what that is or where it is leading.

I have faith. Faith is intangible, it is immeasurable, invisible.

It is enough.

strength

I can’t help thinking that the reason I surround myself with strong women is in the hopes that I will eventually become one, if only by osmosis.

Then I take a step back, and my logic kicks in and tells me I am already strong, that I’m one of them. But since my heart and my brain are often at odds, my heart pipes up and says, “Remember how you cried while watching The Muppets?” And I nod my head in agreement. I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. It’s not like my tear ducts will ever know a drought. They try to build up a stock pile, but then my 2-year-old will thank God for her mami during her bedtime prayers, and Bam! Tears.

Or she’ll throw a blood-curdling tantrum because I refuse to remove my shoes at her request.

Same reaction.

When I’m faced with a situation in my life that I want to avoid, I do other things. I exercise, eat, I shop, I dance. All errands are suddenly no big deal. Everything except the exact thing that is uncomfortable for me. I’m a procrastinator. The difficulty for me is to face that situation head on, breathe into the discomfort, and evaluate life from a different angle in order to right the situation, find the answers, or work towards the solutions that I’m looking for. Achieve happiness or die trying.

A yoga teacher rubbed my back during a forward fold the other day and I felt the all-too-familiar tightening in my gut and welling of tears in the back of my throat. There is something about taking a new class, a new flow, the break in familiar routine, and simple human touch that brings up all sorts of new emotions along with the blood flow. But there is no way to avoid it. I’m there. I paid. Unless I’m willing to walk out, which I refuse, I’m stuck. Trying new positions, exploring new physical limits, even looking at a room from a different angle than I am accustomed to - upside down between twisted arms while holding my ankles - it is all a challenge. A challenge I have no other choice but to work through, breathe into. One I need to face head on.

It is in coming out of those new contortions that I feel a little dizzy, light-headed. Still reeling from the blood and oxygen and sweat that my body is busy circulating and breathing and producing, I can feel the answers I’ve made happen and, whether it was perfect or not, I’m proud that I tried. I feel so focused, at peace…strong.

In that quiet moment, my heart whispers.

Maybe I’m one of them after all.

Maybe we all are.