Risk, Learn, Live

What a year this has been, and let me tell you it has surprised me that sometimes I wonder if tomorrow I’ll wake up from this roller coaster of a dream. To start, last year proved to be a most amazing year, challenging but filled with love. I took the risk I once swore to never take, and gave love a chance. Long story short I can tell you today I learned so much, but the most important lesson I learned is that love is not all roses and harmony, it can be the most painful feeling you could possibly feel.

Those that know me know how absorbed I was in my career, and I can’t complain I finished strong and I have my ex to thank for that, he was my motivation throughout the end of my college years. So I suppose you can say that love is not such a bad thing even if it ends up in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I literally was the happiest woman alive, ask anyone who was around me, I glowed brighter than the sun. My mother took to teach me how to do things, I was determined to be the best lady to this man, the best-est friend, because he deserved it all. Everything.

Things don’t always work according to plan and yeah it stings even after this month, it stings badly. It hurts literally everywhere but somehow I manage to get up every morning and go on with my days. I took a risk, I’m still learning and hurting but I know that I must continue to live life. I’m doing the best that I can to smile like nothing has happened and I can’t lie there are days I wish I had never taken that risk at all but I know that life is about taking risks and what I did, I did with love.  There’s no point regretting the past, I gave it my all and it’s what gives me some kind of peace. So here I am with a broken heart doing my best, because one thing I’ve learned is that sometimes life throws you down so you can get a fresh start. A blessing that I still haven’t learned to appreciate.

Smile, take each day at a time.

Sugar Coated World

I remember that when I was little and there were so many things that I didn’t understood so I made up my own explanations, my own reasons to why things happened the way they did. I never understood why some people were the way they were, or why they would treat me they way they did. Over the years I made countless excuses for them not realizing that I was setting myself to a state of denial instead of looking at things for what they really were.

Bottom line is we won’t please everyone we meet. Unfortunately, that also includes family, people that we unconditionally love, people that won’t feel the same way about us. When we’re little our eyes see the world with a lens of innocence, time goes by so slow, we feel free, and careless. As we grow older we begin to see things by how they really are, and we realize that there’s so much more out there than we ever imagined. As children, some of us are lucky enough to have not experienced discrimination of any kind, our world was sugar coated.

What about the kids who are not as privileged? Children that have been: raped, molested, discriminated, abused, mistreated, and stayed in silence. A friend of mine told me I was privileged for knowing what it meant to love without fear. She was raped when she was ten years old by a family member. Another friend told me how he is always weary of visiting friends because when he was little he was discriminated by his friend’s parents for being African-American. Similar stories went on and on, and as I listened to every one of those stories I thought: how come I never heard any of this when I was little? These people are my friends, my peers. The people I see everyday with a smile on their face, and I was so angry and I felt so impotent.

“New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries”, and that’s when innocence is gone. Is it better to live in a state of innocence where the world is sugar coated? Or in a world where you see things for what they really are? I prefer to notice the stripes, and the dirt on my fries, sure there are things I miss of those “good ol’ days” but I wouldn’t want to go back.

Some people will smile while hurting inside, while the world remains unaware. Believe it or not, some people are very unaware of what is going on around them, let alone in the world. There are many vile people in this world, but don’t forget that there’s also good hearted people out there willing to lend a helping hand.

Smile, we are the hope of tomorrow.

Changes Are Coming

I was recently talking to my mom of how I was when I was little. Ever since I can remember I’ve had the same stubborn personality I still have today. Always wanting to do things my way, on my own. I learned to walk by the time I was 8 months, and started speaking within a month later. By the time I was a year old I was talking like a parrot and already running the house my way. My siblings couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to me first because I HAD to wish them a safe trip to school, I liked to walk by myself without holding hands with anyone. A few months later I knew my alphabet, and my numbers to 100, I would cut straight lines, I was pretty much ready for Kinder status. All thanks to my wonderful siblings who spent hours and hours teaching what I needed to know. By the time I started school I was more than eager to learn new things, I was excited and ready to learn and the same is still true today.

What really got to me was what my mom told me an old lady told her once, that her little girl was going to go far in life, I had the spirit of a natural leader. Mom went on to tell me to do whatever I had to do to find happiness, even if that meant going far from home. That’s been on my mind lately, and quite honestly I’m ready to leave wherever I am wanted even if that means the other side of the world. Although its been an idea I’ve kept with very, very few people somehow its starting to get around in the family, my older sister came to tell me to stay. Not like I’ll be missed right? Something in the way she told me to stay made me very sad, it was painful.

Image by *thefantasim

Its been an internal conflict of mine, to stay or to go in search of my very own adventure. I’m very torn between these two choices. For one, if I stay I’ll be home with the people I love, I’ll see my nieces and nephews grow, I’ll be ready whenever my love comes back home, communication with him will be easier. However if I stay, I won’t get much done. If I leave I’ll have the opportunity to actually go somewhere, be someone, isn’t that why I spent sleepless nights? To have a solid career? Haven’t I always wanted to have my very own BIG adventure?

I can’t have both, and I know that if I leave chances are I’ll come back to a very different home, a different everything. If I leave I’ll be completely on my own, no place to run to, no one to run and hug, no one to wish goodnight or good morning, and chances are if something happens at home I won’t even be able to come back right away. I’m trying to find signs, anything really that tells me to stay or leave. I ‘m running out of time to decide, and I purposely keep pushing it back everyday because this is a decision that will change my life in a zillion different ways.

Smile, either way changes are coming.

This Is My Confession

 I often say that we should work for one’s happiness, for our own goals, and not care about what others have to say. Don’t take me wrong, I find that to be a truth of mine but the real truth is that I don’t follow it all the way through. I do care about what someone says (one person in particular), that person being my mother.

I grew up with a very strict mother, being the youngest one I always felt left out by everyone. My siblings were much more older than I was, and had no interest in playing with a little kid (especially since they were going through puberty and the like). To get attention I strived to be the best in school, to get the best grades possible, to be the best of the best. To get who’s attention? My mother’s. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized why she was so different towards me compared to my siblings. My father named me after an affair of his, I had the unusual name. Some people like unusual names but when my father named me, he “cursed” me. I guess it stuck with my mom, I didn’t ask for what I’ve gotten but I did. My mother has a thing where she’ll be extremely sweet to me, and that is to make up for how she feels about me. She dislikes me every now and then because of my name, because it brings her memories of my father’s awful adventures. I didn’t ask for it, but that’s just what I got.

All my years from elementary to high school, even now to college I try to be the best in hopes that one day my mom will just for once tell me that I’m doing something right. To her, everything I do is wrong, or bad, or just never enough. She never attended a teacher-parent conference, or any of my award ceremonies, she had to be practically dragged by my brother to my high school graduation. Graduating with honors and top of class wasn’t good enough for her. When I started college she said how my career was just not good enough. Why couldn’t I have studied to be a lawyer? A doctor? That’s what she asked me. I got to a point where I said I gotta work hard for me, not for her.

To be honest, I do work for me, but deep down I’ll always have that in me. To want her to notice that I’m not doing everything wrong. To tell me at least once that what I’m doing is right. To not be compared with my sisters. That is my confession, I confess that I do care about what my mom says. Why? Because it hurts when she tells me that I don’t do anything right. Really? I mean, seriously? Making the Dean’s List, being in Honors doesn’t seem to mean anything to her.

See I don’t understand. I’ve heard her say amazing things about me to others, others have told me so too. But why can’t she just tell me? I never asked to be named what I am named, I never asked to remind my mom about what my dad did. I confess that it hurts, I pretend like I don’t care, but I do. Sometimes, I just wish she could let go of the past, that’s all.

Smile, because sometimes it feels good to confess the things that haunt us the most.