In Between Hope and a Dark Place

I sat in between Saturday and Sunday, a limbo of a day that did not exist hoping that it would. Monday’s usually came too soon and my motivation for finishing my spring semester was running low. I even went out of my way to create a group message to tell my siblings and my brother’s wife that I was dropping out. I couldn’t stand being in between a thin line of doing my best and still not being good enough. At this point nothing made sense anymore and going to class consisted of headaches and misunderstandings.

At this very moment, I may have been more in tuned with the reality of myself than ever before because for the first time in four years I thought about how my father’s move from New York to Florida impacted me. I was in the theatre waiting for my friend’s directed scene to come up when the inspiration to write hit me and it hit me all at once.

 

I never wrote a poem about you and I could tell you now that it’s because I never knew how to deal with it

I asked you to take me to the mall

You smiled and told me we had to go today which I was excited about because usually you’ll say one of these days

But the response was nothing I was expecting

“If we don’t go today we will never be able to go”

I never heard any plans about you leaving

I stared and you choked up

You hugged and I said I will visit you

People asked where you were and I told them Florida

They would ask when is he coming back

And I would say he’s not

Everyone thought I was acting, that I wasn’t hurt

But I wasn’t hurt

Not until now in this very moment

When I can’t find enough glass pieces to put myself together

When I lose myself in the finger of others until they take me out

Pinching me with a tweezer

I never told you I still resent you

Because I don’t

I never told you I still hold you in my memories

Because I don’t

I never told you I want to see you

Because I don’t

But I still look at you and smile

Because you’re my dad

I hold on to your voice as it quavers when you ask for me to come home

But between the old house you left me at, the new house you found yourself in, and the school I am force to call mine

I no longer know home

I knew something was wrong with me. I knew I was lost and trying to find pieces to pick myself up. Or maybe I was really really right and after four years I am able to exhaust all of my feelings of past experiences or at least this huge one. And it was difficult to write. I still have not finished the piece above and probably will not for years. My emotions are unsettled in a sea of uncertainty of a world I am required to be certain in.  But between confronting old heartbreaks and trying to prevent a new one, I could not get through a class or a homework assignment without the feeling of being left. It rolled over into my relationship where I started to constantly leave because it is better to leave than to be left, right? I hated everything and every one for a while. Keeping up with my assignments was the least of my worries, until it had to be my only worry.

I needed to do great for my dad. He left his home twice for me. He came from Dominican Republic so I could have the American Dream and left New York because the American Dream did not seem plausible here. He picked up and left and I needed to pick up and do better. I needed to prove to myself that I was possible and prove to my parents that the American Dream is real. They came here for a reason. I needed to reconfirm their purpose and make sure they received all the wishes they had hoped for when they left their home. Maybe my father doesn’t know which household is home either. Maybe he carries home with him.  I started thinking about who I wanted to be in five years and what accomplishments looked like now so that I could be that version of me. I knew I had to focus on school and finish as strong as I could. I started seeing a learning specialist who helped me organize my time and things started making sense again. I picked up my life as much as I could in the three weeks that I had before finals. I am still waiting for the results.

Sometimes in life, we find ourselves in black holes we too often do not notice in our tracks beforehand, and its difficult to find a way out once you are in them. Sometimes it feels like thats where you belong because why else would you be there. But through the times I was there this semester, I realized black holes are a galaxy, another way of living. An exhausting way of living. It wraps its arms around you and calls itself home. Every smile, hug, and laugh just a cover up like bricks outside of your home. They are a portrait to the outside world, but no one really knows whats going on inside. The windows are not wide enough for others to see the full picture. You wonder how the outside world is so happy while you are drowning yourself in your own tears. You spend your time trying to find angles where you can catch a peak of the outside world without people seeing you, so walls become your shield. You realize,  you cant fight for happiness or truth. We acknowledge happiness because it is the feeling that comes in between hope and a dark place. It is the light leaving a dark hole, a miracle short lived, but always remembered. And truth is an opinion, something some one is willing to hold on to as a belief the consider sacred.

So in this crazy semester, I learned the two things that I thought of as untouchable,  happiness and truth, were make believe. A version of my own perspective. My father never told me why he left and I will never know what caused me to look back at this semester so horribly, but I do know I ended up respecting that I did not need to know every one else’s truth and I appreciated happiness much more.

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Details

  
Sometimes we see the world too simply, not because life is not complex, but because we fail to pay attention to details. Details bring individuality to stories and make them specifically ours. When we slack in attention we start losing purpose. Life is about the little things, the details.   

Holes, Glitter, and Curls

  

We usually invision ourselves in holes we convince ourselves we cannot get out of before jumping in because we fear failing and discomfort. Yes it is true that you cannot see the bottom or the top of a hole for it is a hole, but it is also true that you cannot patch something if you do not yet know how it’s broken. I learned to allow myself to fall into a hole or several, with glitter on my shoes and curls in my hair hoping for a better tomorrow.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I am tired of being in the same English class for three semesters now. The titles of the courses may differ, the works as well, but the way my mind has to work is absolutely the same. Many people need to look at the small things present in the text and pictures deeply in order to grasp the larger ideas and themes.

My mind grasp all the small things while connecting them to the large idea. Its not that I cannot grasp that he is paralyzed and could hardly move, however communities through the french alphabet (letters of the language) or the blinking of his eyes. Or what a hermit crab is and how it relates to his dependency on people to work in the world. But why not go into why he might feel this way, and why the timing for this information sets up the story. Or maybe thats exactly what we are doing, but the questions phrased are too simple for my mind to put in energy to answer, what is the point of saying what I see when its so obvious.

I am much more into debates and discussions about the tones and picking out quotes to reason our thoughts. I do not like picking out sentences as a class to analyze what he means. I felt that was part of the assignment when the syllabus said read 1-68 for September 28th. Class should be about hearing the students bring up different interpretations of the text that they read on their own time, not looking at each sentence together to identify our interpretations.

I got a little excited, to the point where I even stopped writing this paper when the question of if we would rather be euthanized than to live like Jean Dominique Bauby. But this conversation lasted all of 30 seconds.

Maybe I should contribute to these conversations to organize my thoughts, but every time I try he tells me my comments will be more useful at a later time. This becomes very evident when I raised my comment of the irony in his use of language while he is almost completely paralyzed and speechless. It makes this book particularly interesting to me because I love to see the combinations that exist that seem nonexistant. But then we talk about the combination of him shaving his father and then someone shaving him, but never really talking about why he chose to mention this specific experience out of all the experiences in his life.

But then of course the class changed to everything I was waiting for through five minute reflection piece where we chose a chapter and wrote our ideas on it. However, even when I talk about my ideas, belief, and interpretations in this section of the class it still does not seem to be taken as highly as everyone else’s ideas. I am wondering if my thoughts are not as advance or intellectual as it was in my first year of college when I constantly got acknowledged of how well I articulated and how important my voice was in the class.

Maybe I speak more willingly in discussions. But as I look around the classroom, maybe being the only person of color has everything to do with the lack of reaction.

Start To Get To Know

A few days ago my brother was unsure if he could take me to school because he needed to work. I was ready to take the bus when he told me that he would take me. The night before driving me (yesterday) he stayed out working extra hours just so that he could take me today. Along came his fiancé and my cousin who I consider my soul mate. It was an amazing four hour car ride, we went to IHOP half way there and I had crepes (nutella and banana) for the first time ever. They were way to sweet for me not really my taste. But anyways we just joked around the entire time as we passed cars and mountains and wranglers (I want that to be my first car :().

We finally arrived at my college after a stop at Walmart and A.C Moore and brought most of my things in. I realized that I could not get inside of the room because my key was not working, I found this a little odd, but the RA helped me and allowed me to get in. Five minutes into moving my belongings I find out that the room I had my stuff in was not my room it was the opposite side of my building. So we had to move all my stuff back and then unpack. I was so grateful for them helping me unpack. It is an honor to have them in my life.

But the trip came to a rapid end because I had a dinner shortly after. At this dinner we ate of course, but we also did some exercises. One of the ones that touched me the most was when the students split into groups and spoke about their drop off experience. Which is essentially how they felt when they came to college. I opened up about my experience, which you all might already know. I missed my cousins huge sweet 16 and was not able to accept my candle and got sent a video of her speech for me, my dad went to jail a couple of days before in Florida but still manage to find a way to make it. Those were two big moments because it was my first year without my parents and I thought I was not going to see him for my big day either. And I missed one of the best memories that my soul mate may ever have. That really disappoints me because I was not there when I should have been.

Any who, in sharing this story and crying in front of a group of people I am starting to get to know I realized that I have never really spoke about this in great detail. And when I finally did it was really hard, but I still managed to do it because I felt comfortable around them. I thank them so much for being so open and accepting my story. And every one thanked me for sharing, but I appreciate them so much for actually listening.

It is just amazing the connections we make with people and how one incident could change your life or really show you how valuable the people in your life are. It is important for me to remember its okay to voice my stories and be vulnerable. People will connect, even people you do not know that well.

Pick Up My Life Again

I just feel like I am laying around doing a whole lot of nothing. However, I was determined to spend as much time with the people that I LOVE since I missed so much in my first year of college. And I have!!

I spent a lot of time with my parents. For the first time in my life I sat with my dad and he told me about his failed hopes for his future, his present life, and how much he needed me to be there. And there I was complaining that I was bored and wanted to be in New York. Yeah it would have been nice, I would have a job now till the day I leave again, but there are things more important than money. This summer I learned to understand my mom. Too often in my earlier post I made my mom sound like a monster, I mean of course I was sixteen (the “I’m grown stage”), but that should not be an excuse. I learned my mom is the strongest, smartest, wisest (yes there is a difference) woman in my life. She just has not allowed herself enough opportunities or faith. I miss them so much and its hard to know that they are going through a very rough time right now and I cannot help them.

I am so ready to go back to school, have my jobs, and be able to help them out, but until then I am enjoying waking up to the laughter of my niece, a message from my sister asking me to join her at the gym, trying to figure out what three movies my brother is flipping back and forth from, and trying to figure out how my four year old niece’s brain could hold so much knowledge. Arguing with my grandmother about my ripped jeans. She says that when she was young people were embarrassed to wear them and that its a shame we pay for that now. I’ll miss being able to call my other half and just hang out at whatever time doing literally nothing and still having a blast. I’ll miss being around people who inspire the love thats within me.

I guess I am not so ready for school in terms of my personal life. But I have been doing so much of nothing this summer.This summer has been too long, but at the same time not long enough. I want to do something amazing, something I will remember forever. But I have a week left and I doubt that I am going to make time for it. I cannot wait to go back to school and start working on my career. I love being extra busy because it makes me feel like I am doing something with my life. But when I lay around all day like this, I feel that I lose who I once was. An ambitious, dedicated woman.