Doctor Where? No, wait... What?

Where am I from, then? Oh, the dreaded, dreaded question… Silence falls when I get asked that question! Lol.  To begin with let me say an absolute truth that the ones who’ve known me the longest will vouch for: I have not been able to answer that question ever since I was about six or seven years old… not even while being IN Mexico.  See, the thing about being from a place is that there are many elements that make it real, and as far as I can remember, I have not ever had the full array of elements in any place I have ever lived. Ever.  In Mexico, I felt it since I was a very young child, and I was told so by many, many people all through my life.

OK, when I say “I was told” it does not mean that I believe everything people say and walk around with it as my banner (well, I do believe many things and people can play the most awful jokes on me because I fall for funky things very, very easily, lol, but we all know that’s not what I mean…).  I was told in many different ways, both with words and with actions, and it both hurt and made me feel relieved at the same time.  Thing is, because both my parents are from different areas of the country, but moved to the city where I was born because of their jobs, I always felt it was an hypocrisy to my genetics to say that I was ONLY from Durango, you know? This happened because I learned to love Chihuahua and Monterrey so much as to call them home since that very early age when what you feel for family connections is a lot deeper than what you feel for the city where you’re constantly bullied… And, really, I think that happens even if the person is not being bullied!  Just to think of your grandparent’s houses, those magical places where you play with your cousins to your heart’s content and learn and grow under the sight of uncles and aunts that you love as closely as your own parents, well, that makes anyone feel like those places are their home, right?  Especially if you consider that in my case, it was only with my cousins that my sister and I could go full-blown fantasy without fear of being judged and criticized and bullied (in my case, I was painfully bullied ever since kindergarden, times from which I am getting a ton of scary memories back, now that I’ve opened so many doors of consciousness and healing).  We created stories with them, and amazing worlds and games that have lasted us forever, and I could not be happier than when I was in that little nook where I could invent, and then fly off to read if I wished, without getting awkward names being called out to me.  That goes both for Chihuahua and Monterrey; and the array of games we played were at all times either invented or taken from one of our favourite cartoons or books, so everything always had to do creation over those holidays spent with family.

Still, there was that little nagging thing that always made me feel different from everyone else, which was not merely the reading part, cos many other people did that, including my sister and some of my cousins, and they never expressed feeling as extremely an outsider as I did.  I know now that they all had their own path to thread, and many hardships in between who they were and who they are today, but it was usually me who people asked why I didn’t like the place where I “came from”.  Sure, even when we talk about Chihuahua and Monterrey there are some sensitive issues that make me go No, I cannot be Northern, can I? Lol, I’m always Northern, wherever I live (perhaps that’s why I’ve moved further South each time I move here in London?? To try to break from that pattern? We’ll see, lol).  The sensitive issues, far from stereotypes, are the music and the food. Any kind of Banda, Northern or the lines of music from Mexico makes me cringe to my very core, much like a lot of Latin music from other places.  Why? I would say that it’s a matter of personal taste, but it’s not so easy… Cos I tried, especially when I thought it was important to my friends and the man I was intending to marry (way way way way back then!!).  I stopped not only because he was far from worth it (not only of my changing of habits, but the whole of it), but also because there was no way I was finding any pleasure in it…  I do love Salsa and some Cumbia, cos there’s a lot of hip-swaying there, and a lot of classic Latin rock from bands that have been around since the eighties.  And let’s not forget Julieta Venegas and Porter, cos come on, they rock big time! So, just to be clear, it’s not that I’m against all kinds of Latin music, it’s just those that fill the air in social gatherings; so, for someone who’s already born socially awkward, there is the added hardship of being mostly quite annoyed and bad-tempered in *those* situations, which tend to be the defining “fitting in” moments in all youth’s lives.

That part, that’s the way I see it, it’s not about the music or even the over-drinking done by the people I wanted to hang out with, but the fact that my dislike for both made me a non-match for almost anyone… That is until University, thank the God and the Goddess for that, lol.  But still, I kept feeling very different, and my BA being International Relations there was more than one person who’d say that I had a more British way of thinking than anything else… Now I know a little bit better and I think we all made a mistake on that account! Lol.  I love England just as much as I have done ever since I fell in love with it when I was 12, but there are some aspects of that way of thinking that I now realize us foreigners tend to get wrong, the biggest of the ones is the whole reading on the tube thing… When I came over 4 years ago I felt like it had been a match made in heaven, me walking into any train or bus and being permitted to settle down with a wondrous book without provoking the sneers and annoying comments from everyone around me… oh, the surprise I got a few weeks back in Bath, when I read a section of a book written by a British woman and intended for us outsiders to understand the British silent rules; and it said “People in this country read in public transportation so as not to acknowledge anybody else in the world around them.  Not because they’re brainy, but because they do not wish to talk”. That was me paraphrasing, btw, but so many of my friends here have confirmed it, both British and non-British…  So, my whole belief system came crashing down with a single article.  The one place I thought I fit in, the Piccadilly line or whatever, and now it turns out that it was all a lie…

But see, the fact is that I enjoy reading, and I will do it in whichever country and whichever circumstance I can, so yes, I will forget all about the “real” British reason for all the reading in public transport and focus on my own one to do it in the first place!  Easy breezy… And to be fair, there are so many people here that looooove reading as much or even more than I do, so who cares if while on public transport the reasons may be different from person to person, right?  When it all comes down to it, I have more of a literary life here than in any other place in the world, and I have come to meet people who have read thousands of books and are my age, so of course I wish to talk to them!  To learn from them and see what I’ve been missing… To get lost in sentences taken from pages yet unknown!

Moreover, in my need for creation, I need the right space to structure my own sentences, and because I feed off the city centres of each city, of course I need one that will deliver the right type of inspiration!  This is something that I spoke about in entries past: when you absolutely love a place in the world, it does not mean you no longer love the others, it only means that the energy of that place vibrates better within you… The fact is, Mexico is beautiful in so many ways, with incredible architecture, lovely streets and parks, amazing mountains and forests and rainforests.  I always tell people to go there, because why wouldn’t I?  The colour and the culture and yes, even the music is fascinating, and all people should enjoy it if they will.  Now, remember what I’ve said about empirical beauty and all that?  It comes down to everything, really, and Mexican traditional music is empirically good, and the fact that I have no taste for it does not in any way forbid me from accepting that it rings good in many people’s ears for a structural reason, and if I don’t like I just don’t play it, that’s it.  Now, if we combine all the colours and the smells and tastes of Mexico during a nice two-week holiday or something like that, it’s most likely that anyone could get a heapload of inspiration from that!  But by living there, and this is just me speaking from my own experience, my inspiration gets stalled, and I have recently found out that it was not just the music or the heat, like I’d thought all my life, but that it’s also got to do with noise pollution! In Mexico, anywhere you go, there is always something sounding really really loud: it could be because in every block there is a store or two with speakers playing music or store comments at maximum volume; it could be that most of the cars in the street go around with their sound systems in maximum volume; it could be that so many people honk a lot; it could be that everybody drives a bit too fast and there are motors and screeches all around; it could be that when you get on a city bus, the driver is most likely to be playing really bad music at maximum volume; it could be that the same thing happens in cabs; it could be that when you travel from city to city there tends to be action or comedy movies being played in maximum volume AND dubbed, so you also get the Mexican neurosis that seem to be a major requirement that dubbing actors have to have in order to work; it could also be that in city centres you get so many street vendors all screaming at you to look at their stuff; or it could be that everyone around seems to be talking and laughing at the highest volume possible for human beings…  What usually happens when you combine all of these factors when I’m around, and add the heat and altitude of some places, is that none of the voices in my head are properly heard and I get confused and crabby…  None of the stories or chapters seem to come out right, and in the end it takes me longer to write things than it ever does when I’m in England…

Now, I do admit that I like the British architecture better than the Mexican one, but that’s again just a matter of personal taste, not anything personal *against* Mexico… nor has it ever been!  And there is also the weather factor, which, even here, is still too hot for me, btw!  No one believes me, but, oh boy did I suffer at times during this summer!  Anyhu, I tend to walk dazed and confused here in London, but that’s a sign that I am actually writing; when I’m dazed and confused, as opposed to confused and crabby, it means that I got so deep into my chapters or characters or whatever, that I flew off into my world, and it takes me hours to come back down to Earth, hence the Sandra walking around London in such a state that security guards rush up to me to ask if I need help, or, if I am deep in my leisure reading, there’s Sandra most likely walking onto the wrong train…  No biggie, I don’t actually have a problem with it, and am actually quite at peace when it happens because that means that I am satisfied with the work I’ve done over the day…

So, architecture-wise, yes, I find the Fairy-tale look of Europe a lot more appealing, especially English architecture, but be clear on the fact that I also think Mexican architecture is brilliantly beautiful…  Oh, food-wise, I brought it up and never followed the subject: I generally love Mexican food, but cannot biologically handle the amount of meat that gets eaten in that country, and social gatherings tend to revolve around a barbeque of sorts or a meal at a meat-based restaurant…  Oh, and the chilly, it’s not so much that I don’t like it, but that I get so dizzy when I feel that amount of hotness in my mouth, and since I’m already dizzy half the time anyway, I have no desire to use external factors to carry it on.  Well, funny muffins were quite an experience, but that’s neither here nor there… Lol.

In any other matter, it was never an issue of having to choose between the two countries.  Yes, if I have to chose where to live I will say England, but that never meant that Mexico is not a good-enough place for me to be in; yes, if I remain here there is no way my family and friends will ever lose me, because I can visit them and they can visit me; yes, even if I get my British citizenship, guess what, I get to have both nationalities cos we’re allowed to do that now (mini wave, yay!); so, what’s the big deal?  Even a few months back I kept hearing the remainder: Just so you see, Mexico has pretty things, too…  But it was never about that!  I have always been and will always be proud of the wonderful things that Mexico has to offer, be it the arts, culture, history, food, architecture, you name it!  Thing is, I’m already made up of so many things from so many different areas of life, so I don’t find it in any way wrong to accept that as much as I embrace my Mexican side, I’m also happy to embrace whatever it is that makes me British at soul… we’d already established in entries past that it’s not the partying and drinking thing, so it must be the culture thing, right?

Oh, and by-the-by, all I say here about the ways of life of different nationalities, I say not because of stereotypes, but rather because it is what I see every single day of my life in both countries: in the street, public transport, public spaces, school, work areas and even homes of different people…  Things that are not necessarily bad, just, as I already established, not of my personal taste, and there is nothing wrong with that…

Aaaand just to make one last thing clear, I admit that there are many many other elements that make this subject be what it is, but I only have so much space to write it on… and maybe there will be more entries to come, but this is the bit that my soul had to say for now ;)

Oh, but fyi, I've got freinds and family scattered all over the world and not all of them read as much as I do, but that doesn not mean I love them any less!!  I am not *that* fixated!
 

Much love to all and may your weekend be fun, in your own particular way of what fun is!

On Femininty, Feminism and Vulnerability...

So, I was supposed to talk about my Mexican vs. British ways and likes and whatnot (and a bit about noise pollution, cos that’s a huge add-on within that particular matter)…  I’d already promised people I would do that, but in the light of recent events (and forgive me if I am riding a little bit on Emma Watson’s wave here), I feel that it’s more important that I take this subject head on.  And today, Thursday instead of Friday, cos Thor is telling me to put it out there today instead of waiting for Venus to come in the morning.  There are two reasons for this: 1) I have been ranting about my hurt and my healing, and for some people it seems to mean that I am weak, which could not be farther away from the truth!  I have previously said that vulnerability makes us stronger, because by putting ourselves right there in front of all in all our true glory, we give them no reason to think otherwise of us…  Yes, I have been hurting, and I have not even tried to conceal that vulnerable side of me, but I have also been healing, and talking about that in a world where most people don’t “believe” in healing (because they might need physical proof of it before trusting that it’s true), this makes me just as vulnerable as talking about my hurt…  Which means that now I am doubly strong, and whomever thinks that they can take advantage of me because I’m vulnerable, they’ve got another thing coming.  They will not suffer my wrath, because that would take me out of my chosen positivity, but they will not break me, either, because I refuse to give them that power.

And 2) Like I admitted days ago on the past entry’s comment, I hurt some very dear friends of mine by not being open and honest about a situation that I should have spoken about; I lacked empathy, the very thing that I was priding myself in having and wanting all to have. I have asked for their forgiveness, but I know things will take time to heal…  I believe, however, that this is what makes me human, and if I have made mistakes, just like all have, I can only hope that this will bring about a learning experience for all involved…  And I can only hope as well that I will be forgiven sooner rather than later!

So, this entry comes to be because I have been healing my femininity above all else!  And people have sort of forgotten that *that* was the part of me that was broken, not my integrity, not my professionalism, not my creativity, not my ability to believe the best in people, not the ability to wish for true love rather than someone to come and fill an empty space, not even my choice to wish the best for all even if they hurt me!  What was shattered, and note the use of past tense here, what was shattered was my femininity, all due to a 6+ year draught, where the only water I could take came sparingly and from men that go from tip to tip of the expectrum, from the ones that would obviously just consider me an one-night stand, to a person that would have raped me in my sleep had he had the chance.  I am not exaggerating, quite sadly… for reassurance’s sake, he said this to me in a series of late night texts after only two dates, so I was physically safe and also had enough sense to bat him off and put him in his place… But consider: just the fact that I am not with any of them proves that I am not desperate, and that I’m still intending that what belongs in my life is true love. I know it takes a while to get to that point, but that’s why I have decided to be with a man who would want the long haul rather than continue in a path of random, meaningless dates, you know?  I think people should respect that decision, because that’s as healthy as can be.

I think I have already said enough about what I think femininity is, and how we should all be allowed to wish for romance back without being judged, so I will add this here to complement: Feminism (that’s right, with a capital F) is a beautiful concept; it has never been an opposition to the gallantry and chivalry of men… If anything, it should be complementary: how about if men open doors for a woman not because she’s too weak to do it but because it’s romantic?  How about the romantic dates come back because it is more beautiful and fulfilling to learn about each other in a safe environment rather than making it all about the sex?  How about clothes come back not because we should be ashamed of the human body but because it is also more beautiful and fulfilling to discover each other’s physical secrets in a moment that should be thrilling and exciting for both? 

Yes, I am a Feminist, and I am absolutely proud of my body, even if I wish to trim here and there, like most humans do anyway; and I will keep on wearing clothes that bring out my best features even if some men think that I am doing it only for their benefit and try to take advantage of that, because I have become strong enough that I can say Hell no, and move on.  What, just because I’ve got amazing legs and a lovely bosom does it mean that I should not wear shorts or skirts or cleavage just to protect men from having dirty thoughts about me or women to be jealous of me?  That rapist wannabe even said that I was not playing into my body as much as I should.  That’s plain sick, all of it.  To begin with, there is always going to be someone with a shorter skirt or bigger breasts, or for the men probably someone taller or with better abs, I don’t know…  What, are they all hiding who they are to protect the rest of dirty thoughts or jealousies? Nope!  In fact, most people who look “socially” physically good are parading around half naked anyway (and dirty thoughts and jealousies will float around whether we cover up or not).  I don’t want to do that cos, like I said before, my stuff is for my man, and I respect how other people think differently so I should be respected as well, right?  I am comfortably sexy-classy, and extremely proud of it!

My view is also that vulnerability and Feminism should play into each other in an organic way: if we’re enjoying each other’s bodies, let’s do it with pure joy and respect, respect in the sense that behind closed doors things can get as wild as one wants but without fear of it showing up online!  I like how Emma Watson has defended Jennifer Lawrence about those pictures, and I believe they are more than right: who are these people that think that just because a woman wants to be adored and worshiped as a sexual goddess (cos, let’s face it, we all do!) and agree to pictures or video (cos kinky does it for so many!), does that mean that she wants to share it with the world?  Now, I have very recently done my very own naked-healing thing (and more on that to come later, cos it’s an experience worthy of sharing, as far as healing goes), and I ended up showing more bits of myself that I had ever intended to, but what came of it, the rush of freedom and self-acceptance, no one can take that away from me, not after all the jackasses that have made me feel less worthy with their words and actions…

Which brings to mind, yes, I choose to believe the best in people, but if I find out that I have been lied to, played with, like I said I won’t respond with wrath because I refuse to play into negativity, but I will turn around and walk away without ever looking back except to bring forth what I have learned and pass it on.  If anyone plays me because of my “vulnerability”, they will get the surprise that I am far from weak…  And that goes as much for a man that might lie to me, as for people that might have a secret agenda of lies and deceit and wish to “take advantage of a vulnerable me”, in order to hurt me and bring my world crashing down.  I take no sides.  I’m on my side.  Unless it’s *my* man, then I will consider him innocent until proven otherwise, but please remember that being a positive person and a full-on dreamer does not make me stupid, and if I am choosing this on account of my man, I must have a pretty darn good reason for it!  Please note: healing path since the age of 14, not desperate so as not to have fallen for other men to fill any voids…  In fact, no void at all!  I was broken in my femininity, not un-whole!  I was always complete, and did not need anybody to come be my “other half”; and I still am just that, no matter how ranty or vulnerable I come out…

Yes, I hurt, I am human… and all this blog has done for me is good things, because it has allowed me to heal that hurt through intentionalizing, as well as to know myself far better than I ever did before, whether I wanted to admit it or not…  And this in no way means that I will never hurt again cos I have “healed all”, it simply means that I know I am in the right path, and that however dark the road seems at times, I will always know now where to find the light.  Yeah, I may switch on the wrong light bulb every so often, but who doesn’t?  It’s a matter of switching it off and finding the correct one…

OK, way in tangent here, but it obvious why it’s important, right?  I have to let this be known, because a great deal of what’s being said to me these last few days has been on account of the vulnerability I have displayed here, and I do not want that at all in my life now or ever…  Not while making my British reality by getting my Tier 1 when that comes along, not by finding it through love if that’s the case…  What I do believe is that when we make decisions of this magnitude, the people who knows us the best should bear in mind the whole path that has led us to that choosing, not just the effervescence of feelings and meanings that have been displayed over the course of a few weeks (and intertwined with healing as well!).  I also know, and will work on that for as long as needed, that my brief blindness and lack of empathy makes me feel ashamed of myself for the pain I caused those I love, not because I think I was doing anything wrong…  I was doing something right, but it looked wrong because the message had not gone through from my brain to my mouth that I had to say something about it before I jumped into a new abyss…  cos let’s face it, I am a Fool so I will always be taking that leap!  And just because I am not afraid of the leap or the landing anymore, does not mean that I have become foolish or careless, but rather that I’ve had enough time to experiment with jumping and landing so as to feel certain that if my heart is telling me to jump, I will jump!  I might land on someone’s arms or I might land on my feet, either way, I’m safe.

Having said that, I have nothing but the deepest love and respect for the ones who are watching out for me, and my eternal gratitude will lay with them, so nothing I’ve said here means that I am not considering their words, but rather that I am choosing to believe the best in myself and trust that my decision shall be made for the best, whether it’ll mean eternal happiness or another heap of learning, or maybe both!

I feel that I am already saying more than I should, and for the first time ever I am not being true on my policy of full honesty and disclosure, because the whole thing is bigger than me this time (yes, even my ego allows me to see sometimes that the world does not revolve around me).  It might blow over in a day, it might take years…  (please let it be a day!), but one thing I know for certain: the Universe has answered me many questions, and I am more than ready to keep on listening, to it and to the people I care about, and that includes friends, family, and, why not, my man!

Cheers all, hope you’re all receiving blessings in many shapes and ways… xoxo

The power of Empathy

This is my own answer to my own rant… This is partly coming because of a “Who do you think you are, you’re not the only one who suffers” message I got from a friend last night, one of the people I love the most in the whole wide world; and to the second part of the partly is because to me, there is only one thing that I believe is greater than the power of release, and that is the power of empathy.  When I do this ranting-blog type of thing, which has been many times over the less than a year that I’ve kept the blog up, it’s not because I’m looking for pity, or advice, or acceptance, or even for compliments…  Well, I will always say thank you to compliments, but that’s another matter, hehe, because it’s not so much about how much people like us or not, it’s more about the fact that when a compliment is given, the energy of it just fills so many spaces with positivity that resonates for very long in everybody.  That’s why I am so enthusiastic on giving them, because I love to see the people I care about resonate so amazingly…  And that is also why so many people tend to think I am in love with quite a few of my male friends!  Yes, you boys, don’t be shy and look up… it’s not me who’s said it, but I tend to get the questions of “Why don’t you get together with so-and-so?”, “Why don’t you marry this one?” or “Are you in love with that one?”  Oh, if it at least were that easy, right?  But when two people lack chemistry, that’s called friendship, and it can be just as deep as caring as romantic love but that’s it I suppose.  And even when I answer that I wouldn’t because they’re gay, I’ve gotten the most annoying response: “Oh, surely you can turn them straight”.  Um, No.  And if anyone from my thwarted past of actually falling in love with my best friend is looking into this, please be assured that my initial (non-yet-romantic love) feelings and respect for you have not changed one little bit, and I’m still wishing you all the best…

Whoa, super long tangent there!  Why doesn’t anybody stop me when I do that…?  Never mind… as I was saying, I believe there is something even bigger than the power of release, and that’s the power of empathy, and it’s something that can really go a long, long way, especially when you realize that you don’t know the full story of the person, and I don’t mean just their life story, but their week, their summer, their day…  Come on, there have been little moralistic stories about this going around the Internet since email was invented. We all read them, we all nod in approval, and then we just stash them away and when the next person comes with a problem we all go “Oh, man, that’s nothing!”.  So, we all make mistakes.  And I’m not saying this for me right now! Yes, my whole week has been absurd… The passive aggressiveness of someone who’s been judging your whole world for weeks and then starts to repeat She’s a b*tch into her phone every time she walks in the room or whenever she conveniently takes a call right outside your own door (and also go “I feel so bad, why did she do that?  I feel so bad!”), all of that can break anybody, so how do you think it makes someone in my shoes feel…?  And all of that passive aggressiveness, you wouldn’t guess what made it happen: it started because I had the *audacity* to apologize for saying something that deeply offended her: that we are a group of 5 full time workers that just happen to live in a really big house, so that even if I cleaned the bathroom and kitchen about 3 times a week (which I did do over the past few weeks), there’d always be a bit of lint here, a bit of makeup there and so on… and *because* I apologized, then she turned it around by saying that I was trying to make her look bad, hence the little scenes described just above.  So for me it was pretty easy to release that one, even if the other things behind it are rather harder to let go off… but I’m just giving you a live example of the little things that can be happening in a person’s life that can lead them to a breakdown, or to even a complaint…  I did apologize to some of my friends in the other blog entry, the one I will post in a few weeks, because I broke my own rule in Glastonbury: I got annoyed at someone complaining, and even if it was for just a moment and we both understand the things that what were stressing both of us (and we are very close anyways), I just saw a dark side of me that could run wild if I didn’t check it now…  I know this because not so long ago several of my friends in Mexico told me that I was becoming harsh and judicious, and I believe them cos I love them with heart and soul and know that they wouldn’t say something like that if it wasn’t true… So I think it’s time for me to bring back my golden rule: do upon others as I wish to be done upon me, and that’s empathy!

So, that’s why I said I don’t mean all of this just for my benefit… how many of us are also going through the same need right now to have someone tell us “Yes, I do understand you”?  That in itself can be the little switch that will bring healing to mind, body and soul.  Now, that same friend that sent me that message?  I ended up helping him thru the night, even after it had been me calling him over and over the night before posting the entry, crying my eyes out and coughing my lungs out and asking for help.  To me, the fact that he didn’t give me any help and afterwards came back with that message, then turned it into a plea for help, means even more than if he had posted an entry asking for help himself: that’s the moment when you realize how hard it might be for people to even come up with the words “Help me”, and you know they’re not being a bad friend, they’re just as deep in scary beliefs and self-doubt as you are…  So I did the only thing I could do:  I reminded him that the whole path he’s thread has been done by his own merits and that I knew for a fact that a huge amount of people believe in him and his skills, and that when he is phased by a huge decision, like last night, he should trust himself a lot more because it’s been his outstanding decision-making that has led him on that path of continuous growth…  We all have that in us, not the same set of qualities and skills, but rather that little “It” that can make us feel proud of what we’ve achieved, as small or far-long-ago as it may seem at times, but that “It” can help us remember that there is always a reason to believe in ourselves again.

Empathy is the one thing that can bring a person back into the light, and don’t get me wrong, I really believe that there is nothing wrong in going into the dark side every so often, because we’ll always suffer, and we’ll always doubt and struggle, all in different amounts and times in life, which should never be treated as competition!  Because we can never know how much that person is really aching, and because we can never know if that’s the only bit that’s causing that particular ache…  So like I said, I don’t necessarily mean for me right now, because I have been flaunting about my healing path, and one thing it does (the path, not the flaunting) is wap me back into my feet in no-time.  Yeah, I have no idea what wap means, either, so shall we go with that I just invented a new word that means “get to” but sounds much cooler?  That doesn’t mean that I will never have dark days again, especially since my disorder is that particular one that everybody talks about now cos it’s finally stopped being a taboo: depression.  Yes, even my illness is something that I cannot physically prove, how do you like that for irony?  (I do, actually… fits in with everything else that’s funky in my life…).

So then, as if we were on a roundabout, I will come back briefly to my flat mate: I have absolutely no idea what could make her go Drama Queen and hurt people with her words… so I was an easy prey, big deal! The reasons behind that must be huge, cos really, aside from the fact that I can actually set to work from my bed, she’s got really nothing to be jealous of me for! (Well, unless she’s one of those models who actually wish they had a curvy body, but even then, it really doesn’t apply…)  Anyhu, since she’s nothing to do with me I can just wash my hands of her, cos I’m really not the doctor (er- not even gonna try to make a pun there… I was trying to go full-on Alanis Morrisette, but I now realize I can’t ever go back to that song… to the meaning yes, but not to the lyrics, lol!).  Seriously now, none of us are the doctors, and even if we were, visiting hours are nine to five, and other than that, we’ve got a life to lead…  Where does empathy fit in here, then?  Well, sometimes it might be more empathic to just let the person be and make it clear that you don’t have a problem with them per se, and everything else will just be easier for both: you won’t have to deal with the continuous flow of attack, and they won’t have to come up with new ways to torment you…  oooh that might work with bullies, too!  Whatever happens next in their path, that’s theirs to deal with, and that just reassures us that it was never a personal thing in the first place, so let it go…

What happens when it’s someone we do care about?  Well, to being with, do try to help as much as you can, but like I’ve said before, do not carry them! Ever!  Carrying a second weight will just make you reach your goal slower, and it’s not about who reaches first (cos goals are all set in different places for different people, so there should not be a competition in that account, either), but about how we can help a little so that those we care about get there easier and quicker…  That’s why I said I felt that pull that actually keeps me going: if I didn’t have anyone that actually cared about me and tried to make my path feel easier, who knows when I’d have given up…

My friend said: Why do you feel so behind?  You’re in London, you’re in the place you’ve always wished to be!  Yes, I am in London, but I’m in London with no name, and not the pretty, poetic, “I’m anonymous in London so I can make my own name as I go along” thing I was hoping for, but the “Only about 20 people here know I’m a writer” kind of thing… that and the proof of address thing I said yesterday, and the fact that it was so hard to find a new room! (The hardships were coming from my lack of proof of life, as you might remember…)  So, yeah, I had a dark few days, and that’s fine.  I had to work it all out by myself, and that’s also fine… but if I believe in the power of choice, which I do vehemently, I choose to remain empathic.  I choose to remain alert to the messages of the universe, and I choose to keep complimenting people… oh, and my female friends?  No one has ever asked me why won’t I marry you, so don’t worry, I’m not giving you that kind of look or vibe (although you are all so top notch that I know for sure that you also deserve top-notch… those of you who have the right ones, those of you who are still searching, and those of you who are on the verge of beginning the search again, cos the one that you thought was right was actually wrong…  and that goes for both male and female preferences of course).

Super quick random disclaimer: whenever I’m doing energy work about my possible future partner I only talk about heterosexual preferences, but that is because I want my partner to be a man, not because of anything else…  I think that even if I was a man I would like men…!  Oh, wait, but then if I was a man then it wouldn’t fully be me, right?  Cos the initial cells even from conception would have been entirely different and whatnot… So there is no possible way of knowing, and then I could possibly be perfectly happy with a woman… but then it wouldn’t even be me trying to decide, it would be someone else entirely…  What I mean is, I do not ever use my gay/lesbian friends as examples in my love-seeking energy work because I’m looking for hetero, but I fully love to see you guys and gals happy with your respectful partners, or deeply wish for you to find them soon, if you’re also in the search…!  Did I ever tell anyone here that my parents originally thought I’d be a boy? And that my name would be Sandro, of course.

Okay, weird tangent…  Well, the tangent was perfectly fine, it was rather the placement of the tangent that came a bit odd… well, I did say it was random…  Anyhu, just to close, I’d like to say one last thing about the feeling behind bit: to begin with, it’s not really like I imagine it like a race, cos there are some people slightly ahead and there are a few stragglers every once in a while, but I also see people remaining in certain places which are their goals, and being happy; and sometimes I see people who were at their goals and just had a hankering for a new one, like we always do, and rejoin the run…  so technically I’m not the last one *in the race*, but I am the one that people get ahead of most easily, and also the one who’s goals sort of seem to drift away from instead of looming closer; name it visa requirements, amount of time spent rearranging a novel, years lapsed since my last serious relationship, whatever, they’re all one and the same, cos they’re all important, and to see them oh so far away makes me go into my dark space every once in a while…  As for everyone else, one of the reasons I find it so easy to respect the people that I care about is that I can see that they all got to where they’ve been and where they are by their own merits and their own strength; and that when they get to the next goal it’ll still be like that.  Sure, I know a lot of them had plenty of help, but they’ve managed such amazing things with it!  Do I feel lucky to be in London?  Yes, the luckiest woman in the world, and the most grateful one, as well, cos there is no way I could feel proud of who I am if I had not accepted the help that I am being given… but that does not mean that I won’t have my dark days, that I won’t fall down for a bit and cry and maybe cough a little more… that only makes me human.  Then I can bring back the sunshine and happiness, or the singing rain, if I’m feeling poetic… and I can even make myself sprint faster, although sometimes I’m not entirely sure which direction I’m going…!

And for those who do compliment me when I write stuff, do not even think for a second that I forget about you: you are some of those people that pull me forward, and even when you swerve away to a particular goal, I know that I can be happy for you and that even if we don’t see each other for a while, our energies will keep in touch so that when we do meet again, not while we run but while we brunch or have a nice coffee one afternoon, it’ll be as if no time has passed…

For me that’s empathy, that little bit right there.  The person who can be confident enough to pull someone forward, but also the person who will allow others to follow their path without standing in their way out of selfishness.  Of course it consist on many other little and bigger things, but that’s the bit that will maintain a friendship going, no matter what…

So, my friend and I, not because there was an apparent lack of empathy does it mean that we don’t care about each other anymore, but maybe it was just a moment of wake-up that we both needed to go thru… And also, there is the thing about the fear, the one my first therapist had been saying ever since high school and so many others afterwards but I refused to believe:  If I get ahead of people then everyone will hate me…  Ding ding ding!  So this, like everything else is a blessing in disguise, because now I can work with my Galadriel archetype and move on…  (I’ve known I’ve had the archetype for a few months now, but I hadn’t really hit the right angle on it… thought it was just the power-crazed part of it, but it’s got another side, doesn’t it? Sigh, fear of success, let me get ready to tackle you…  I just have to get my gear on!).

So yeah, I like this catharsis thing, it’s just like psychotherapy, only instead of talking you’re writing, and instead of it being private you get to share it with the world… and it can be scary as hell, but it’s also liberating and stimulating…  and I recommend it to anyone that could be having troubles with keeping their mind in place…

That’s it for now, I wish you all a good day, night, or whatever it is wherever you are! xo

The fear: break it, shake it, make it...

Make it out, that is!

Because the Autumn energy is all about letting go of all of those things that are not useful to us anymore, and because the Equinox rituals have already started here in England even though the actual date will be on Monday, I will go full-on on what “the fear” is about today, partly to let it go myself, partly because I think that there are too many of us who have it nowadays, so however my words can carry me and others out to a safer zone and hopefully even help to get rid of “the fear”, I’ll just keep my policy of full honesty… there will be more on this by sometime November, cos I wrote a full entry on my return from Glastonbury but will release it after a particular episode of the Doctor Who Imaginarium Fan Production series that I am now fully working in, but posting that particular entry today would certainly mean Spoilers! and that’s a big no no for us all, Doctors, producers, all cast members and staff, and trust you me, even viewers ;)  I mean, there are pictures coming out already so people have seen a little bit of what’s it all about, right?  The awesome pictures of Stephen Cole as the Doctor and that with all of us with Dalek Om and the Tor right behind us…?  And that hippy with the curly hair hugging Dalek Om opposite the Doctor?  Yeah, that’s me.  I was hired as an extra body part, got paid with a couple bags of jelly babies and had more than enough time to roam freely and work on one of my novels and supposedly a lot of my healing. (Disclaimer note: Mani Navasothy is doing a superb job, and we are all more than happy to be doing this project with him even if it’s revenue-less for the time being.  We have a blast with him and even though I have previously said that this is the “holiday” part of my life, I do view it as a job in itself, and it just so happens that I am having about two or three heaps of fun with it, cos only one just does not cover it!) (And as for Mani, I am proud to have him as my Director, my Teacher and my Friend, so I will stop talking about anything film-wise from here on out of respect for him, but you’ll get the full deal in a few weeks time!).

Oh, but that means I cannot say much about my healing, either, cos it’s very linked to some of the places where the filming was made and the storyline… Eek… well, what I will say about it, is that I worked on a lot of stuff there.  A lot, a lot.  And even so, I’m still not quite healthy at this moment, cos I’ve got a cough that’s about to make my lungs come out my mouth…  and we all know what cough is, don’t we?  Resistance to make necessary changes in life; overwhelming feelings of worries, anxieties and stress… and being self-critical!  And when it comes directly from the throat: communication issues!! So then, if I worked out so much stuff in Glastonbury, why is it that I’m sick like this now?  Oh, the reasons, the many reasons!

Reason number one:  I’m a writer without a book to show for it.  Wait, what’s that?  I can’t hear you very well…  I do have a book?  No, I’m not forgetting what I’ve written, I just don’t have anything published yet…  Oh, I see… My Kindle book, you mean?  Books?  There’s two?  Then how come no one is reading them?  Yes, yes, I remember uploading the short story collection some time ago last week, but I haven’t announced it cos I have to change my bank details first, but more on that later…  Well, let me tell you this, most people who are reading this have already read my book as well, or at least bought it and been going thru it slowly, in case they’re using it to learn Spanish…  I have no problem with you lot, cos the support I’ve got from my readers so far was been very heartwarming; the problem is when I have to put myself out there so that I can actually start making money from it as well as the other ones which will be coming soon (you dear readers have been paying a little bit for my caffeine addiction, so yay and thank you, but I need to pay the rent as well, if you get my drift…?) (er, for that reason I have decided to go AdSense, and will have it on my other soon-to-come blogs, so I apologize to those of you who liked my blog clean-cut and free…  who knows, I might not even keep it…  Maybe I can make a living out of counseling, coaching, healing and organizing spaces… and then this will just have been a minor slip in my career… or I might not even go thru with it…)…  Anyhu, this means a whole lot when you’re given such a hard time at home because you stay in all day so that must mean you’re doing nothing and that must mean you should be doing the full clean-up of the house…  this coming from a person who tends to not be here for weeks on end, so has no idea that some days I am out all day, either with my writing, with lectures, or merely having heaps of fun running around London with my Sonic Screwdriver in my hand (whether we’re filming or not, lol).  But the problem is never just a single person, is it? 

Side note!  This morning she started screaming at our landlord thru our Home Whatsapp group, for no apparent reason, so yep, I know it’s not my problem, it’s hers, because she cannot quite deal with school stress as she put it in the thread, nor with having to balance two boyfriends…  Yes, so now not only is she an actress/singer/dancer/model who has no time to clean up the house and so asks the writer, who apparently stays in all day staring at the ceiling, to do so… but now she also has two boyfriends, when the writer has none.  My point is: it’s not my problem, and I have to let it go, cos there is no way that I can prove anything to her anyways, but also because she clearly has Drama Queen Disfunction… which, btw, cos I’ve heard her sing, I’m 100% sure she must be amazing at what she does, I was just expecting a bit of empathy, you know? Cos really, we artists thread the same path, she must have been where I am at some point in her life, right?  But this all just brings about:

Reason number two: when you actually have to tell people what you do for a living so that they can even consider renting you a room in their house, things get difficult…  See, this house I’m living in has been sold, which means that even everybody has to look for a new place.  Thing is, since the original plan was for me to go back to Mexico, apply for the visa, come back and do the training course and then set up my business, hooray, I was not even a little bit worried…  but it turned out to be a misunderstanding, because the woman that sent me the information said that I didn’t have to do the training course until after I had got the visa, when in fact the course is a major factor in getting the visa… if it hadn’t occurred to me to call her last week I might have never got the correct method of doing things, and all because I had that nagging feeling that I’d read it the other way around in the guidelines a few months ago…  turns out I was right, but apparently I wasn’t too clear on my question for her, either, cos she didn’t know I was flying back to apply now!  She’d understood that I’d go back, set up shop there for a year and then come back in the summer, do the training course, fly back to Mexico, apply for the visa, then come back and settle here again…  Anybody still with me?  Miscommunication issues… they can be brutal, I tell you… Well, because I called her last week, I got it sorted out, so I got the invitation to apply for the training course this October, cos the way she sees it, I’m already in the country anyway, with permit to remain until December, and I have gone so far with my business planning that I’m already crossing over to a further stage, one that people normally cross into *after* the training.  So, yeah, that’s how hard I’m working, even though I’ve got nothing physical to show for it.  Problem is, when I go house hunting and people ask me what I do for a living, I am having difficulty to stop myself from skidding. It was fine three months ago, when I was coming in to “do research for my novel over the summer”, but now it got complicated, cos I’ve also got the question “Well, didn’t they give you advance notice that you had to leave the house by a certain date?” (so I will stop saying that the house is being sold, I guess…  but then how do I answer the whole “Why are you leaving that house?” matter?).  These questions come forth because I’m basically trying to rent a room for less than three months, and people get a bit antsy with that, especially with the whole thing of, yeah, I’m a tourist and not earning anything… trust me, doesn´t matter how innocent my eyes look or how sweet my voice is, most people just do not like the fact that a potential illegal immigrant might be renting a room in their place… which is ironic, since 4 of the 5 people that I’ve seen are immigrants themselves, but that is not the point at all.  The point is that people want to feel safe in their homes, and having a potential illegal immigrant artist/hippy healer in a room in their house might not be the safest of bets…

Another side note: remember that I am living in a city that requires proof of address now for even the smallest of things, such as getting your money back for the three Oyster cards that you used last summer when you were a student and your parents came to visit… so, once again, nothing physical to prove I am even me!  Geez!

Now, I feel “the fear” because I crossed a borderline that I had no intention of crossing yet.  My original plan was to keep working until I could make my writings take flight, but as there was no success on the getting-a-job-after-graduation thing, now I’m swerving into self-employment.  It is the right thing to do in many ways, especially because I do have many skills that other jobs require but I don’t have the work-experience for, and also because I have really become an independent doer (hopefully soon an independent payer as well, yay!), so it makes a good life-style to manage your own schedule and other things… but when you have to explain that to people who you want to rent a room from, it gets weird, lol…  especially in a super-expensive country like this!  And when you’re 32 and living off your parents’ money, it just stops being funny, if it ever was… I struck a student loan kind of deal with them, so I’m at peace with it, but most people just hear, Yeah, parents’ money…

See, for me the easiest thing here would be to go back to not caring what people think of me, which is mostly a lot easier when you’re a student writing your first novel during class breaks and have purple hair, or when you’re a part-time teacher and are still writing that first novel, or when you’re a student again and everyone is more or less on the same page (and you’re writing a brand new novel, hooray!), but when you get to reason number 3, that’s when things fall apart a bit.  R3 for me is that feeling that everybody is going faster than me and that no matter how fast I run I am not even close to caching up with anyone…  Everybody else has jobs, houses, money coming in, are getting married (or are at least dating, which for me would be an enormous leap forward), and are even forming families.  And there are moments in my life, in my week, when I could not feel any lonelier, because I know that even if I’d wanted to be with someone, it doesn’t matter if they’re in the same city as me or not: everyone has their own full-life type of deal, and even though everyone says that I am quite the busy woman (which I am), I am certainly not the one to break appointments, I am not the one to keep saying “Yes, let’s meet such and such day” and then not even call to cancel so I could make other plans with other people that I am also hoping to see…  I mean, I do say it a lot: I am a writer so I have a very flexible schedule, but a) that does not mean I’m free 100% of the time, it just means “flexible schedule”, and b) not everyone else has a flexible schedule, so when someone leaves me hanging, I’m basically left alone for a Friday night or a Saturday night, when everyone else is out there, doing their own thing, with their partners or party friends and there is no space for me in there (I mean, if I wasn’t invited from the beginning what makes me think that I could self-invite, right? Everyone knows that I’m not a party person anyway, so who’d want to say “Come over if you don’t have any plans”.).  But it’s an all week kind of thing: lunch, dinner, coffee, you name it, people just go “Oh, you don’t mind, do you?”.  Truly not asking for pity here, just for empathy, cos it’s a truth that has to be said, and it just so happens that it is a returning conflict I have in Mexico, which makes me say even more Heck I want to stay here!  (It’s also happened here but like three times?)  Last time I left I even got a few of those people telling me that I had not paid enough attention to them and that they barely even saw me.  Excuse me? I called your cell, I texted, facebooked and whatsapped, what more do you want?  And now, I am putting my whole life out there, for all to see, on a daily basis, telling the world my news and trying to make myself be heard as a writer and the same people ask every once in a while: “Why are you forgetting me?  I haven’t heard any news from you in forever!”  That is, they get back to me only when I tag them in something or send a pm or whatever, and sometimes I instantly regret it because they answer back “What a miracle that you’re calling!”  Huh, but you haven’t called/written to me either, so is it a miracle that you’re answering, then?

Ohh ranty-panty today are we?  Well, I am 100% sure that I am offending none of you who are reading this, because as far I know, you are those who have been truly supportive of me during this time, and I obviously got an amazing network of people all over the world and those people make me feel warm and cozy even though I might be lonely at times…  Most probably it’s because of you guys that I’ve actually come this far, and I can feel some of you turn back and pull me a bit (no one pushes me, cos believe me, I’m so so far behind…  but I feel a pull now and then, and that is what I need to keep going).

Aaaaand, if you’re a passer by coming in to read this, I must say, thank you for your time and thank you for your consideration…  Welcome to my head and I hope you stay.  I need to get myself some readers from outside of my inner circle, and that might take me a while, but if you’re one of them and are deciding to stay, thank you again and I will try to make it worth your while (maybe we’ll heal together, maybe I’ll just entertain you…  whichever way, I’m glad you’re here).

So, I got lost a bit with R3, but the gist of it is, how can I not care what people think of me, if that’s what my living arrangements, my possible future love life, my client base when I set up my business, and my reader numbers will AND are depending upon?  And just the fact that there are people far ahead of me even in North Carolina does nothing to help my nerves.  Yes, there is a reason to that sentence; I did not just overdose on Strepsils.  Thing is, I’ve been goin’ around tellin’ people I’m the first ever Lady Doctor, when there’s in fact another one, and she’s ginger too!  Whether who’s better than who is not the point (because there are tastes for all, so I worry not about that part), but rather that even when I feel I can finally say I’m doing something out of the ordinary, something out of true love for art, there is another one who’s already shown up and done that.  Story of everybody’s life’s you’ll say (heck I’m saying it to myself just now), but when you add that to the already huge pile of things I have to prove about myself, you’ve got a red-hot reason number 4 right there (pun partially intended).  And there are a few more, but I’ll just leave it here, cos I might zig-zag around these subjects for a few weeks anyway, at least until I can go Bling blig, shiny happy healing has arrived!, or until I find out how to really set up the healing blog and then let’s see if I move all of these incessant ramblings into there to be worked out in a fuller, more professional way…  and also, this links a lot into the Glastonbury entry I’ll set up in a few weeks, so there might be a bit of a déjà vu going around by then, lol… either way, I’ll stop now at R4 and see what other answers the Universe brings about :)

So, damn right I’m coughing, damn right I’m crying and damn right I’m scared out of my sixth sense (yep, even though every message that has reached me over the past year has been “trust yourself, what you believe to be true is actually true” and so on, this situation makes me weak at the knees, and not in the nice, warm I-just-saw-a-pretty-boy kind of way, but in the holly-crap-on-a cracker-I-can-barely-stand-I-am-so-weak-kind of way…), but that doesn’t mean I’m frozen, it just means that I’ll find a way to let it go and get the healing down right this time!

10 points for whoever got that one… oh, it was too easy, then?  That’s fine, I’m leavin’ it cos I like it!

Cheers world, and may the healing reach you whenever you need it too!

 

Simplemente soy...

Hace varios años, como parte de mi terapia, una psicóloga me preguntó que quién soy yo…  La respuesta que surgió fue un poema, el cual lo único que logró en terapia fue hacer que la psicóloga me pidiera que fuera más concisa y que no le diera vueltas al asunto, jajaja…  Ahora, nunca he pretendido ser poeta, y estoy consciente de que este escrito en particular es muy repetitivo, pero aún hoy pienso que responde muy bien a la pregunta, sobre todo porque se me consignó no poner que soy escritora porque eso es mi “profesión”, o que soy mujer porque eso es mi “sexo”, o que soy “hija de” alguien o que soy “una soñadora” o que “me gusta tal o cual cosa”…  Puse todo eso y más, porque en definitiva, y considerando que la semana pasada hice referencia a todas las partes de mí que me constituyen y de las cuales estoy formada, eso es lo que soy... y por eso este poema se ha ganado su lugar en esta entrada el día de hoy…  Disfruten :)

¿Quién soy yo?

Después de estar pensando en esta pregunta por días y días, estas palabras comenzaron a fluir desbordantemente de último minuto. (Lunes 6 de julio de 2010).

Soy cantar,

Soy ilusión.

Soy pensar, soy reír, soy diversión.

Soy mis senos, mi cara y mi cabello,

                mis caderas, mis brazos y mis piernas.

Soy la mar y soy la sierra,

Soy la mirada orgullosa del espejo,

Soy canción, soy poema y soy novela,

Soy luz, soy sombra y soy la nube pasajera.

Soy lucero, crepúsculo y todo lo intermedio.

Soy talento, soy amiga y soy maestra,

                aunque no sé qué clases doy.

Soy ave, soy gato, soy ciervo en el bosque callado.

Soy color, soy amor,

pero nunca, nunca soy dolor.

Soy niña, mujer y diosa,

                seré anciana alguna vez,

                mas siempre con alegría y juventud.

Soy hija, hermana,

                prima, sobrina, nieta,

quizás madre futura de otro ser,

esposa (esperemos) seré cuando lo decida yo.

Soy manto estrellado que cubre la tierra,

Soy Luna, soy Venus, soy Sol.

Soy fineza, soy ternura y soy romance,

Soy el viento, la lluvia, la llama dorada y la tierra bajo mis pies.

Soy mi voz, soy mis sueños, soy razón,

Soy un beso apasionado y soy caricia de mis manos.

Soy el oro, soy la plata,

soy diamante, soy rubí, soy esmeralda,

                soy el cuarzo curativo y soy mil piedras trabajadas.

Soy susurro, carcajada,

                El tambor, el violín y la guitarra.

Soy contradicción, enero y agosto,

                soy salud, libertad y comprensión,

                y soy también la clara luz de mi intuición.

No importa cuántos cambios haga,

                soy siempre, siempre, siempre yo.

Yo soy, nada más y nada menos,

Aquella mujer que siempre soy.

 

Being happy with oneself means...

So, here’s the deal…  these days, every time someone complains about being single, there are a great deal of answers coming their way about loving oneself first and all that…  there’s quotations form great authors or philosophers or psychologists saying it; there’s pictures with the lines and maybe a butterfly or a meadow or a young woman smelling a flower or running down the meadow…  there are conferences about it, and they cost a lot…  there are workshops and therapies and books and CDs and YouTube videos about it…  We covered a little bit about that a few entries ago, right?  Well, I am going to expand on that, going rather into the whole “key to be happy in your life” thing that the free-to-over-expensive advice gives us in every media:  Love yourself.  Forgive yourself.  Accept yourself. Know and trust that you deserve only good things!

Well, World, let me ask you a question, how about you stop TELLING US those wise words and let us START SHOWING that we do believe in ourselves for once…

What do I mean?  Very simple…   I will begin my answer with an anecdote: about a year back I had been writing my news about my masters to my family and friends, and even though sometimes I went through rough patches, I decided to focus on the positive rather than complain about certain things that I knew would only worry people and bring about a bunch of questions that I did not have the energy or time to answer…  We all do that at certain points; it’s not about saying things to make others happy, but about avoiding subjects that might stall your own progress by focusing on the negative answers rather than using the law of attraction (hence the need to be positive when we communicate).  So, the thing was, someone that I love very very dearly told me to stop doing that; that it made me seem like I was trying to convince myself as well as others that I was happy…  and then there is that thing about not letting the world know about your happinesses and joys because envies rise way too easily…  have you heard any of that…?

I’ll add to it what I’ve been told a lot lately: that I am being arrogant, cocky and egotistical whenever I say that I know I deserve good things because I am a pretty darn good woman…  Now people are telling me to be more humble, after about 25 years of giving me the same speech as the ones on the first paragraph of this entry.  I have said many times throughout these six and a half years that the reason I was in the relationship that destroyed my life was because I believed I was not worthy of a good man, so I stuck with the bad one I had because I thought that otherwise I would be alone forever…  I have also said, many, many times, that the reason I got my life back was because one day it hit me that I did deserve someone, not only better, but as awesome as I was, because I was quite awesome even then!  Yes, hiding away in a violent relationship, overweight to the point of obesity, with acne problems that I’m still trying to fix, even then, I was awesome because I had my personality and hopes and dreams (and even a bit of hidden beauty), and I saw it and I ran for dear life.  Now, tell me folks, if that’s not loving oneself, then what is it?

Thing is, by then I had already done many of the workshops that gave me the tools to fight my illness off, and I had been in therapy and medication for a while, so I *know* all of that helped, but I also know that it wouldn’t have helped if I hadn’t had the force of will to continue pushing through.  Why am I saying all this?  Because I am in that time of life when one goes “Holy crap, I’ve been doing this for over half my life now!”, and that “this” means healing.  But (yet another but) because society tells me it’s wrong to boast about my happiness with myself and how far I’ve come and how for the past four-five years I have actually become the person I wish to become and that those little things that I don’t like about myself do not annoy me as much anymore because I am doing something active to CHANGE that about myself, then I’m going to take a different approach:  I’m going to lower my head and talk about all the things I am not enough of, because that’s what we should do, right? In order not to raise envies and all that?

So, then, because I’ve just mentioned the weight and meds thing I will star with that: I am not sexy enough because I haven’t fully got rid of the medicine-induced overweight.  But I’m also not fat enough to be considered even a “gordibuena” (oh, I just realized this entry should have been written in Spanish… er, mental note to add it to the “at some point to be translated” list! Lol). Oh, translation? “Fatty-but-hottie?” No idea, cos “Curvy” just means something else, and that definitely I am, just not lean enough to be sensual, gosh.

An easy one now: I’m not geeky enough to be a geek cos I have no working understanding of science or computers.  But I’m also not feminine or glamorous enough cos I’m obsessed with geeky Fandom things.

Then the oh-so dreaded question that so so so so so so many people ask me here:  where am I from?  Well, I’m not Mexican enough to be Mexican, that was very plainly made known to me years and years back in school and the streets and nightclubs and basically anywhere in that country…  Still, I was never American enough, either, cos I lived in Ann Arbor only two years, even though they were 100% central to my creativity going BOOM!  I am certainly not Italian enough cos I never really got the hang of it, not after the few months I was there… and not British enough –get this- for the very same reasons I’m not Mexican enough… ha!  Yep, that is the irony which holds my life together.  (Er, the reasons are the ones in the nightclubs and streets a bit as well, so you might get the drift).

Ugh, you win, I will talk about it… I don’t like to party, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to have fun…  Fun means a different thing to everyone!  And just because I don’t like to be in a place where the music is so loud that you can’t talk to people or where there are half-naked women prancing around and stealing the glances of every man that I could have been interested in, or that I really really don’t like the feeling of alcohol in my body, does not mean that I do not know how to have fun, or that I don’t know how to live.  It means that I have always had fun in my very own way, with my books and my fantastic stories during play-time in my childhood and teens and twenties and still now…  To me, frank laughter is way more important than dancing all night, and I fully accept that part of me… No, I’m fully PROUD of that part of me, and suddenly it turns out that it’s not okay to say it?

If you look at my list, I am every bit of those things I said I’ve been told I’m not enough of… well, except fat now, yay, I’ve been losing inches like it’s 1999… wait, no, wrong Pop Culture reference…  Agh, my mind is a slip’n’slide, if you don’t know that about me by now, you will never ever know me…  Ha!  Nailed it!  Um, coming back to the matter at hand:  yes, of course I’m sexy, and I am very confident in my sexuality; just because I don’t fit into size (Erm) does not mean I am not comfortable.  Just because I don’t want to say the size does not mean I am lying, it just means I have enough common sense not to let the law of attraction get the wrong idea… yes, I still need to work on some areas of my body, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, or that I have never loved it… maybe it took me a while to accept the fat, but that never meant that I’d stopped loving myself.  Actually, I’m curvy and I like it!

Then there is the geeky thing… some people have told me recently that I am just saying that I’m a geek because today is, like, cool to be a geek, you know? but that since science does not fit in my head and electronics tend to stop working at my touch, then I should not say I am a geek…  Excuse me, seventeen years of school-bullying say otherwise, AND it’s the purple hair all over again…  Me in purple, pink, blue, sometimes all three colours in my hair, being stared at in Durango, called names, criticized to the point of no return. And the day Shakira comes out with her video in the purple WIG, people turn to me and go: “Oh, you look so *modern*, so *in fashion*!”.  Now you see where I’m getting at?  And, no, a full nerd I never was (I think I’ve mentioned), because my grades were never the best, although they were usually in the higher end of the class spectrum, and I tended to be teacher’s pet high and low…  So, how could I not embrace that part of me?  That’s the only part of me that I’ve fully, truly loved and embraced during my whole life, even when I went through the low-self-esteem that drove me otherwise…

And then comes the other side of the coin, the one that makes me embarrassed sometimes because there is simply no period of my life now when I don’t have one foot or the other in my mouth… I keep saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment, and though it usually sounds brilliantly funny in my head, people just stare at me blankly or opt for ignoring me…  Now, I am a hell of a lot more glamorous than I’ve ever been in my life, but every once in a while I get sooooo looked down by professional women, or actresses or dancers, or all-in-ones…  Gladly I have learned to push that aside (it normally stays aside for a while, then comes back in those times when one gets a touch of the blues or so, but puh-lease, who doesn’t fall back on little insecurities now and then?).  Truth is, I’ve come such a long way from the girl who dressed like a boy in high school to the woman who is described as trendy, flirty, sexy, stunning, and, yes, glamorous, by her friends now.  And I’m proud of it!

Now you see why I took the second approach?  In putting my head down I was able to tell it like it is once again in here… it’s not about trying to convince anybody, and certainly not about playing the victim!  I don’t shed even a single tear anymore for the many mistakes and big or small traumas that made me fall really low at other moments in my life…  and I don’t shed them because I have been healing for over half my life for god and the goddess’ sakes…  I mean, what would be the point of learning all of that stuff and going so far on the healing path if we’re never allowed to say we’re okay, right?  Everyone should start thinking like this…!  (Well, NLP says that we should stop using the word “should”, but I think in this case we should use it!) (Wait, what? Lol) (Think about it, if we all think that it’s okay to show people how happy we are with whom we’re becoming, the world would be a more positive place altogether…  And I’m not talking about flaunting or arrogance, because that implies that the person doing it is looking down at the rest, and that is not the point!  The point is that we should all be allowed to feel peace and freedom with who we are, without fear of being judged or criticized by others…   And I know there are soooo many people who already do that, including many many of you, lovely readers, but what if we spread the word? Let’s just try it, and see what happens…

Bye for now and keep your amazing selves being amazing…

 

Wait, what?  That I cannot leave without saying what…?  Oh, that, yeah, no, I was not forgetting, I was just avoiding it for the time being…  The whole Mexican vs. British thing, sigh.  It’s so hard to find the words.  I have them in my brain, but they’re encrypted somehow… give me a week and I’ll get back to you on that…  I just hope that by now it’s perfectly clear that I love being both and that it was never a matter of disdain, right?  I should have made myself clear on that by now…  I will expand next time. Promise!

Have you all a lovely weekend!

Cheers!