Seeking

 My mother, atheist activist extraordinaire, passed away two years ago. Almost a year after her death, we were on lockdown due to the pandemic. Was it COVID-19 or was it freedom from my mom's judgment that got me on the path I am in? Probably the freedom one. COVID-19 got me baking bread, but after being committed for a few months, I have not made bread in a while. 

I also have not been working on my quilting much lately, but that is because my sewing room turned into the overflow room when we did the home improvement projects last year. It's hard to move in there lately.

In the 1990's my significant other was into alternative spirituality. Through his mom I learned about Tarot cards. I even bought a couple of decks, but never really learned to read the cards. By the end of the decade I had a child and a broken marriage. The year 2000 brought the promise of a new beginning, a total Ace of Wands moment (though I had no clue it was such at the time). I crossed over water and moved to Texas, leaving behind my Tarot decks.

Twenty years later, in early 2020 I purchased new copies of the same two decks, and resolved to try to learn how to read the cards. Of the two decks, one continues to be my favorite; the other one is more a memento. I have gotten several more decks since then, along with books and online classes. I use it as a way to understand my path and what do I need to work on.

My Personal Code of Honor

• Do not care so much about what others think of you

• Live and let others live

• Accept you know very little about life, the universe and everything

• Actively tell your loved ones that you love them, and demonstrate it with actions

• Work to recognize your biases so they do not control you

• Do not allow yourself to get carried away by "woe is me" emotionalism. Instead, try to understand what is at the root of your moods

• It's OK to believe in the spiritual side of life

• Always be there for your daughters when they need you.

Limbo

What are we going to do?
We've opened the door, now it's all coming through...

"How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful", Florence + the Machine



Today I found myself sending LinkedIn invites to old college friends from the Honors Program at the UPR, members of my old tribe. I miss them, or rather the idea of them, the possibility of finding myself through their eyes. Who knows what they would think of me nowadays, if they remember anything at all. They'll probably take one look at my profile and yawn, and no lifeline will pull me out of the fog. They have all gotten PhDs and done interesting, even important things in the same span of time I have failed at two marriages, made a career out of Excel pivot tables and become a master at predicting the immediate past.

As my eyesight has gone south, so has my memory. I can't be trusted to keep all this shit straight. I need friends to tell who I am. But I have no friends. Or rather, the few I have barely know me. I have done a great job of limiting access to what's really on my mind and curating my persona so as to avoid controversy. But the result is that nobody fucking cares, and I am slowly vanishing into the ether. I am becoming translucent. Not long from now, only my cats will be able to see me.One day this specific recipe of neuroses and idiosyncrasies will simply disappear. There will be traces here and there, pieces of a puzzle, mostly in the memory of my girls and my exes.

I should have been paying more attention to building memories, maybe trying to practice some mindfulness, but instead two, perhaps three decades have been lived on cruise control.

Social distancing is easy for semi-hermits

I had the flu at the end of February. I get the flu shot every year in the fall, as most people in high risk groups do. By the end of February, the vaccine's effectiveness must be minimal, as the influenza A hit me like a ton of bricks.

I can't recall feeling sicker in a very long time, perhaps ever. It took me over a week to get back to a semblance of normal. It's scary to think that scores of people lose their lives to the flu every year.

I'm scared of SARS COV 2. I'm scared of catching it and getting the disease. I am barely recovered from the flu. I am struggling with seasonal allergies. I have not done a breathing treatment for asthma in days, but every day is a struggle to breathe deeply. And that is with clear lungs. I don't want to picture the struggle if a lower respiratory illness is thrown in the mix. I've had pneumonia before.

Authorities are asking people to practice social distancing. Our school district has cancelled classes through April 10th. The city and county have ordered bars and clubs closed, and restaurants to close their dining areas and only provide drive-through/pick up/delivery orders. My company has instructed all personnel to work from home, unless their presence in the office is required to perform their job (labs, manufacturing, some customer service roles).

None of this impacts me greatly, except for the madness of crowds hoarding basic goods. My daughter, a teenager, is capable of amusing herself and knows better than to interrupt me during business hours. I've been working from home since the day before I got flu symptoms. I telecommute more than half the time anyway, and have my home office set up for this, so this is not hard for me. I also have a tendency to stay home for the most part when I am off work. Still, everything feels so weird when it is not by choice. It's scary to think every single outing puts me at risk of severe illness or possible death.

Wistfulness

We want to be seen. We recoil at the idea of being invisible. Oh, but we are.
Each year that passes we become lighter, shadowier. We become stronger and clearer about ourselves, just in time to dissolve in their eyes.

Every wrinkle, every age spot carries the entire history of us, even the faintest parts. But only we can see. The book has but one reader.

By most accounts, I live a charmed life. I've worked for the same Fortune 500 company for 22 years (if you count pre-merger and post-separation entities as the same). I have health insurance. I still live in the house I bought 17 years ago. I have two beautiful, strong, amazing daughters who have brought out the best and the worst in me. I get along with both my exes. I get to share my life with an amazing group of cats. I make my own decisions.

It can be exhausting, though, to always be the rock, the strong one, the reliable one. My dad taught me not to depend on anybody, to be self-sufficient. I am grateful for the power that has afforded me, but I sometimes I wish I could let my guard down.

Nineteen years, eight months and counting

The other day I asked myself what ties me to this place I live in, Northwest Harris County, the farther suburbs of Houston, a Tomball zip code.

What keeps me here? Is it my job, the longest tenure I have ever had, longer than my two marriages, older than my daughters? Of course it is. But is that the only reason?

Paula is gone to Philadelphia, living with Pancho and Uqui, working and making music whenever she can. She told me not long ago that she is the happiest she's ever been. I am glad she's found a group of people she fits in with, and someone to love. I miss her a lot, but I am happy seeing her spread her wings.

Home life these days consists mostly of Isabel, the cats and I. On holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, and the occasional Sunday, Gabe and his mom come over for a meal. My birthday is this weekend and he asked me what kind of cake I wanted.

Gabe and I are still legally married and I still consider him family, but we are not a couple anymore. I don't have any blood relatives here, and we lived together as husband and wife for 14 years, so that counts as something. But I wouldn't stay in this place on his behalf.

That leaves Isabel. What will she do, where will she go when she graduates high school? I have told her I would like to be a part of her life in the future. Respecting her need to live on her own (or with a significant other) in the future, if she leaves this area I would seriously consider moving to be close to her. Hopefully she does not pick a place with cold winters to move to.

I have spent over a third of my life here, 39% to be exact. Houston has been good to me. I have no complaints. But I will not hesitate to leave someday.

Stuck in the Sludge

The part of me that thinks life is what you make of it wants to slap this sulking creature, tell it to snap out of it.

Another part of me, the one that knows for most of us success in life is as much due to our hard work as it is the product of a series of accidents and lucky coincidences, fears luck is not on my side on this one.

Chemical aid does not seem to be helping, although without the antidepressant who knows how low I would be right now.

I am tired of the uncertainty and fear. I am angry and resentful. My life as it know it is most likely at an end. I am scared of what my future life will look like. I fear it's only downhill from here.

Craqueá

When I was a kid in Puerto Rico, people used the anglicism "craqueao" (or the female version, "craqueá") as a blanket synomym for the word crazy (cracked-up).

As a kid and a young adult, I never stopped to think about that word, what it conveys. I probably thought it meant the brain was broken and did not work properly.

Now I understand all too well what cracked up means. It means to lose trust in your ability to handle compounding stress; to know yourself to be fragile, broken. You're not whole as a person; there are cracks and your fortitude is seeping away.

Masa amorfa

Don't know who I am anymore.
Can't recognize this person I've become
She's brittle and bland
So long away from home

Translucent shadow
Bloated and shrunken
Stuck in a rootless present
Home as I knew it long gone

Tightly wound and
Stuffed into a box
Yanked from a dusty chrysalis
Dissolved into a pile of cats

This place I walk
Has claimed a third of my life
The place I crawled from
Is someone else's now