I am a b*tch

Some of my favorite blogs are kept by women who are codependent, or as one of them says, codies. They are in relationships with addicts in recovery and they document their ups and downs in their pages, sharing with readers the work they are doing on themselves, recognizing patterns and the reasons why they may have gravitated to their addict. Some of them have their own addictions they are fighting as well.

The one thing that I marvel at, and admire the most, is their fierce love and their commitment to their mates, to walking the path of recovery with them. In a nutshell, these women are fucking strong. Their men are very, very lucky, and I hope they realize it and treat these women like the queens they are.

Compared to them, I am a royal bitch, because there is no way I would do the same if I was in their shoes. No siree. I have enough on my hands just being a mother and a productive member of society while managing highly fluctuating moods. I don't have the patience, the dedication and the energy it takes to support somebody else's journey of healing. To put it plainly, I can't put up with people's shit anymore. I do not want to.

You could say I used to put up with people's crap before. After all, I grew up in an alcoholic household. And yes, you would be right. I did put up with crap from my parents. But it was something I had to do because basically I was stuck with them. Even then, as a college student I remember telling my mom that enough was enough and she should just divorce my dad. They even separated for a few weeks, although my mom ended up taking him back, because my dad was so miserable. And maybe it was for the best, as he died a year or so later.

I love my husband. He's got demons in his past that sometimes affect his mood. He's got struggles in his present incarnation as a self-employed professional. I support him completely. I am grateful he does not have an addiction problem, though. I don't think I could deal with the uncertainty, the potential for lies and the risk of being drained financially. You see, more than anything, I crave security and stability, two things that an addict can't provide.

I have two kids, who freely unleash their inner drama queen every day. Both are intelligent and quite challenging. My nine year-old questions everything I say and often calls my bluff when my words do not match my actions. Gabe says they take after me. And it seems to be true, as I sometimes act that way too around my family. But I wasn't like that as a child at all. My mom says I was very well-behaved, never one to give her any trouble, save for some talking back during my teenage years. Married to Gabe, I am sometimes childish and throw fits that rival my daughters', as if compensating for all those years when I had to be the dependable, balanced one. Awareness that I am being an ass usually makes me snap out of these tantrums rather quickly. Other times, the moods are murkier and spill out in episodes of rage whose origins I am at a loss to ascertain. Gabriel puts up with it, surprisingly. Maybe because I am always contrite after these moments; after all most of the time I try to be understanding and accommodating. Maybe because I put up with his moods too, although not as good-naturedly as he does.

Being a single mother was hard for me, but honestly it was no harder than being married. I am well aware that I can say that because I have a good job, with benefits. A stay-at-home mom, or a mom in a minimum-wage job may have a different view. In any case, I was able on my own to make a stable life for my daughter and I. Four years after my divorce, when I decided to date again, my approach was pragmatic. I was not looking for my soulmate, I was definitely not looking for a husband, much less a provider. I had a house of my own, I had a job and I already had a child, all I wanted was companionship. But not at any cost.

The first guy I seriously dated turned out to be an alcoholic prick. We were together for three months. When the novelty ran out, he broke up with me via e-mail, very Sex and the City tacky of him. I cried and was a wreck for two days. Then I realized I had been let off the hook and I should actually be glad, not sad. On the third day I sent him a farewell e-mail in which I told him he was an angry drunk and should own it and get help. I ignored his replies where he professed he still loved me and it was just a matter of bad timing. And when he wanted to come to my house to give me back my stuff, I made sure to leave his shit outside my door and not answer if he rang. To further quell any lingering doubts I had as to his character, I fabricated a fictitious "carefree, fun-loving hot Latina" profile on Yahoo personals and waited. A day after I posted my profile, among the dozens of hits I found a message from him requesting to meet Latina Hottie in person. Just as I expected, good riddance indeed.

Chambao

I was browsing through iTunes yesterday, and decided to check their recommendations based on my purchase history (they do the same thing as Amazon). Among the artists they were pushing was the group Chambao, from Spain. They have been around for a few years, but like Orishas before them, I had never heard of them.

I love their sound, it's flamenco music for the digital age. The song above is called "Pokito a poko" (poquito a poco or little by little). Something in the lyrics grabbed me when I listened to it:

pokito a poko entendiendo
que no vale la pena andar por andar
que es mejo camina pa ir creciendo"

Translated loosely and with no mind for the rhyme as:

little by little understanding
that it's not worth it to walk just to be on the go
that it's better to walk as a way to grow

Sunday Scribblings- Crossing Water

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is:

When in your life did you feel the most powerful? Was it childhood? College? Now? What is that feeling like; what does it mean? Do you have power over your own life, or are you not feeling that so much these days? If you don't want to get serious, you might imagine superhero powers, and what you would do with them.

At first I thought I would write about being pregnant with my daughters. Both times I felt incredibly powerful and special (look at me, I'm creating life here!). But in the end, I am going to go with the time I moved to Houston. At once terrifying and exhilarating, it was the point when I truly became a grown up. At 31, months after my first marriage ended in divorce, I left my island and all my family behind to move to Houston with my 2 year-old daughter. To be truthful, it's not like I was jumping without a safety net. I was coming here on a work relocation offer, to a job that paid more and had more responsibility.

I had some help moving here. All my moving expenses were paid, and the company even paid for an apartment hunting trip. I made arrangements online with a dealership in Houston to buy a car. The person I replaced shared with me the name of the Early Childhood Center her daughter attended. My parents kept Paula and took a flight to bring her to me two weeks after I had moved, so I could have time to get everything set up.

I moved into my apartment the day I arrived in Houston, on Friday March 31st, 2000. My stuff had arrived a few days earlier and the movers were set to bring it in the next day. So far so good, I was impressed by how smoothly things were going. The next day I got sick and was puking my brains out while the movers were bringing in my stuff. I do not know if it was something I ate or if it was my nerves playing some kind of April Fool's joke on me, but the next day I was OK.

My move to Houston was the single most empowering thing I have done. It changed my life. It forced me to truly rely on myself, to be the strong one. I would not have it any other way.

Fiction Friday # 22- Secrets

This week's challenge:

Give a virtuous character a sordid past.


I did not go that sordid, but I like what the challenge prompted me to write.

Secrets

Every night I got up to go to the bathroom, and I always had trouble getting back to sleep, the secret pushing to come out after a year’s worth of silence. But how could I tell her? She would be so angry at me, so disappointed. I was terrified.

One day I asked her, would she love me no matter what I did? She said yes. I decided I had to tell her. The secret felt too big inside of me.

That night, as she tucked me in bed, I said I needed to tell her something. She lay down in bed next to me and said “go ahead, baby, I’m listening.” I started talking and then it just poured out.

Mom, last year there was a kid in the cafeteria sitting next to me who said the F word. When the cafeteria lady came to find out what was going on, I told on him: “Ma’am, Tommy was saying F%@*^!” She sent us both to the principal’s office. They sent me home with a letter for you to sign. But I was so scared that you would get mad at me that I hid in the bathroom and signed the letter in your name. Are you mad at me, mom? Am I in trouble?

Mom took a deep breath. She hugged me. She said what I did was not good and I should not do it again, but she was glad I had told her, and she loved me very much. Then she told me about the time when she was a kid in third grade and did not do her homework. The teacher put a note in mom’s workbook: “Ingrid did not do her homework. Why?” and a blank space for my mom’s mother to sign the page. Mom was so scared of her reaction (mom was always a goody two-shoes in school) that she forged abuela’s signature. I actually did not know what the word forgery meant until my mom told me this story.

I asked her if she told abuela about what she did, and she said that she kept it a secret for years, but that my uncle found out about it and used it to blackmail her, in jest. We had a good laugh over my mom’s memories of the taunting chants that mi tío Toño used to sing around her. “Libro, liiibrooo, liiibrooo.” For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, libro means book.

So imagine that. My mom and I did the same thing, at the same age. I feel a lot better now.

3WW- He eagerly caught the smell of her perfume

This week's words are:

Caught
Eager
Perfume

Towards the end of my senior year in high school, my best guy friend from the previous year came to visit the school one day. I have written before about him, in a thinly veiled fiction exercise.

It caught me by surprise the day he came to visit, and I was more than eager to meet him. I was on the second floor of our school when I saw him downstairs in front of the principal's office. I rushed down the stairs quickly and ran to him. He wrapped his arms around me and gave such a hug that I wanted to melt into it. As he hugged me, he whispered in my ear "you still smell the same. I missed your perfume." Or something like that.

I can't remember what happened after that. Maybe a group of us went out for lunch with him. Maybe we did not. In any case, that was the last I ever saw of him. This was someone I used to care about a lot, yet I sure made no effort to keep in touch with him once he left school. This, again, is the story of my life. I seem to have no trouble divesting myself of relationship ties and affections, especially at a distance. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder in my book. I am not celebrating or indicting this trait. It is what it is.

Especially for Wolfgang...

... who was quite busy at work last night with the Halo 3 release.





Image courtesy of lolsecretz.

Skullphabet

Is that cool or what? If you like the skullphabet # 1 font, you can get it as a free download at the skull-a-day blog.

Mancha de platano

About 14 or 15 years ago, a newspaper ad for Clorox Bleach was published in the local newspaper back home. It was a branding ad wishing Puerto Ricans Happy Holidays from the Clorox family of products.

The ad was beautiful and powerful in its simplicity: a full-page ad with a white background, a picture of a single green plantain in the center, and the following copy at the bottom: Esta es la única mancha que no queremos sacar (this is the only stain we do not want to remove). A reference to the term tener la mancha the plátano (which literally means to have the stain of the plantain, symbolically that which makes us Puerto Rican and is indelible), the ad was eloquent and very successful at tugging at the heartstrings and our sense of pride, so much so that when it came out I tore the sheet from the newspaper and taped it to the wall of our apartment, where it joined other assorted post cards and clippings that covered the walls.

I wish I still had that ad, so I could show it to my daughter. There is a lot of crap in advertising, but every once in a while someone hits it out of the park. That was one of those times.

It's just one of those mornings

The fact that today is Monday makes it hard, but it is not the sole reason for my mood this morning. The thought of all the stuff pending at work makes it worse. The reminder of multiple looming deadlines paralyzes me. I don't think I can leave the house today. The very idea of taking a shower and getting dressed is more than I can handle right now. Getting in my car, driving to work and seeing other people fills me with anxiety and dread. I don't think I can deal with that today. Left to my own devices, I would crawl into bed and sleep.

Lucky for me, I brought my notebook computer from work home on Friday. So I will be able to connect to the office and work from here. I may have to bite the bullet and head to the office later today, as I think my boss' boss invited me to attend his weekly staff meeting today. I don't get invited every week, and usually when I do it is because they need me there to answer questions or whatnot. So if I check my calendar and the meeting is today, I will have to muster all my willpower in order to go. Just thinking about leaving the house sends my heart racing.

Uneasiness

It's there before she knows it, that familiar rumble inside her, the feeling that she is expanding like a water balloon. She doesn't quite understand what she is feeling and why this is happening now. All she knows is that she is filling up quickly, and that sooner or later it will come out. Whatever the feeling is, sooner or later it will spill out of her in tears or it will explode into anger.