8 Reasons Why Mexicans Are 10 Times More Badass Than You Thought.

 By Amy Cazares

1.    They Don’t Speak English

      For real. Anyone who has studied the English language knows there are a billion ways to say “the cheese is old and moldy”, and only one certified prick English teacher to tell you how many ways you can say the same thing and still produce different meanings. You try changing that shit into Spanish and it just doesn’t translate. It just doesn’t. That’s because Spanish is a romance language and there is nothing romantic about old and moldy cheese. 

 

Not romantic.

      There’s no way to produce the same kind of faceless, vague, and cynical English humor in a language that is more direct with the flowing verbs and rhythmic nouns of Spanish. Doesn’t give a classless, crass person a whole lot of space for ambiguity or suggestive bully-ing because you have to take responsibility for what you’re saying when you say it in Spanish. French, too. In fact, probably all other languages that are not English.

2.    They Know How To Laugh At Their Own Expense. 

      In fact, they take pride in being able to laugh at their own follies because they know how to not take life so seriously. Mucho years before the economic crash, they were already passing around hand-me-down clothes, eating rice and beans, having family get-togethers and potlucks, and generally covering each other’s backs. 

 

Random strangers covering each other's backs in the mid-90s.

My cousin, Carmela, helping get my uncle's car out of the ditch.

      Friends, family, friends AND family. They are so damned happy that they take their life-celebrating selves to the cemeteries and share that love and support with their deceased loved ones on the Day of the Dead. They know it’s important to remember everyone, lest their loved ones suffer the “second death,” or be forgotten. Comfort and joy is much easier to come by because they are always together, working together, supporting each other. Life is centered around the kitchen, as a matter of fact. Working together produces a warmer environment. A warm environment produces the feeling of safety. Safety therefore produces a lighter, uplifted feeling of overall reduced life burden because they are sharing and relating; and that produces laughter, because they are predisposed to an accepting environment no matter how much they fuck up. And they’re not speaking English. Awkward, nuance-riddled English.

3.    They Are The Awesomest Kind of Family To Have

        They are warm, accepting, non-judgmental, forgiving people. Period. End of story. Case in point...

"One of these things is doing its own thing, one of these just isn't the same..." 

One of these things grew up in the States.

       Nobody said a thing about the inappropriateness of my screwing around.

4.    They Are Not Pretensious 

        It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you’re going, or where you’ve been. There is absolutely no status. Not because it’s a way of deflecting American attitudes about their country off of them, but because they just do. not. care. They don’t give the least fuck about preconceived ideas because they have no preconceived ideas. 

"What was that? Sorry I was too busy being badass and sexy to 

give the least fuck about what you think of me."

        They are too busy taking care of their families, making kickass food, having parties, enjoying mariachi music, celebrating their culture, and speaking romantic languages to care. They are too busy being accepting and loving or at least being concerned with their own responsibilities to worry about things they cannot control.

Unless you are messing with family.

       Mexicans are very warm, welcoming people, whether from Guadalajara, Oaxaca, toward the northern states or southern peninsula; so it’s not that they don’t have room to be pricks or can’t be pricks, it’s just that it’s a far harder concept for them to grasp than, to say, your average fifteen-year-old-emo-minded, this-side-of-the-border 32-year old. Status cannot exist where it does not exist.

 

5.    They Make Kick-Ass Food and They Do Food RIGHT

        I’m NOT just talking about huevos rancheros and bean burritos. Chalupas, pozole, chile con carne, tamales, steaming hot corn cobs wrapped in hot sauce and lime at the vender stands (or elotes), and friggin' guacamole! Also most interesting are their candy. Tamarindo, cajeta. My brothers and I loved the novelties of tamarindo (think spicy Fruit Roll-Up being squeezed out of a Mop Top Hairshop Playdough head) and cajeta (cararmel/honey/peanut-buttery-type concoction) which came lined in wax paper inside a long, wooden oval-shaped coffin-looking containers.   

Abso-fucking-lutely delish

(Clockwise from top left: tamarindo, elote, bean burrito, cajeta, guacamole, cajeta agian, tamales, pozole, and chile con carne.)

        Traditional breakfasts kick some major cuisine butt with their stack of beans and a pile of rice alongside some eggs, shredded pork in mole sauce, and some steaming-hot, rolled up corn tortillas. Imagine if every kid in the States and Canada ate that before their big MAT6 test—we’d be ace-ing the crap out of standardized testing!

        Point is, the importance of breakfast is not lost on Mexicans. They do it right. The big-ass meal of the day is breakfast followed by mid-sized lunches and dinners, and finally a small bedtime snack. For example: sweet bread with warm milk. That sure is ass-backwards!  Dwindling calorie intake just before hibernating, rather than huge nightly feats? Preposterous!

6.    Never At A Loss For Words. 

        A giant nebula of sayings, parental wisdom, life-is-hard anecdotes, superstitions, and really, super good advice—which does for the soul what warm milk and sweet-bread at bedtime does for the tummy—have come from using absurd or comical imagery to make a point, in lieu of the more direct Nouns and Verbs. 

       “Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos” (“Breed crows and they will take out your eyes”) is a far more interesting way to say that actions will have consequences.  

        Not only is this a more colorful and easily-relatable way of expressing a classic truth, opinion, or mindset, but it really hits the memory record button in your brain. That shit is used by psychologists, counselors, and therapists to broaden the overall, perceived problems of a patient when basic, fundamental explanations don’t do enough to empower them. It makes a self-evident truth reachable.

 Simple math

7.    They Have Aztec Ancestry

        Before the Spanish came and conquered them by siding with the enemy, bringing over unwitting weapons of biological destruction (small pox), and shackin’ up with Aztec women, the Aztec empire was one to quite arguably rival that of the Byzantines. 

        Not only was their influence and power far reaching through most of what is current-day Mexico but they built aqueduct, civil, and agricultural systems that ensured a productive cycle of commerce and trade, opting for negotiation-style rule over military-enforced control. Their pyramids at their capital Tenochtitlan were ginormous and beautiful. 

        And, as the blend of European Spanish and Aztec cultures combined to give way to the race of people Mexicans are so proud to be, they took the pejorative “mestizo” (coined by the Spanish to indicate who was not of noble rank ---  part native and part European) and instead harnessed it as a proud, national identity. 

"In YO’ face! Trying to demoralize us, Spain--eat shit and die!"

Showin' some Mestizo pride.

        An identity so sweet and so evident in pride of their Aztec ancestry that it can be seen splattered across the canvas of Mexican culture even today—“El Día de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead) is derived from Aztec superstitions and the eagle on the cactus eating a snake in the middle of the Mexican flag comes straight from Aztec mythology.

8.    They Owned A Goooooood Chunk of the U.S. Back In the Day.

        Before American politicians manifest-destiny-ed their way across to the Pacific Ocean, Mexican territory lay considerably further north than the Rio Grande. By ‘good chunk’ I mean Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, up past Colorado, and into a southern strip of Wyoming. That is approximately over 1 million square miles of land*. 

To put it in comparison, the current-day United States stands at 3.79 million square miles in total. That means Mexicans owned one-THIRD of what is now the United States of America, on top of what is now Mexico. So maybe we need to rethink our definitions of legal and illegal aliens. Maybe if they wouldn’t have been so fresh off fighting for their independence from Spain and fighting off the French, they could have withstood the massacre coming from the States. Maybe the section of states which used to belong to Mexico would have stayed Mexico. Maybe a lot of things. Maybe they are just trying to go home!

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

Okay, let's back up a bit. Let's back way up. There's no way I'm going to get into the mystery of the Holy Trinity or any other mystery, or even get into the deeper strains of faith in the church or even in general until I get something off my chest.

Bigotry is the new catch-phrase for the insecure and self-conscious.

Think about it. There is an tumultuous, agitated, pouring outcry in society to be accepted, from kids in the schoolyard all the way to more controversial LGBT community, this not being a defined range, but all controversial within the context of what we see, experience, deal with, tolerate, opine about, etc. that even the honest Christians get the "B" word stapled to their heads when trying to stand up for what they believe. We--society, all of us--in our rants to be accepted, are slapping as many labels on ourselves as we are other people so that we feel recognized and acknowledged, to the degree that we are pointing fingers and looking everywhere but ourselves to put blame and not take responsibility for our hurts, our confusion, our anger. Or grouping good, honest Catholic Christians with the effed up, crazy, fundamentalist whacks. Or, at the very least, the Catholic Church getting the brunt of this societal divorce and becoming a whipping post for anyone who would disagree with her positions. But we don't need to be labeled! We just need to live our lives as we see fit and do the best we can in the light of the Great Creator. As long as we're trying, Our Lord will see this and he is going to have a good, enlightening discussion with each of us at the end of the road. He is the only judge we need to worry about. He knew the insides of our soul before we even thought of labels.

Furthermore, there is a difference between compassion/understanding/love/patience and 'tolerance', also the new throw-around catch word of the day. Dictionary.com defines tolerance as

1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.

2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own.

3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.

4. the act or capacity of enduring; endurance: My tolerance of noise is limited.

For the ones crying out loudest for justice, this definition only applies to them, but not of theirs toward the Church. That is also injustice. Or just plain not fair, is it now. Society wants freedom to practice whatever religion, mantra, zen-like thing they want---we want freedom to say whatever the hell we want, and we have that freedom, but we don't give others that freedom, and we certainly don't want to hear it if it disagrees with the feelings and opinions we've taken a lifetime to build. And sometimes we're just mean! Even people in the LGBT community! Not only does this hypocritical thing negate whatever peace-bringing thing we practice (or don't practice) or preach, but there is no respect for another's beliefs. So gay or straight, male or female, rich or poor, tolerance, as lukewarm and apathetic as it is, isn't even being applied by the ones who preach it. Then the word "bigot" gets thrown in there and well, if you're not one, it just gets old.

In some cases, some are just as intolerant of the Church's right to free speech as they accuse of the Church of being. And/or throw the entire intended meanings out the window, losing the context completely. (Like here and here.) When negative cycles like this get repeated, we are revisiting times that do, indeed, seem like the Dark Ages, because we're forgetting the whole return aspect of what you dole out. Like grade 6 logic appealing to the rest of the grade school-ers. The only difference being that instead of fighting a "no, I didn't, HE did" war, the kids have rejected the teacher altogether and so many of the ranks below them are in dispute. But there is still junior high and high school to go. It has become trendy and enlightened to buy every rearranged truth that is said under the umbrella of tolerance. It has become far less than unpopular to say that a homosexual lifestyle is a sin. But tolerance is the easy flip-word, negation to conviction. And it is just as humiliating to read and hear some of the things Christians say, from awkward wording all the way to right out bullshit. Let me be the first to say, even defending my church, that there are some pretty effed up people out there that claim to be Christian.

I can endure listening to thoughts, feelings, and opinions that differ---even greatly---from my own, and love so many walks of life as though they were my own (just ask my Mexican father, my Quebecois boyfriend, my Norwegian mother, my colleagues, my friends), but your freedom ends where mine begins and one of the choices I have in exercising my boundaries (besides abandoning literature and self-education--um, that's a no-go) is to stand up TO the craziness, stand up for what I believe, in a way that is whole-hearted and passionate, not to the point of bashing it down your throat, but not backing down because this aspect IS dying and church is struggling to make people understand her role in the grand role of Love Itself. I am damn near positive I'm not the only one who feels as I do. It is difficult for us to express these things in words and semantics that people will understand and accept, but then again we are only human. I hope there is leeway in that.

 
If we consider that true faith is a relationship with God, and if we consider that any relationship which you act on love and with regard to perfecting the way you love, it moves the relationship to greater and greater depths. Any good couples counselor will tell you that behavior not concerned with the health of the relationship will only eat at the relationship, and that we must become responsible for our hurts and attitudes which contribute to the health or the demise of the relationship. And that's what we have: a relationship with God. Whether we choose to engage or not, whether we grow up in one kind of home or another, whether we agree with it or not. Both sides must work on it, for the better of the whole relationship, whether the other side deserves it or not. And that is where Divine Law is already working. Agape love. The divine love that precludes any hurt or darkness. That is what God has for us, no matter what we do. (It's just that if we keep doing things that refuse Him, we are closing our hearts to his love, a cycle in which, if not stopped, can lead to eternal death.)

The Catholic Church is obliged to uphold these laws in the way that a spouse or lover is obliged to do things for his or her partner--out of love, devotion, loyalty, commitment, and deeply spirited desire. It's not about being God's little grunts and do so out of miserable duty. It's about choosing to love Him back! And doing the things we would do for our spouse/partner out of love. The historical, problematic part of the church is that she is made up of humans and her spouse is the Savior and humans always want God to bend to their will. It doesn't work like that. Whether or not you live by karma, The Golden Rule, cause-and-effect, or any such reciprocal principle, it is about loving accountability to a loving God, who is compassionate, merciful, and forgiving, but not subject to us, our creations, our rules. Right. Now. We are his creation, subject to Him. We are the ones who change, flex, move, bend, not Him. It is us that need to grow into his love, not his into ours. We are the ones who have to split our guts working on the deepest parts of our love because where we work, we grow; where we grow, we have pain; where we have pain, we can more easily identify with someone else; and when we can do that, we are on our way to loving the way God intended us to love one another.This also means trying to help all of our indignant, angry brothers and sisters understand that 1) we love them SO much, we want them to take part in our community of brothers and sisters, no matter their orientation; and 2) rules suck, but because of the Galileo incident, we know the church CAN grow and can fix old thoughts. Who is to say, on this earth, the church can't change and that there is no hope? Your own hope to live your life the way you want to is the very hope we have that if it's meant to be, it WILL happen.

But let it be known that it is not right on either side to get extreme of go full-throttle against the other without understanding and compassion.


Also, remember this addage? "When you point, three fingers are pointing back at you." We are all sinners. Duh. There are more than a few of us living in sin in a plethora of counts across the board. What about the man living with a divorced woman? The woman having an affair with a co-worker? The gazillion couples having sex before marriage? The point? Don't judge. No matter what your creed, your side, your argument. Stand up for what you believe but don't be an ass. What all of us sinners forget as we cry out against perceived injustice is that we all do crap that offends God. All. The. Time. But he still looks at us with love in his heart because he IS love there is a whole order of business of Him waiting for us to love Him back. He wants us to grow. The very definition of love includes growth. But he is not a lazy or trendy god. He is the god of all the ages, the sole creator (via evolution, yes) and not prone to OUR rules. The ones most outraged by the church's doctrines and papal declarations are neglecting to own--because it is very painful to not always live as we would choose--that life in God IS painful because growth IS painful/awkward/uncomfortable; and... that human interpretation of divine-anything is going to be prone to flaw by the very nature of being human. I am NOT saying you can grow out of homosexuality--that is just wrong. What I'm saying is that we can and should try to live in harmony of our choices and God's desires for us side-by-side until we've exhausted our every effort to live a full and holy life. There needs to be the same understanding for each side to any argument or issue, which is never easy and quite often impossible as there are many angles of a heated topic as there are individuals--and we ALL have our own, unique levels of love and of angst.

And so, when truly bigoted people say bigot-ey things in the name of Christianity, it makes me want to puke. But so does taking messages and addresses out of context. It is our job to hold our brothers responsible, but it is important to do so in a way that is in the way that Jesus would. And how was that? Certainly not being a push-over, uber-tolerant, long-haired, tunic-wearing dude that was like "heyyy, I said this was the Golden Rule and these things were the most important commandents, but.... uh.... I'm gonna change 'em." No. He brought the spirit of the law back into the consciences of the crowds and put it in our eyes like a mirror, broaching controversy with a loving message, and not laying down waiting for people to roll over him. Eventually the message he was spreading--the good news--ticked off people so much it got him killed. Do we dare say that he brought it on himself or 'that's what he got for being a revoluationary'. No. They could not accept the new message. And even in all the ignorance to be born of all the ages since, none of the ages before his days on earth can claim to have the kind of growing intelligence and illumination that we have now. His way of thinking revolutionized philosophy.

As more people grow to be more up-in-arms about how the Church fits in or does not fit in to their lives, there will only be more persecution slung out of our mouths. I know, I was critical of church and religion in general in my twenties. I still can't understand some of the same things my straight and homosexual friends can't understand. But I am young, and we are young, and we are all subject to ultimate God-law (the law of love, Divine Law) whether we want to or not, which is not a law of tolerance but of love, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy. And the church is NOT what it was in the archaic past. (And before you go popping off about molestation, just shut your mouth and remember that all of us regular, normal Catholics were disgusted and mortified and wanted to hang and remove those priests ourselves, and that they do NOT represent the real heart of our blessed church.) Part of that law of love is our individual free will on this earth, but ultimately we have to answer to a loving god for why our hearts are so hardened. Both sides of the equation. Forgiveness is the hardest thing to do or to come by but by far the most precious commodity.



(If you could read this, maybe you can try this one: The Gospel of Tolerance.)

The Holy Trinity

Speaking from a strictly personal experience, I know this mystery is what sets us apart from other faiths, even other Christian faiths. Also, there are beautiful elements and qualities in other the world religions that set them apart from the world, too, but this, along with transubstantiation, is what really marks us catholics apart from all others.

It's the mystery of three persons in one. 

Before anyone starts going crazy on me, I'm not really one to be talking about this in length as I am just a mere layperson in the context of worldly scholars, studied theologians, and various experts. And, if anyone has read any number of my posts, they would know that I am not a saint. I am not even backed up on my scriptures, and I struggle with my own things just like everyone else.

Also, I suck at explaining.

But in trying this out, in stepping into territory that I am wondering/starting to believe was part of my call here on earth due to the abilities I have been given (yes, acquired--but then, from whom do they come?), I branch out here. I try to explore the beliefs I have come to know here, the way one explores the traits of a most trusted friend, to offer my meager contribution to the plethora of opinions, beliefs, and even precepts that are out there (and perhaps explain why ours are there---the universal Church of Christ aka the Catholic Church.)

I don't do this to convince, either, because I have already wasted too much time trying to awkwardly share my thoughts before and ended up leaning too heavily to the convince-the-proverbial (theoretical) audience side. And for my part, it causing pandemic confusion at times and simply funny looks at others. Past efforts have been wasted, depending on the reason from where I wrote something or on another's ability to understand, and I, for one, am done with it.

I don't do this to convince, either, because I have never been one to push my thoughts and feelings down someone's throat. What's more, is that I have been surrounded in the past or immersed into situations where I am the one getting ideas shoved down her throat. I don't want to do that to others. I want to stand up for what I believe, I want to demonstrate the strength and the force with which I believe because I came to be lukewarm in my testimony, but without infringing on the freewill others.

In addition, if I believe in what I am sharing, and the proverbial audience is to be changed (or at least contemplative), then it will not be because I am so good at my job. It will not be because I am brilliantly persuasive or because I have all the answers, because I'm not and I don't. If something is to be changed and I am talking from the heart, the words will speak for themselves, no matter my style of delivery or vocabulary or use of language. It will be because something else is reaching through my words in their honesty, and I will be responsible for the integrity of my words, but not their effect. The effect, which is what I tried so hard to control in the all the ways I used to write, is not something I can control, I have finally learned. It is the result of the soul recognizing a truth in another soul, which gives an interior brightness and clarity or simple understanding. And so it is, that if effect does come upon my words or after, it is He to whom I should give glory, whose spirit inspired even the smallest bit of understanding from any single member of a so-called reader crowd, and not myself, because anything good that comes only comes because it was made possible by a greater and more loving creator. In ever having told my story, my faith has been and will always be an integral part of it. The difference, I stress, is intention.

So, before I dive into the mystery of the Holy Trinity, I stop here, if only to collect my thoughts more and to make a humanly-flawed attempt at an introduction, after which, "discussion" of the mystery will resume. It is time. It is time to give glory to the One who has given us all.

Old thoughts, a letter never sent, good reading

Why would I want to go see what you bashed me with? On a site that I'm not interested in seeing? You tend to keep thinking I NEED help, when in reality, I've carved out a pretty hard ass road ALONE and acquired some pretty damned solid morals within my faith in spite of myself, keeping an open mind to all forms of wisdom: great works of art, of music, quotes worth immortalizing, literature.


I don't claim to have more wisdom than anyone or any 90-day program, but I find a very solid sense of the same things you are learning with this program in the skill set I already have and it just grates me that you keep telling me you think you know what I need. I think you just need to stick to knowing what you need because you're not very good at knowing what I need. Most of these programs are carved out of the same principles found in every good-moral book: the Torah, the Koran, the Bible, even great philosophers and literature giants. I'm not trying to impress anyone, You. I'm done dancing to the tune of everyone else's fiddle, and...


...just what am I supposed to do about everybody's hate? I will eventually have to go back sooner or later, and when that transpires, everyone's just gonna have to get over it sooner or later because the people MOST immediately affected by my oh-so-demonic move are already moving on. Also, I'm just not worth the hassle. They are not the ones I screwed over! I'm not divorcing them, I'm not tearing up their relationships, I'm not ruining their lives. The people who still hate me have a responsibility, like it or not, to tell me directly, to approach me, to confront me about, or shut the hell up. I don't want to be mean, but I am physically exhausted and emotionally drained from all the ways other people have felt so entitled to be that angry that even in their ANGER they try to control what they cannot because they lack compassion and understanding in spades. Even in seeing just how and what I brought on myself, here, even now, all these thousands of miles away, this truth cannot be veiled.


I understand that their anger stems from being hurt, confused, misunderstanding, hell even cultural differences and I can't blame them. I can't begin to tell you the torment I've felt over this, the hot tears I've cried, the soul-wracking sobs that come from being 1 person who suffers the opinions of many, but what does you telling me about everyone hating me do for anyone? Does it make you feel better? Do you think you are telling me something I am not wholly and completely 100% aware of? Is it supposed to make me feel worse? Teach me a lesson? Bestow something else, anything else, any other morsel of fruitful bearing, wherein it would just be better to move on? What good does it produce? How does it help you or me or anyone move on, feel better about the things that have transpired or heal deep wounds?


Hurt? Hell yeah, I understand that one. Pissed, yeah, for sure. But telling me not to come back? I still have reasons to come back and if you don't want to be one of them, I can and will respect that, but taking suggestions that don't really come out for my well-being is exactly the suffocating thing that I defied by leaving. All the friends that were close to me/us were friends first and foremost because they had important traits/qualities we found in each other worth saving, worth investing, worth smiling and laughing about, telling jokes, celebrating with. I'll take anything they have to say. But no one is going to tell me how to be me.


As for the lingering gossipy few, there are plenty of lakes around for them to take a long walk off a short pier. Everyone in that area of the world has something to say and I, for one, am not going to walk around like Hester Prinn with the scarlet letter branded to my forehead on account that I'm some abhorrent troll. In fact, I'm not even going to walk around as the least or the most of anything. I will not give a shit. Any. More. The very same noses that have been needlessly, bit-grabbingly poking up into my business up 'till now are all the very same noses that were okay to love me as long as I was doing exactly.... what.... they wanted. And you know what? None of them were around when I needed to talk and none of them stood by me along the way. I didn't make the move I did to protect and gainfully keep any semblage of popularity. The question is: why do YOU care if people hate me?


And as a last-ditch effort, I defend myself. If what I did, by leaving, was so horrible, then what about the good things I left there? Why isn't anyone thinking, well, you know, she was a good woman in X, Y, Z regard or remember the good things, or---for crying out loud---my children! Even though there was probably some silent, collective cheer when my girls went back to live with their father, I can tell you he didn't raise those girls all by himself and they didn't get to be sweet, spunky people that all my friends and all the nose-pickers claim to have say over without their mother! In fact, far from it. And. I was a good waitress. I used to teach there. I made friends from every gammut and circle I crossed. I was reliable. I threw my all into anything musical. I was a fairly productive member of society there. Everyone USED to like me. I knew I would have a lot of explaining to do, that my motion was severe, that it would sever many ties, but only did I expect to answer to those closest to me. I already committed far more than my share of energy in treating everyone with acute equality and niceness (even if they didn't deserve it) in attempting to get along with anyone at all costs. I'm done with it.


If not the past, if the good things I did in the past are somehow now negated, then so be it. I won't point out that I sent my girls to live thousands of miles away with their father pending a whole year. I won't mention that it was me respecting their choice. I won't point out that I could have made any number of battles for keeping them with me, could have made one vague excuse after another and won. I won't point out that I have come to rearrange my whole life around his job so that the girls will have parents that aren't split by plane tickets and geography. I won't point what a superiorly royal bitch I could have really been and wasn't.


The fact is and still remains that no one knew what was going on behind closed doors and worse, no one cared when I tried to even approach the subject. Just toss, toss, toss it under the rug. Don't talk about it, it's not that bad, it's not what you think it is, you're not thinking about it right. Ad nauseum.


People didn't see and people didn't care, so people didn't have a right to judge. The timing of it was messed, the action severe, but I point out: you didn't really give all that much a whoop anyway. But as I sat here once, with all the steaming hot indignation I felt, I couldn't help but see the ironic injustice of it all. All those who yelled at me from their social thrones on high, from their bacteria-cultured cells, through Facebook, behind my back (thanks for telling me)---the ones so hellbent to pin me to the wall---weren't there for the least or the most of the previous 12 years. None of them, not one, dropped by to help out when I was a single mom, alone and scared. Didn't come in to say hello when I had a dearly beloved husband sick and dying in the hospital. No one uttered a word of sympathy or pity in the whole existence of an altered life with an incapacitated husband, nor appreciation. Barely a word or gesture or measure of greeting, understanding, compassion at any single moment or angle of grief in my worst moments and muted support at the best. I wish I were exaggerating.


So then who.... tell me..... was there? Who could have possibly taken my hand and been able to give me the kind of real help and support and/or shove in the right direction I needed? Who was going to be willing to to be loving to me before my adjusted way of living went so far off track that I really felt like there was no one? How could anyone not of dedicated stamina help me figure it all out without exacerbating the world I made for myself? Who was there to think of anymore when I had no one? And who was going to help me so long as I was not willing to help myself?


No matter how many "shouldas" and "wouldas" and "couldas" that are infinitesimally born of the one and same problem, the fact is that I couldn't believe how changed things had become and I just finally had enough. I was fed up with being the kind of woman I swore I'd never become.

Prince William And Kate Middleton

At the start of July, after picking up the girls at June’s end, visiting Vieux Montreal the same day and seeing the jazz festival being set up, characters on stilts, paintings on sidewalks, water fountains, charming town squares, sex shops (oh yes, quite the education for my girls who merely only saw the words over a business door and blushed—no, we did not go in! What kind of mother do you think I am?), novelty boutiques, and Chinatown, we left Marc in Saguenay for work and went to Levis to see the prince and his bride for their first of appearances in their Canada tour.

We waited a total of about 9 hours to see them, at least 5 of those unnecessary as we came WAY early in the morning to make sure we got a good spot and noticed that we could have come a lot later. Still, it was good to be safe, and finally after about eight or nine hours, they came into the barred-off circle of people, a crowd of probably four- to five-thousand people, and shook hands with as many people as their security team would let them, Prince William taking the far side, Kate Middleton coming around our side, who the girls wanted to see more.

I let two other little girls with flowers, whose mother I had been talking to for the afternoon, go in front of me to share the front-row space with my girls and all four of their faces were all over the newspapers the following day, and the television news. Marc had seen us all on the live coverage at work and had been super excited and jumping up and down.

Waiting outside the fort doors at Levis, QC. It was quiet for quite a while.

The girls were beside themselves when Kate finally made it around to them, and from what I could see, Ms. Middleton was very gracious. I really have to say it was nice to see someone exhibit a down-to-earthness that seems so easily lost on celebrities, at least from all the testimonies I’ve ever read about famous people who lose it or who are such jerks in person, and especially because up until that day, I really couldn’t see the relevance of the British royal family. However, I could definitely sense that she was just being a person who “happened” upon celebrity status, rather than being an altered ego of herself, like stars or celebrities or are driven by the sensationalism of their own career. And I am happy to admit that I can see that what Kate Middleton brings back to the royal family is something very akin to hope for future generations. With a rather classy, classic style, she is a new, refreshing kind of role model for young girls; and she seems to be as in awe of her status and reception as her fans are. What’s more is that it’s exciting, especially as a mother, to have such a wholesome thing to look up to. Yes, I can say I’m happy to be a convert, if only because it made me realize how cynical my attitudes have become.

So, Why The Do-Over Do-Over

I had originally attempted to answer this question in another post, but ended up getting off subject in the worst way. Mainly, the emotional way. Nevertheless, I realized almost right away that my post entry had way less to do with the answer to that question than the emotions and defenses I was feeling at the time.

But rather than focus on just how embarrassing it was (somewhat still is), or how I felt a certain integrity not to re-edit it because there’s a certain element of standing by a work, even if it is flawed; or how learning about saying what you mean and meaning what you say mixes in with the old habits of overcorrecting and likely met with a variety of personal reactions (of which I had plenty), I’d rather just say it here like I intended to originally.

Besides, if I corrected the old one, it wouldn’t show up as a new post here, but rather stay buried in the year-ago collection of blog posts and get lost; and I feel confident that it’s not going to really matter to the least of my critics, nor do I care if it does—I just want to be able to look back and be satisfied to reread that I addressed it.

So, question. Why, I was asked, did I even have a do-over wedding-type shindig only to leave my husband 8 months later. How could I even think about doing that when so many people were present to witness the celebratory wedding we never had. It has been one of the top most lingering questions to keep surfacing this last year. It wasn’t just the one question itself, but also all what the answer represented, and a rather decisive maneuver to address it on my blog when I finally could answer it fully and honestly.

Answer. Number One. (And keep in mind, this was NOT an easy answer, nor an easy decision to come to in the very first place.) It was the quickest way to put a whole big patch over the whole thing. All the problems we were having. All the problems we were pushing under the rug. All the problems I tried bringing to the table and we never fixed. All the problems we tried scooping under the rug and never got counseling for. All the problems that bled into new ones, bigger ones, problems that we didn’t bring into our own lives (cancer and medical) breaching into ones that we did (too long a list now). Problems that metastasized into big, leprous, itchy tumors. Problems that caused us to consider divorce, not once, not twice, but at least three serious occasions in the past and in front of friends. Flatlined moments only dug out of long enough to fool myself back into the shredded union.

Number Two. I never thought, in probably a million years, that my life would flip over upside down on its head just months after. I was just not looking at the situation in my marriage honestly and was desperate to hide it, change it, make it work somehow, feel renewed, and give each other amnesty. I was hellbent on making it work ‘till the day I died, even resolving to be a Stepford wife if need be. I would take the final swallow in choking down what was left of me and operate at a shell level until the girls graduated and only reserve the real stuff for them (because it was the only way to compensate what K refused to give me--passion.) In many ways, I was like the wife of the alcoholic back in the day—the one who convinces herself that it will still work, that the terrible things going on inside her marriage only exist for a “tiny” reason, and compartmentalizes the situation so she can put it “over there” for an unspecified amount of time, until the next time. Only we were both part of the problem and I was compartmentalizing for two people—me and him. And I wouldn’t discover how bad it was or how hard I was working to choke it all down until I met someone who was able to drag me out from under all the layers of crap and point to the light.

Number Three. All of the layers of junk we had gone through, both inside and outside our marriage, whether it happened to us beyond our control or we brought it on ourselves in some way, was something I wanted to put behind us. I just wanted to really start over. I thought it was a great idea. I was inspired. I thought it would be a great way to throw away all the left-over ickies of life first afflicted with cancer and joint problems and then later infidelity. Or, like I said, a day of amnesty in our marriage and bumpy lives together. I wanted something normal and I really felt that it would be a good way to say a big ole “f*** you” to old attitudes, to people who couldn’t support us, nosy people, people who added to the demise of our relationship (including ourselves), and just celebrate something we never, ever had: a real wedding. I really believed that if we could give ourselves this treat, that we would feel more at liberty to be who we wanted to be with each other.

But….

It would take more than living in a small town and blaming everyone else to get past that. It would require a good, hard, honest look at myself. And it would take an even harder realization: that we already were what we were going to be, and that we contributed to our own demise. We had turned 180 degrees away from the day we got married.

Nothing can really happen without counseling and lots of support, which we received so little of, and when each of us had changed so much as a direct result of ignoring the issues. It was a small, isolated northern town with nowhere to go, nothing to do, very little aspirations, and people who care more about themselves than others or drinking themselves into oblivion. And where we had no family, no blood family anyway—the ones who love you regardless—people only can only go so far for you or, as in some cases, when there is something in it for them—like a snooping Tomcat or a glimpse at my boobs or ass, which I did nothing to bring on. Nothing. It was difficult to find help without judgment and we did not surround ourselves with people who could help us professionally or emotionally. Resources without traveling a good distance for them meant there was at least some risk of losing privacy, And we both had our own, separate hard times with reaching out to others. By the end, we didn’t know who to trust, and we only had ourselves to blame.

This I must say, though. Not every single person we met or knew there was like this, nor did they fit into this description, nor is it totally accurate or fair. But I am not talking about those people, and there were quite enough of the kind that did fit this description to make it difficult to live in a community where we, as a couple, depended on a support system that consisted of friends who could be as fickle as the wind and/or in no way obligated to us. Family absolutely mattered but ours continued to be far away and in the background, and we were only family to friends until their real family came home for the holidays. By the end, I just gave up trying to talk to people.

It should have been a sign in and of itself that I was not putting out the kind of quality person I wanted to be surrounded with by being defeatist about the things I could have done to save our marriage, but I had become so very tired of taking on more than half of the quality control for our union and excessive guilt three times over that I finally quit owning all the guilt of the whole marriage and started living like a person that knows it takes two to make it work. I just wanted to strip down the appearances we made even to each other and live a real life. I wanted K to make the call to the counselor, the psychologist who came in once a month from the teacher’s union. I wanted him to be the one to put in a last ditch effort to save us. To help me help us. To take some responsibility in an emotional matter. I wanted him to take the reins for a while, but not just in tasks, but in love and in passion.

But it takes two people to want this. Love is an action word. Be it that I’ve made mistakes—Lord knows I’m no angel—I know what devotion is; and I know that even in spite of myself, I backed up my fluffy words with actions. Anyone who can say that simply providing the basic necessities should suffice, well I would say I tried—oh god how I tried—to make it be enough, but it just doesn’t. Not for this girl, not for most passionate women. Not for me. It was not an easy decision to make.

And finally, when I could no longer deny it and no longer wanted to, I left. Bam. Just like that. Because it was my choice and because I’m a grown-ass woman (as my father might say.) Because I honestly didn’t think people would give two shits. Because people with family there just don’t realize how lucky they are. Because I was tired of haggling all of this AND my place in society without so much of a bottom line, a safety net, a support system, or a family. Because I was tired of allowing everyone else to make decisions for me. Because, as stupid as it sounds now, I thought it would be good that K wasn’t left alone. (In terms of the night I actually left, which itself hadn’t gone like I’d planned.) But most of all, because I was tired of grieving over my other half letting me go like a trap door on a stage long before I decided to leave and not caring about it, even when I brought it to the table as a concern.

Be it erred thinking or truths in reality based on perception, all of this was what was under the layers of the onion that our marriage became. I still grieve this because I believed in our love. I believed in our ability to make it work, to keep getting to know each other, and to get over obstacles. In all of my crazy quirks, mannerisms, nuances, plain dumb idiocy, forgetfulness, dizziness, airheaded and Gemini-ish blabbermouthy youth, never was I unrealistic about getting married or putting the work into it necessary to survive. Not even when any single link in the chain of the medical age robbed our lives of a real beginning, where the chain of THOSE events were never-ending. Nor did I forget the moments of magic we had once upon a time and in the beginning. But maybe I shouldn’t have had to do it so alone. Maybe I shouldn’t have had to do it so. damned. alone.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em?

I think I finally cracked (yes, you may ask, again) because instead of trying to locate the source of the buzzing mosquito, black fly, horse fly, or worse at the cabin we've been staying at--and believe me, there are several of each--I found myself trying to hum the same pitch of the buzzing and then hum the interval of a third over that pitch. There is only one reason I can think of for doing that, and it beats the alternative of continuing on a hopeless insect killing spree: submission.

However, there is no way around the construction on the house. At least three or four days out of five, I have woken up to the house literally being jarred by M.A.'s uncle, Y. pounding a hammer, nailing with the swift and loud air gun, sawing; and there's no humming a pitch to that. It has been positively stressful. More than I'd like to admit. But with the whole last year being what it has been, I've been desperately trying to shut my brain off to things that would normally spark my temper. Some days, I feel like I've ingested drugs or some other toxic or otherwise substance because I almost choose to not be my regular self.

And what has this last year been? This "last" place, last home to live in before moving west, for the beautiful, jaw-dropping scenery that it is, has been the third place we've been "stationed" at in a year, and at least the hundredth (or so it feels) place in time and space to have rested our heads without being able to call home. In a word: hell. Yes, "home" has never truly been ours, no matter where it's been, since we got here a year ago, because we have been bouncing around other people's homes, for better or for worse, for reasons beyond our control; and the loss of our independence has been staggering.

I lived with people back when my ex was sick and hated it so much that I swore to myself I'd never do it again.

It's times like these where all of my education about the good, kind, all-loving, all-powerful, all-merciful god we have goes out the window and I feel myself believing like a Puritan or something, and that this is just him showing his wrath in this kind of, "oh, you haven't had enough yet, here you go."

Yet I am trying to hold onto yet another thread--the thread of getting back west and getting back on our feet. M has a career waiting for him, me the opportunity to get back into the workforce and get some more schooling. It seems sickeningly unfair that we have to leave the beauty and culture here to grab at the opportunities anywhere else, yet many positive things await us out west.

Most importantly of all, the two young people I treasure the most in this world will never have to be apart from me like this ever again.

The Things We Do

So I talk about a lot of emotional stuff on here because that's what I do. I blab on and on ad nauseum about, because it's interesting to me. It's interesting how the mind works and how sometimes it works against your emotions or for them. For me, it's the other way around: how my emotions work against my brain or not.

But for the sake of my occasional attempt at humor, and at least to share what I found amusing, I was thinking about what we women do to maintain our shape. In the artificial way, while we are either on our way up or down the scale. How we suffer through suffocating undergarments that come up to our boobs, how we struggle to peel out of them to go to the bathroom at, say, a wedding reception. What it takes to fasten everything together. Support bras, support hose, girdles, Spanks, garters, wires, even high heels to some degree. Everything it takes to look thinner, taller, shorter, more curvy, more sexy, less bumpy, less frumpy than we are (and should accept but can't because it's hard) and all only to have to peel out of it all at the end of the night.

And then I got to thinking about this on a dating level. Even though I, as a mom, should be anti-pre-marital sex (I certainly don't have room to preach, Miss Prego at age eighteen sans hubby,) it's a reality that becomes cumbersome once you realize that the canoodling in the bedroom will regress to peeling off and out of the time-honored tradition of gut-sucking contraptions of our feminine masochism. And then that poses a real challenge. Do you politely giggle and get out of more canoodling-graduates-to-sex? Or do you put your date to the test and make him watch you make a banana of yourself? And there's always the good, old plausible "Let me change into something more comfortable" whisper in his ear to buy time in the bathroom so you can make a banana of yourself in private.

I mean to say we haven't moved very far from the corset, have we? And do you know how we used to get into those? By getting laced up from the back. Someone else would have to lace you up inside steel boning and metal eyelets, put their foot into your back, and pull! Hard! The only protection between skin and digging corset was a thin tank top (chemise) and then they would tie that sausage casing up. Yeah, someone was thinking of the furthest way to torture a woman and still get her to smile--because you know those women still smiled. They would smile while they suffocated. And you thought you couldn't breathe in a pair of Spanx! Honestly, who thought up this stuff?

And so I thought further.

It had to have been a man, only for the simple reason that men are problem solvers. They tend to think towards an answer in a path of least resistance or in simple terms.

Fictional Male Character 1: "How do we get to see the most boobs for the least amount of work or pain to us?"

Fictional Male Character 2: "I know! Let's squeeze the crap out of the middle and tie it really tight so that the ends come out like turkey stuffing!"

But no! This sexist approach does not work. According to my lackluster research, it was supposedly Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, who had apparently banned "thick waistlines" at royal court in the mid-1500's. A woman! I gasp verily!

While there is actually no concrete history on who owns part of the corset's invention, and while this simple track of laughing to myself while peeling out of my own pair of Spanks not too long ago has gotten me into a complicated dive into the history of the corset, it bears pulling the thought to the surface merely for a laugh. Just think about it next time you walk into the underwear boutique...

Step, step, step

It's easier to squeeze a whole pig into a sausage casing than it is to get people to change, you know? I need to tap into some more sarcasm in order to deliver the material, of which I have by the stashes and butt loads, but stepping into comedy probably just isn't my thing. In fact, I'll say it's not my thing. That way, it exempts me from expectations.

But take this into account. (Along with everyone's self-entitled right to free speech.) I am a complicated, complex woman. But alas, I also admit to being controversial. I didn't mean to be, but it ended up that way because I was really a bitch in disguise.

See, I tried to hide my feisty temper because I was afraid of what people thought, too afraid to face the consequences, and in the early days, just was WAY too angry to balance a good dose of ranting with a dose of good humor--it always just ended up in some mean fashion. Or at least it seemed that way after the fact. Like, when I was getting called into the office at work for an entry that contained absolutely zero incriminating evidence toward individuals or businesses mentioned (printed, mailed, and not labeled by a jealous (I guess?) co-worker.)

But I when finally could say I got over my case of the whiny, backed-up jitters and reactionary emotional epilepsy, I breathed the fresh air and realized that because I could take responsibility for my actions, I could also air opinions. AND... that I'm willing to air my take on things whenever I so choose because that's just what adulthood and a grand lack of willful maturity affords me. Yay!

So when I hear stories that my former, self-righteous boss, who took it upon herself to lecture me for a decision I made some ten months ago or so to leave the life I was living, the same woman who was trying to "improve" me in merely my job and I resented that because of her snobbish, two-faced attitude, made a face in reaction to a decision my best friend made, I feel obliged to snark back from my blog, if only to do the dork thing and retort what I would have said, could have said, and will now not refrain from saying from afar. Yes, while she was right in only one tiniest regard in the diatribe I received from her all those months ago, she is still the same little fish in a little pond, who looks bigger because the pond is so small and still has learned nothing about love, compassion, or the way forgiveness works. That is the biggest grievance at all. And it basically boils down to the old addage: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. And keep your eyeballs to yourself.

Karol Wojtyla

Karol Wojtyła

What can NOT be this guy. This, yes, priest. Ambassador. Man. Leader. Servant.

Holy man.

Isn't it he who called us to the call Our Lord already gave us: a call to holiness? Yes. Yes he is. I wish I was better read on him. He had SO many amazing things to say, so many things I wish I could have been the one to say, strength that chokes me to my core that I still don't have, courage of a great king. Now I guess I can see how a kingdom can weep at the loss of their king. In so many ways, Pope John Paul II was the best kind of king. The kind of king who knows how to employ the position he was granted, the kind of king who radiates love, joy, warmth among his subjects, the kind of king who knows that being the greatest lord over his subjects is being their greatest servant. Think about it.

That being said, I have a very good feeling that it would be mortifying to call him that. I am quite sure, as pivotal and legendary as his presence has been over twenty-three years, and probably more given that men like this don't just jump into the scene in some kind of random political shot (I wonder what his college mates would have to say about him), that he would have never considered himself kingly at all. In fact, based on what little I've read about his life, his youth was very afflicted with his mother's death, his brother's death, and dodging death during the Nazi occupation of his native Poland (I gravely simplify here.)

But I got to see him in 1997, when millions of young people were in Paris, France for the World Youth Day. His bullet-proof "Pope Mobile" passed by us twice and he was so close I could feel light. I was so unexpectedly overcome with emotion that I nearly missed taking a picture, the few that I have of that day so precious to me that I stuck them in an 8-page photo album with no other photos. Even at that age, I was not easily star-struck. I had been to a few rock concerts, passed Billy Cosby at Universal Studios in California, rubbed elbows with a few Hells Angels in South Dakota, and smiled as my dad recounted that Dennis Hopper came through town and almost brought his bike into his shop to have a look at it. I had even followed enough movie stars in magazines to be disenchanted with the whole Hollywood lot. I have just never easily been impressed--like truly, inside-my-chest exploding impressed. But the amazing metaphysical exchange I felt in Paris has never left.

His life echoed the lives of the saints, the ones called Doctors of the Church (St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. John of the Cross, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, to name a few) and based his mission on the Law of Love, being that we are all under whether or not we accept it, it is true that the closer you are to Love Itself (the pure love that is God), the more you deny yourself and move through cycles of rejecting earthly things, from the basic to even the more complicated, like human attachments, imbalance even in prayer, etc. (And it has to be in cycles--or stages--because a loving god isn't going to just make you chop off your whole life like your right arm. He gives us the space of our lives to learn how to do it in trials we can handle because, get this, He respects our free will.)

And Jesus himself talked about being a servant at the Last Supper. He surprised all the disciples by washing their feet (a servant's job, and a gross one at that) and instructed them to do the same. In the tradition of teachers (rabbis) mastering the Law of Moses and gaining followers who liked their way of teaching, teachers of the Jewish faith had a certain status and were not expected, least of all, to wash someone's muddy feet. They were probably more likely to get their feet washed by the person hosting the party. Well, the servant of that person.

In addition, he said "no servant is greater than he who sent him [the master], nor is he who is sent greater than the one who sent him." This has always seemed a little wordy to me, but in layman's terms, Jesus was telling them a simple truth: no worker is bigger than his boss