Strawberries. Just Strawberries.

I’m feeling a little on the vulnerable side these days. Life seems to be tenderizing me lately. I’m trying to bend and weave with the unexpected, let my heart feel what it feels, and to be present. Keep showing up and keep facing the truth of what’s unfolding. However, I’m running a little low on reserves and I’m not sure what to do.  Feel low? Permission to be human is nice. I think I’ll just give myself that. Simple permission to be. Just be. The surrender feels good too.

I’m not a fighter. Never have been.  However, I am a persister. I have total faith and confidence in my ability to not only survive but to thrive. I just don’t question it.  I’ve suffered quite a bit in my life, and I continue to do so, but I know I’ll come out the other side. I won’t be bested.  I don’t even know how I know that. I just do.  

I don’t know if there’s a book out there that already talks about this, but I’m curious: where is the work, the piece, the person, that is going to talk about the southwestern borderlands as a place of multiple colonizations? As a place that had to face two conquests: the Spanish and the American? The Mexican came along too but that is even more complicated to explain. because the Mexica were conquered too. Where is the indigenous experience going to be centered in all of this? And where is the Chicano experience going to be centered too?  My education is woeful. No one taught me anything about me. 

I am here because of all of those waves of history and ancestors that came before. A confluence of pain and rebirth, new peoples developed too. I’m a Chicana mestiza. Who am I?  So many things and nothing at all.

She blew the candles out just as a chill ran through her bones. Perhaps I had spoken too soon, she thought. She was enveloped by ink-black except for the porch light peeking through the blinds.  It was midnight and there was no booze left in the house. Her eyes hurt from reading for hours by candlelight.  There were no working lightbulbs left. She certainly wasn’t going to leave and go buy new ones. She wished achingly for some vodka or anything else to help blunt the memory of what happened the night before. 

She got up off the couch and tried to push the blinds a little bit closer together to try and keep the room perfectly dark.  it was no use.  

It’s been a really long time since I’ve said anything on here. I’m feeling good and grounded these days. My life is not glamorous but it feels authentic and real. I mostly feel present and whole.  

I’ll say more soon!