Tag Archives: family

Moving Through Death and Disappointments

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An ex of mine became a believer in the message behind the book The Secret. You know, believe something is yours and it will be. Your thoughts can manifest things into reality. While I never really bought into this and thought he had been smoking too much weed, one of the things I really tried to engage with in February was positive thinking and countering negative self-talk as soon as it came up in the back of my head. While I think that it takes more than positive affirmations to change your life, I’m sure that buying into a “woe is me” mentality isn’t healthy.

So I reminded myself everyday that I’m a good mami. I’m a good partner. I’m a good writer. That there is enough time for me to do what I need to do. That there are enough resources for me. That my next home would have an avocado tree. That I’m a good daughter and that I deserve to have good things in my life.

But then sometimes life has other plans.

My titi, the youngest of my mother’s remaining sisters, was struggling with cancer that was quickly worsening. Hospital and home visits were spread among various family members until she passed away, exactly three years to the day that her mother died, a month shy of three years since another sister passed away from cancer. Dealing with death and the morbid logistics of death are hard enough. Throw in dysfunctional family dynamics. All I wanted to do was sleep but that is not an option with two kids and a long distance relationship to tend to.

So I pushed on. I didn’t make it to the next round of a fellowship I applied for. One writing gig I got excited about didn’t pay. The other writing offer I celebrated as a validation was put on hold because of the state of print journalism.

My relationship with my pareja is wonderful but so hard. My kids are great and doing well in school but my five year old never seems to shut up and my 14 year old is lazy.

Enter more negative self talk.

I don’t want to believe that I have a black cloud hanging over me or that everything in my life is destined to be hard/a struggle but damnit it sure as hell feels that way.

But I do have two more fellowships I applied for. I’m still healthy. I am loved and there’s a house with an avocado tree waiting for me.

Sin Llaves

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Handing over those three metal keys, separated for the first time in five years, from a family of keys that included the keys to my mother’s apartment where I work and the key to my pareja’s house on the other side of the country, felt like a defeat. It felt like an acknowledgement of my failure as an independent adult woman. It was ad admission of my inability to keep a roof over my daughters’ heads. I walked down a street, that wasn’t particularly a beautiful street, it was crowded with garbage and people, and tears filled my eyes. I had walked down that street so many times in my life. When I was in High School, I walked down that street in the opposite direction, to the house where I lived with my father, his wife, and her daughter. Back then the Italian immigrants had (grudgingly) made room for the Dominican immigrants. Five years ago, I was 7 months pregnant, and I moved into my tiny one bedroom, with my then partner and my daughter. That street was no filled with Italians, Dominicans, and Mexican families. I knew every shop keeper and would wave and saludar a medio mundo everyday.

Three years ago, when we broke up, I was determined to keep my little apartment, with it’s leaky ceiling, loud neighbors, and occasional mice. Two days ago, I felt like I had surrendered.

My landlord and I parted ways with a chorus of apologies. They never did fix the leaks. I never seemed to be able to pay my rent on time and I bounced alot of checks.
“You’re a nice lady”, the husband of the husband and wife team told me.
And I left thinking they were a nice couple and in many ways they were. They never threatened to evict my little family, even as the rent came later and later and then in pieces.

On my ride on the 7 train to my mother’s, where I have temporarily moved my family into, I fell into deep sobbing surrounded by two big shopping bags of the last items that slept in Casa Mala : A vejigante mask, a box of chocolate cake mix, a Piri Thomas cd, among other things.

I don’t have keys to a home that is truly my own. In many ways I never did. I didn’t own the space that once was casa mala. Why do we even feel like we need to have/own space as opposed to share space? What is it about this place/country/society that makes it feel dirty to return to living with an extended version of family? Independence is praised and interdependence is looked upon as deficiency. Clearly I internalized some of these messages myself, even as I opened up casa mala to numerous friends.

There’s an overused saying about one door closing and another one opening. A donde los llaves que me quedan me llevan.