The day(s) I was born in this lifetime

(Edited on Jan 12 2016 – I didn’t change any integral part of it, just added the preamble for the third time I was born in this lifetime!)

Thirty-two* years ago I was born early.  I was in fact being born inside a car, in the middle of the road between Vicente Guerrero and Durango.  Well, I ended up being born, by a matter or seconds, in the hospital IN Durango, but that experience was definitely my very first learning experience...

To begin with, I learned how to show through actions (and to use my words the correct way) whenever I needed something...  not that I mastered it right away – it did take me about twenty-eight years to do so, but phew! I finally did!  Back then, I of course didn’t have a voice yet, and I was pushing with all my might for my mum to let me out (not that I wasn’t cosy or anything, I just wanted to start with life!).  She, of course, was not aware – because sometimes mothers aren’t when the baby comes early – that this time it was for real; she took her time to realise it was, then my parents borrowed a friend’s car to drive us to another town (back then Durango was the best option to deliver me even if it meant driving for about two hours).  My dad was, of course, like a lot of dads are when the baby comes early, trying to convince his wife to go to the hospital from the beginning (I guess that’s when the usually unacknowledged male sixth sense kicks in?), and it was him who took the beating from the hospital staff about not getting us in there sooner, like, again, so many dads are.

So, two-three hour drive and borrowed car aside, my birthday wasn’t at all anything out of the ordinary, family-wise.  My sister was at some other friend’s house, happily waiting to see what her parents would bring back home.  My parents were delighted I was coming, even if had given them such a scare (and eventual embarrassment about the car business).  And I was born in a moment of intense hurry and stress and a little bit of panic – no wonder I’m always running everywhere!  No wonder I’m always set on finishing what I start, no matter how long it takes or how painful the delivery process is...!  Frankly, there are only three things in life I’ve left unfinished, two of them were jobs that were draining me of peace and joy and sanity, and the other was a novel, but that one eventually mutated into something else, so I guess something good came from it even if I didn’t know where it was going at first... Oh, wait, there was also Graphic Design!  But that change of BA was good for my mind, heart and sprit, so we can let that one go, right?

So, yes, I was in such a hurry to live that the feeling has never left me again, even in moments of deepest depression or trauma.  Yes, I am The Woman Who Is Always Running (yeah, you know I did, those of you who get this reference!).  And yes, I have a driving need to finish everything that I start.  I think that the first decision I ever made was the right one!

But that was not the only day in this lifetime that I was born...  there have been at least two* more times, although because of certain events that have happened during the past few weeks, I am a bit unable to point out when the second day was...  A few months ago I thought that it had been September 2^nd, 2013, when I officially moved to London, but lately I have realized that I can actually take it further back...  To Newcastle maybe, London-inspired as the Masters decision was?  Or to May of 2010 when I came to London for some writing workshops and a lot of inspiration?  Or maybe even twenty* years ago (darn, has it really been that long?) during the summer of ‘94, on the first family vacation to Europe, and my first sight of London.  What I can fairly say, in any case, is that London was the place of my second birth...  It would make sense for any of those times to have been it, because after every birth there has to be a period of growth, most commonly called life, and what London gave me – what London has always given me – is a new aspect of myself to be discovered at each step, a handful of letters to be taken from every corner and placed dotingly upon my notebook, and a will to become a greater person than I ever thought myself possible to be.  The wish to remain here, or to return at every given chance if that’s the case, is what drives me at this moment to keep learning and to find a whole new array of skills that have lay dormant for years and years while I polished my first love: writing...  London has been kind and patient with me, and also driving and intense, and even warm, though most people do not believe me (but I should say that the darker colour of my arms should be evidence enough: it has not faded in three and a half years, even though I’ve worn long sleeves for most of that time and rubbed on many a clarifying lotion...  granted, it did get re-enhanced last summer in Edinburgh – who knew?)  (Nothing personal against tanning – that’s just material for another blog entry).

In London I have laughed my most and ran my most, and read my most and danced my most...  I have loved my most and cried my most and written my most...  I have sighed my most and organized my life my most and been late my most...  and even ate my most and slept my most and been sick my most...  And I do not mean most in all my life: there are plenty of those things that I have done way more in other places...  chances are that ALL of them I have done most in Durango (except the eating thing, that’s a nose to nose between Monterrey and Chihuahua).  But in London...  oh, London is the place for each of them to become epiphanies... and for an artist –for a writer – that’s just invaluable...  To me, losing London is like losing a child, and I have cried with the same intensity at that prospect...  To me, London is the place where a word turns into a novel and a sound turns into consciousness and a step turns to reality...  That is my London, that is what it’ll always be.

And that’s how I can state that I was born a second time here...  I do not say re-born or born again, because that usually means a prior defeat, which I, thankfully, didn’t have...  not when I was twelve, not in 2010, not when I moved to Newcastle and most definitely not when I made de decision to move here, giving up a sure job in Durango to try my luck, actively deciding that my novel Wideawake had to be finished here, purposefully charging head-first into the time around graduation when I was broken with terror and uncertainty and loneliness... I was never dead; I was never beaten or surrendered before coming – or while going back.  My relationship with London has always been one of intense growth: every time I come I undergo a deep healing process, because I know that London deserves me to be the best person I can be while I’m here.

I’ve said it before: it is because of England that I became a writer...  I would not have had that defining moment if it hadn’t been for Alice’s trip into Wonderland: it was me falling into that rabbit-hole at age seven, it was me discovering that I had to know who I was and where I wanted to go to get somewhere in life...  I think I’m still in that process.  I also think that another part of me will always remain at Never Land, and I will always have chills during that scene in the Disney version when Peter takes Wendy, John and Michael along with him and they land for a brief moment in the Clock Tower, now renamed Elizabeth, after a flight along the slanting rooftops and chimneys of a sleeping London.

Then again, Jo March carries a great responsibility in my actually deciding to go with writing, and Borges’ labyrinths defined a great deal of my personality, so even now I am fully conscious that I have taken into me bits from everywhere I’ve been to and every person I’ve met and every piece of literature or any other art that has connected me to different places...  I’m an eclectic collage of discoveries, and I have been smart enough to take the best of each and include them in me...

What Mexico means to me, how the pain and awkwardness of the actual (biological) growth process shaped me in Durango, Chihuahua and Monterrey, how the joys and laughter of childhood and teens and early adulthood shared with a family beyond improvement and a wide array of friends that came and went and sometimes came again, that is something that no-one and no place can ever, ever take away from me.  If a year from now I’m there or here or somewhere else entirely, I know that I will be in the right place for me for that time being; because that’s what my life has been so far: a collection of right places at the right times for the right reasons.  Even if some of them felt like death, even if some felt like the world was going to end because there could be no God evil enough to allow the world to go on when I was in such searing pain, even then it was the right time, because without those moments, I simply wouldn’t be here now!  Mexico will always mean sunshine and colour and family ties and endearing friends; even if I hate the music (and cried a little the other night when I realized that I might have to give up soon the bus stations with classical music over the loudspeakers), and even if I am extremely sensitive to heat, or even if I have never known true love in Mexico or I have never managed to understand people’s obsession with TVs in restaurants and stores, Mexico is the blood pumping through my veins and thus what keeps me running, just as much as the States is the origin of eternal friendship and with it, and the snow, the neurological birthplace of my Cassandra; and Italy is that place where the first ever need to change and better myself actually came forth (for better or worse, it was for someone else, not for me...  shame on me, I know, but I was only 18, I could still get away with that kind of dramatic outlook; still, it was  the first turn of the machinery of my betterment...  so for that and for the rivers and the mountains, Merano deserves my heartiest thanks...). Then there was Canada, where I took the decision to leave acting and focus on writing (I didn’t see the irony till years later, because I was in Vancouver precisely to study acting, and so I didn’t want to say anything until much much later... which, also, came to be an excellent choice, because in those gray months of pulling towards both sides I got the chance of being an extra in Bandidas, and you can actually see me twice, one from the back and one quick shot of my face almost right behind Steve Zahn...  I think it’s around the third minute of the film or so).  It was all a kick-start for my first novel, La Sombra Detrás, so thanks Vancouver!  And London comes in, then: it is that neurological part of my life that delivers the words from my brain to my fingers.

I see myself as a being made up of many countries, of many cities even within those countries (that’s why my accent is so funny, lol), and as a person who is able to take in all the good from each of them and carry it along wherever she goes...

Ooohh, it had been my intention to do this big, wordy writing about the history of London and of how each moment can be translated into external/historical learning experiences into my life (and everyone’s, for that matter), but it’s late (I’m late!  I’m late!  Pull out a pocket watch and yell: I’m late!) and I have to get ready for my birthday lunch!  (Hehehe, I’m actually uploading it after spending the day in the woods and now we’re having dinner in a lovely pub... cos of course I was out of data this morning, ha!)

That’ll be an entry for another time...  Cheers for now and till next Sunday!!

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, healer, dreamer, lover

 

--I don’t want to go...

*I am 34 now, so it’s been 22 years since Cassandra was born in my brain!  Also, I was born a third time in Glastonbury, as I will speak shortly of in the entry titled The Mysterious Lady of Glastonbury Revealed.
 

You can read more of my blogs, stories, novels, healing writings, plays & performances I've been on, my modelling career and runaway thoughts in the following links:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sandra-Tena/e/B00NWBFY6E/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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