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

BORICUA, first and foremost.

#promesaisajoke
#colonialismexposed

Diaspora growth

I put this together myself from data publicly available here: http://factfinder.census.gov/

Follow this link for background on the history of Puerto Rican migration:
http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/past_events/Jorge_Duany_Puerto_Rican_Diaspora.pdf

This quote stood out for me: Almost 8 per cent of the Island’s inhabitants relocated to the US mainland during the 1990s. Between the years 2000 and 2007, even more Puerto Ricans (some 415,000) emigrated than in the previous decade (326,000). More than two million people have moved from the Island to the US mainland since the mid-twentieth century. The proportions of this exodus are even more staggering when one recalls that Puerto Rico’s population had not reached four million in the year 2007. Aside from nineteenth-century Ireland and twentieth-century Suriname, the magnitude of the Puerto Rican diaspora has few historical precedents or contemporary parallels.

The Honoree