FREEDOM OF SPEECH = DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

I was reading in Yahoo! News today about a man called Albert Snyder. Mr. Snyder lost his son Matthew Snyder when he died on a Humvee accident in Iraq almost four years ago. Matt was 20 years old.

During his son's funeral the ever lovely Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest against gays, and Jews and pretty much everybody else on God’s green earth with signs that read “God Hates America” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” “You are going to Hell” “Semper Fags” and other enlightened messages like those.

Mr. Snyder can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he suffers from depression since his son’s death (which is understandable) and is battling diabetes. He is angry and hurt and humiliated and probably wishing his son’s funeral would’ve been a dignified event for him to say goodbye without having all that bad juju thrown his way.

Mr. Snyder decided to sue the Westboro Baptist Church and was granted 10.9 million dollars that were after reduced to 5 million by another judge and then another judge reversed the verdict and he is now ordered to pay roughly $17,000 to Westboro for the legal fees they incurred. It doesn't seem right, does it?

According to Westboro Baptist Church, America is condemned, doomed to hell and being punished by its acceptance of what they call in their website “fag lifestyle”. After taking a gander at the Westboro website (and feeling right after like I had to take a bath on bleach or holy water) I realized just how difficult the law is. The first amendment of the constitution of this country established freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion and freedom for people to peacefully assemble, etc.

The amendment is a beautiful thing; not only respects my ideas and opinions no matter how unpopular they might be but it also protects my rights to voice them.

Poor Mr. Snyder had to see hate first hand and at a moment of crippling vulnerability. No father should have to bury his son and it made his tragedy even worse to see people gleefully holding signs that celebrated his death and the death of all those other soldiers out there who have lost their life in this war.

Even though Mr. Snyder is now without his son and grieving, and even though my heart breaks at the thought of him seeing those signs, the law states freedom of speech for all. Is it moral for those people to be there and mock his pain? No, and I am sure there are special places in whatever hell those fuck-heads believe in for people just like them. It is right for them to feel the entitlement of invading such a private moment and ruin it with their hateful, putrid beliefs? No, it isn’t.

Is it legal? Yes, it is.

Freedom of speech is defined as the right to speak without censorship and/or limitation, the right to speak or otherwise communicate one’s opinion without fear of harm or prosecution. It applies to all individuals in this country, it covers all opinions, and it defends all ideas.

Those who read this blog know how passionately against religion I am and how passionately for gay rights I am. So it is with a heavy heart that I recognize that Mr. Snyder is going to lose that lawsuit against Westboro.

The law should protect all: sick, hateful, disgusting, crazy individuals too. Even when their moral compass is up their asses, even when their beliefs are repulsive, even when they don’t respect the most private of moments, even when they have no understanding of the meaning of compassion their opinions also have to be respected.

The fact is that the loathsome crew from Westboro peacefully assembled to spew their venom. Mr. Snyder actually didn’t even notice they were there but until later when he saw his son’s funeral on the news. The law should protect Westboro because vile and abhorrent as they are they didn’t break any laws.

My only consolation and I hope for Mr. Snyder’s too is that the legacy of Fred Phelps founder of Westboro Church (won’t do the Baptist a disservice by affiliating them with him) seems to be on his last legs. I don't know if he is healthy or not, but a body can’t hold that much hatred and venom and continue working properly. The man is 81 years old already! Even if his progeny were to continue his work he is the heart of the operation and without him I hope it will dwindle to nothing.

I found Pastor Jim Sommerville’s blog while researching for this post; Pastor Summerville had an encounter of sorts with darling Fred one time when he and his band of roaches went to Richmond Virginia to harass its Jewish community.

Pastor Sommerville is a more evolved creature than I am and he decided to pray for the soul of Fred (what soul?) and for him to find love and let go of the hatred that, to quote Pastor Jim “has made him its disciple”.

I don’t have it in me to wish for Fred’s salvation. I don’t have it in me to pray for his rotten soul. If I was the praying kind I would pray for Mr. Snyder’s battered soul and broken heart. I would pray for his family and the families of all those who Westboro has touched with its grimy paws.

I would pray for Mr. Snyder to feel some consolation after the suit is over even when it probably won’t conclude as he hopes. If I were the praying kind those are the ones I would pray for, I wouldn’t waste a word on Fred.

Actually Fred can go to hell.

For Pastor Jim Sommerville’s post: http://jimsomerville.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/how-do-i-stop-my-enemies/

For the Yahoo! Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_funeral_protests

COLOMBIAN CONSULATE AND BEING GERMAN

I once took one of those silly facebook quizes and found out my nationality was meant to be German. Apparently my personality it’s at odds with my nationality, race or whatever you may call it. I thought the quiz was stupid since I didn’t feel I had any of the stereotypical traits that German people are supposed to have. Organization, punctuality, coldness, reserve, nerves of steel and an aversion to casual touching. (I am cursed with all of those)

I have discovered, however, that I would probably thrive in Germany. We went to the Colombian Consulate to finish the paperwork for Alfonso so his body could go to his family in Barranquilla and in the middle of my Friday, when I was already threatened at work for missing two days over this ordeal, we found each other in a madhouse also known as the Colombian Consulate in Miami and with no other choice but to wait there until everything was done.

After miraculously surviving the Miami drivers we made it to the consulate. It looked pretty from outside with the flag waving proudly on the top and the place a nice terracotta building that look like a hacienda of yesteryears. Pandemonium awaited us inside. There were screaming, running children, people talking loudly, plastic and fold-over chairs in rows, fans and an oppressing feeling of…poorness. That more than anything bothered me. Call me a snob I don’t care, but is it too much to ask for our governmental employees, the ones that represent Colombia in a foreign country to dress as if they are Colombian representatives and not like a college student after a weekend of partying? Casual Fridays took a new definition that day.

Not only was the place depressing but it was a palace made to the God of Formica. There is little I dislike as much as Formica. I was willing to ignore all that, I was, truly! I am perfectly aware that the brat that came to this country 8 years ago still kicks in now and then but I could not ignore the disorganization, the yelling of names of people who were waiting instead of having a number system or even a microphone so the people waiting could hear their names been called out.

I am not sure what was worse, the line of people who were there to pick up their ID and had to sign they had received it in a piece of paper that was 1”x3” and then folded over as if it was a name for Secret Santa and then thrown in a box, or the fact that they were using type writers, or the fact that there were no clearly delineated lines, or the fact that the employees didn’t have all the paperwork close by and one of them had to actually leave his place to go pick up the paperwork in another floor. Talk about efficiency!

No, let me rephrase that. I do know what was worse, it was the fact that the Consul of my Country didn’t have an office, a space of his own where he could sit and direct, manage and make Consul-like decisions. No, he was seating behind the main counter, on a Formica desk, in a bright yellow and blue polo t-shirt that was way too small for his generous girth while he ate empanadas. Oh the humanity!

I was so pissed off and embarrassed. Pissed off because I was incredibly overwhelmed by all the paperwork that had been done already in the moving of Alfonso and here, yet somehow we had managed to get him ready to go in less than seven days but there in the place where everything should be easier since we are all Colombian and they are there to help us, they were slow and bureaucratic (redundant much?) and the one place in the process where everything didn’t go smoothly. And I was embarrassed because I always am sure to tell Dear Husband how civilized we are and how everything works there the same way there as it works here and he was suddenly smack in the middle of a perfect example of Hispanic governmental incompetence.

Now I should not be so harsh with them since my uncle’s contact in the embassy was the one who helped with the entire process of sending Alfonso home to be with his family. The lady found us the funerary home, the shipping company and also gave us an insane discount courtesy of the Consulate. It truly isn’t the Consulate’s fault I guess. Since they have no resources to be at par with the way things are run nowadays. They are truly doing the best they can with what they have. But we aren’t an incredibly poor country. The Colombian Consulate in Venezuela is nothing like that, then why should the Miami one look like a grocery store where they call your name when your two pounds of chorizo are ready?

That said, I must admit I have been here way too long. I have lost my ability to stand in line for 8 hours to get my passport done. I had forgotten how damn long and slow all those processes take at home. I have lost my Hispanic patience. Even with my family! On the way to the Consulate we had to turn around twice because they had left something behind and all I could do was sit there seething wondering why in the fucking world wouldn’t they just prepare everything the night before and be ready to go when we had to. Dear Husband turned the car around TWICE without a word, blessed as he is with never ending patience while I could feel my right eyelid twitching as it does when I am passing furious and heading into volcanic rage. I guess my temper is the only thing that saves me from being German since they are stereotyped as controlled individuals and my temper is the one thing I cannot get a hold of.

I feel horrible saying it but I cannot wait to be an American Citizen and never again have to go to a Consulate.

Vielen dank und gute tage!

FADING OBESSION AND THINSPIRATION

I was reading today about Kate Moss’ comment that was taken completely out of context but that sparked a lot of controversy (you people just loooooove the word “outrage” and “controversy” way too much) and made the people fighting the “beauty is bones” view have a mini stroke of rage. Apparently Moss was asked what motto she lived by and her answer was: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” which is apparently one of the mottos of Pro-Anas and Pro-Mias everywhere.

When I read the term I was clueless, Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia or sometimes just “Anas & Mias” was something I have never heard of before, but oh this country never ceases to amaze me! Most of the times the shocks and surprises this country brings me are good, 99% of the time is something that makes me smile and makes me see that moving here was the right choice. There is, though, that one percent that is completely fucked up.

Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia, as my research revealed, are websites and groups dedicated to support anorexia and bulimia as a “lifestyle” and not as a mental disorder of any kind. They see it as a choice, as a way to control the one thing you can do something about, yourself. I entered the website thinking I was going to find it funny and that I was going to spend 15 minutes making derisive comments about the silly girls who wanted to be skinny and fit the twisted mold of today’s beauty. I was very wrong.

I spent three horrying hours reading how these girls (mostly girls but there were some guys) spend their life torturing themselves over a 9 oz. tin of cashews!! It would’ve been funny if they would’ve been just vain and superficial people with an obsession of being pretty, but every line spoke of deep-rooted problems., of pain, cutting, feeling invisible, sheer loneliness and it wasn't funny at all, it made me incredibly sad. There are pictures all over the place called "Thinspiration" where a skinny bobbled head Victoria Beckham poses looking like a skeleton, a bare backed bony Keira Knightly whose every back bone you can see, protuding hip bones, deep clavicles, ribs galore.

It’s confusing because at moments they seem so in control of it, as if their disease was part of who they are, as if it was soothing in a way. Some of them know it's sick, they know it’s not normal and still they do it. They want to stop but can't, they don't hesitate about cutting out people from their lives, friends, family who worries about their health and choose the disease or lifestyle instead. They rather be lonelily counting the calories daily to a high of 400 per day (which was the highest calorie count I read most barely survive on 245 calories a day) than to let people in their little circle of celery hell. They choose lonelyness, emptyness, pain, over anything and everyone else.

Some were angry at being judged, others had survived almost dying after being force fed and taken to hospitals and were trying their best to retain their anorexic lifestyle and not dying at the same time. They were struggling for a balance where they could be what they wanted to be, THIN and remain alive to be able to enjoy it. They all say that happiness is 3 pounds away and then another 3 pounds and another 3 pounds but no matter how thin they got, how their bones poked through, how they faded away into almost nonexistance they still sound unhappy about their body. A girl was worrying about the cup of salad she ate at lunch and how she knew it wasn’t bad for her because it had been only 200 calories but how the feeling of fullness made her want to purge. Part of her obviously recognized how irrational it was for her to worry about those 200 calories but the stronger part, the sickness in her made her want to get rid of it. In the forum she asks for guidance asking if she should or should not purge and even though I didn't get to see what happened later I am sure she went to her office bathroom to throw up the little nourishment she gave her starving body.

Others, thought were simply proud of their accomplishments. Proud that they hadn’t eaten anything solid in 8 months and that they were 84 pounds and 5 foot four. Some of them were in an imaginary war against the world. A war with battles they won each day by refusing to conform, by refusing to eat. To them their disease is control, it’s pure, it’s beauty and the world is simply keeping them away from that higher place where they are above all mere mortals who weigh triple digits.

After spending hours reading about these people torturing themselves over an unhealthy look and goal I couldn’t help but be thankful I spent my teenage and formative years back home. I remember when I started college I decided to drop a few pounds and was 109 pounds at 5 foot 3. My guy friends made an intervention in protest of my fading ass. They all complained that I could no longer pass the “towel test” (a test invented by a pig friend of mine where a girl puts a towel on her butt without holding it and the curve of her butt alone it’s supposed to keep it there) and that they could see my hip bones and that was not pretty. I came to the U.S. when I was 19 and my cousins hadn’t seen me in two years, they both thought I had an eating disorder because they could see every bone in my body pocking out. And I was in a healthy diet! I wasn't starving myself like these people do. As if food was an enemy sneakily waiting for them to fail.

I am so ever thankful that I was expected to have curves, that society back home demanded that I looked like a woman and not like a boy. I was so thankful that my guy friends wanted my ass to be bubbly and out there and liked it as it was and will ever be: Big. I would’ve never survived high school here. I would’ve never survived having my formative years being told I was ugly and fat. I would've turned out like those girls who starve themselves and have breakfast of celery sticks, lunch of a cup of peas and tea as dinner. How can they help but feel inadequate, fat, disgusting, ugly and unhappy when everything out there points out the same thing? That the body they have is not good enough? That happiness and success depends on them being skinny.

I grew up being told that curves were beautiful so I think they are, is it their fault that they think curves are disgusting when they were told that by television, magazines, friends, family, men that sharp angles are preferable?

I read this list of “inspirational quotes” to be thin in one of the websites and cannot help but feel depressed for these lost hungry souls.

• What nourishes me also destroys me
• Food is like art. To be looked at, not eaten
• Anorexia is not a self-inflicted disease but a self-controlled lifestyle
• Empty is pure
• If you close your mouth to food, you will know a sweeter taste
• If it taste good is trying to kill you
• Giving into food shows weakness. Say not to food and you’ll be better than everyone else
• Bones define who you really are, let them show
• They’ll say they are concerned about you, your health. All they want is to control you, they want to pin you down and force feed you that fat they call love
• People who eat are selfish and unrealistic (?)
• You don’t NEED food, you just want it.
• Don’t you want to walk on the snow and leave no footprints?
• When you start feeling dizzy and weak it means you are almost there
• Food rots your teeth
• Anorexia is not a disease. It is not a game. Anorexia is a skill perfected only by a few. The chosen, the pure, the flawless.

I truly hope those people someday see that having body fat is not the same as being fat. Eating one cookie it’s okay. Bones are not meant to be seen the same way we don’t see beams on a building because otherwise it’s falling apart. That life isn’t about counting the calories on celery sticks, it’s about being healthy and laughing, crying, eating, living, loving, not about secrets, and purging, misery, loneliness.

See the light, people! Have a doughnut!

NOTHING FITS. PURSUE OF AMERICAN FITNESS.

My body aches, I have crammed this week two 40-minutres sessions of cardio on the treadmill, yoga, abs and arms workouts and even my lashes are weeping. People here are obsessed with fitness which is funny specially when one considers the fact that America is one of the heaviest (I don’t like the word fat) countries in the world. Like I have pointed out before this is a country of extremes where the morbidly obese and the scarily thin coexist in shaky harmony. Since I am neither skinny nor obese I find myself being in that unhappy middle where obese people hate you because you complain about your weight and you hate the skinny people because they complain about theirs. I gave the gym a shot last year. I went every day for six painful, miserable months and actually gained two fucking pounds.

I am now happily exercising at home with my yet-to-be-paid-for treadmill. I rather bust my ass at home in the privacy of my own four walls than do it in front of a bunch of strangers. Granted is not really easy to exercise around a hyperkinetic dog that licks, pushes, barks and shoves her snout on your crotch but I’ll take that over talking a stroll down to the bowels of Hell. Dante didn’t talk about it in his Comedy, but I am sure it was a mere oversight. What else can you call a place where they make you weigh yourself in front of your husband and make you take measurements of your body so you know IN NUMBERS that your ass is too big and your boobs too small? As if you weren’t well acquainted with that fact. What else can that place be, if not Hell? With all the mirrors and the unflattering harsh lights, the inane music that makes you feel trapped in an elevator while you endlessly loop on a treadmill. You add to that the people around you that are a walking promise of what you might become (Gym Barbie and Willie the whale are your choices) and that sounds to me like a cocktail for insanity.

I remember clearly a girl in particular from my six-month stint in hell (a la Persephone) she was a chubby girl who was trying so hard to lose weight, you could see it. She used to jog/crawl on the treadmill next to mine, sheer determination coming off of her like waves. I could feel her need to fit in a pair of single digits Jeans. So there she was, wheezing air in and out, everything jiggling while her face got purple with a mix of pain, heat and concentration. She would watch Dancing with the Stars on the TV in front of us, seeing the graceful dancers and the cute outfits as an incentive to lose some weight and the shimmery lights distracting her from the pain. Inevitably damnation came in the shape of an Applebee’s commercial, with their fake “healthy” food and their yummy, greasy goodness. You could see the bodiless hands dipping the boneless wing in the sauce, damn them! And the girl would stop jogging, she knew that I knew that she was going to go home and wolf down some wings and there’s no point for her to kick her ass any longer for the night. Right when she is fantasizing about the drippy wings up come from the stairs the trim gym goddesses, in matching Nike outfits and perfect hair. They don’t sweat, they glisten and they climb the stairs gracefully while they pat the nonexistent sweat with a hand towel.

One time tired of seeing her defeat I did the unthinkable and talked to her, I NEVER talk to strangers but her face was just so sad that I couldn’t help it so I look at her and I could hear her thoughts: “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!!!” and I didn’t judge her because they were my thoughts too. Granted I didn’t really hate the skinny bitches in matching outfits and washboard abs. I would totally push them out of the way if a bus was going to hit them. I would just push reaaaaal hard. So filled with pity for my kindred spirit I told her: “Whatever they have like no ass” and smiled at her. She looked at me and I guess she thought I wasn’t heavy enough to hate along with her because her withering stare still gives me the hibbie jibbies and she replied: “Yes, they have no ass, but I have TWO” and she spits that “TWO” at me like a dart.

Even after that I kept going to the gym. I became one of those people I “ugh” about. I never really belonged there, tough, but kept going anyway. Dear Husband loved the routine, the endorphins (an urban myth as far as I am concerned). He would be all peppy and smiley and my eyes were stinging from the sweat, I was blinded by the fog in my glasses, my muscles cramping all confused because they were never worked like that before and my lungs didn’t know quite what to do with the air.

I hated that fucking place; even just remembering makes my blood boil. I still remember Dear Husband’s voice saying: “When you cheat while exercising you are only cheating yourself” every time I took a break. I love that man. God knows I do but when we were at the gym he would say stuff like “Don’t lock your knees” or “Give me two more”, “Love the burn, feel the burn” or my personal favorite “There is no can't here” and I swear I would feel this homicidal urge that only the fear of being someone’s bitch from 15 to 20 and that horrid orange jumpsuit, would stop me from going “Snapped” on his ass.

I tried. I really did. I would wake up tired and achy and not an ounce thinner and I would just say to myself “muscle is heavier than fat” and fool myself into going again. I would try to be all positive and shit and imagine myself jogging at the beach in my thong with nothing jiggling. I would repeat “The Secret” in my head over and over again “Don’t just wish to be happy, be happy, feel happy” Smug bastards.

The pain, I assured myself, was a gentle reminder of my efforts, I would someday, laugh at my pains, no! Someday I wouldn’t even remember what it was like! And I would be curling 35 pounds and I would run around naked in the beach, thong? Who needs a thong!? I would walk around the gym doing nothing, patting my forehead with a towel and being hated by all. Sigh. That’s when you know you are hot when petty women hate you on principle.

I am a stinking failure because no matter how obsessed this nation becomes with a 100 pound ideal of beauty I am never going to be it. I am Hispanic! My ass alone weighs close to 100 pounds. I cannot fight genetics. I am not meant to be thin and I am okay with it. I just wish every commercial, TV show, model; clothing store would stop ramming their ideals down my throat. Only in this country you go to a store where the size L is actually small enough to fit a 130 pound woman. Who do they think they are catering to? The average American woman is a size 10 to 14 but the stores carry jeans from 0 to an 8. Cero is not a size damn it! It’s a non-size! You have to actually go to that dark, musty area of the store where the “plus sizes”. Nobody wants to walk to that area of the store. That means the cute, tiny and acceptable jeans don’t fit your fat ass! Just walking in the periphery of the “plus” size is bad for your reputation, people look at you funny and you want to get violent... remind me, why do I like shopping again?

No matter. I will work out at home and be healthy and fit and God forbid curvy.
Fuck this country idea of beauty.

HOW LIFE SCRUBBED SNOBBERY OUT OF ME

We became the ultimate Hispanic cliché and started cleaning houses. When the opportunity knocked I thought nothing of it. I was already planning and wistfully thinking of the hair products I would buy for the brillo pad currently residing atop my head. I giggled when thinking of makeup I would not get from Publix or CVS, I could smell the strawberries and champagne lotion I would get from Victoria’s Secret.

I didn’t stop to consider or think about how I was going to get the money, my mom could’ve said we were going to start a baby-smuggling ring and if it was going to get me closer to my expensive moisturizer I was game. Cleaning was merely means to an end. Off we went to clean for our first client. Our first task was a triplex property that was at the moment vacant and dirty from the tenants that didn’t bother to clean before they left. I attacked the kitchen after my mom’s face broke in rashes when she touched it after she found a drawer-full of dried red chili peppers the Mexican family had left behind. So I cleaned the fridge, thankful to have something else to do aside from reading (which had been my only solace since I found myself without a social life), and singing out loud while I scrubbed the working song from Snow White.

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig

in a mine the whole day through,

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig

It's what we like to do...

I was amused at myself for actually enjoying the task and went looking for my mom to ask her something. I walked into the bathroom and found her there, kneeling in front of the toilet scrubbing away someone else’s filth. All trace of amusement fled and outrage filled me faster than words can explain. I sputtered there not getting any words out while she scrubbed and scrubbed and asked me what I needed without stopping.

I need you to stop cleaning! I need you to get up and stop doing this! I need you to turn back time to when we were not ruining our hands and nails over someone else’s mess and instead getting them done once a week at the salon. I need you to be outraged right along with me, I need you to stop acting like this is all normal, stop acting like this is okay! I need you to call my dad and demand our money! I want you to stop sweating and hurting your back for some money. “I need to pee” It’s all I said. “Use the other bathroom” she said to me with a “duh” expression in her red and sweaty face. I ran to the other bathroom and sat on the blissfully cold tile (that my mom had already cleaned while I “Heigh-Hoed” to the Snow White song) and wept.

I wept for all the things I used to have and took for granted, for the past that was so close it was almost not past yet but already so far anyway, for the bitter anger that was burning inside of me like poison. I cried for the image of my mom scrubbing on her knees, that first time I saw her, the first of many, that remains imprinted in my memory, for the circumstances that had brought me here, for my father who had suddenly financially abandoned us without a backward glance. I cried for my pretty things left behind and the pretty things I now craved and could no longer buy. I cried annoyed at myself for turning into such a weak person that had cried more since here in America than in the last 18 year back home.

I cried because good Catholic guilt was choking me, knowing that my mom had come here because of me, because of my future and my aspirations (whatever they were then). I cried because I knew she probably had, since she came, cried in a hidden place for me not to notice. I cried because I had such promise, so much potential, such a brilliant future, such smarts (hey! I am not bragging that’s what people used to tell me) and here I was, stripped of my pride, forced to be humble, and someone else’s maid. I washed my face and came out and attacked the kitchen once again, this time ferociously, all pleasure forgotten.

I know now that before I had enjoyed the cleaning because I was playing the maid. Not realizing I was really one. My mom came out, done with her part and sat down rubbing her lower back while I silently wiped, and scrubbed, rinsed and polished every corner of that ugly kitchen until the Formica gleamed. We closed the door and walked back to the house toting out buckets full of cleaning supplies. My silly superficial and shallow self quivering in shame when people drove by as if they cared that I was someone else before and now I was cleaning houses. I was feeling such shame from walking the street with my bucket, you’d think I had come back from prostituting.
 
 “I am so proud of you” my mom said before we reached the house. She hugged me and I would’ve burst in tears again if I wouldn’t have found funny that she said the words NOW, after I cleaned a kitchen, but did not say the same when I had been accepted into law school. “Thanks” I said suddenly lost for words.

We got inside of the house and the chattering and laughing, the screaming and running around of my uncle, my aunt and cousins pushed away any thought of wallowing, the house too full of life to entertain any petty thoughts. It always came back to that. Family saved me. No matter how bad I felt, how humiliated by my change in circumstances (how very Austen-y), how traumatic my stupid experiences felt, how much I miss the money and the liberties that it offered, no matter how much my heart broke when I saw my mom struggle with the language when it seem too seamless and easy a transition for me, no matter how many times I wanted to beg to go back, having someone with you that revels in your tiny victories, someone that praises the time you spent cooking the chicken, having someone to sit down and watch the soap operas with, that is a balm that cures all maladies.

Those tiny moments with family saved me and my sanity. I could feel myself changing. I wanted to hold on to me, onto the person I knew. The one I was back at home. I felt that if I let her go it would be one more tie irreversibly severed. I liked me, spoiled brat that I was. I wanted to remain me, a little selfish and self-centered, spoiled and used to having everything handed out. I didn’t want to be tough and resilient I wanted to remain soft and pampered. Oh but being soft hurts, and my hands alone showed the signs all blistery, cracked and dry from the aggressive cleaning product I had used to kill the green radioactive-looking thing that had been growing in the fridge of the place we cleaned.

So I sighed when I walked toward the double glass doors. I sighed and muttered and cussed under my breath yet walked towards it anyway. My hair was finally under control after buying some extra-strength anti-frizz. I walked and said goodbye to myself, my old self and tried to feel some comfort in the fact that I was finally doing the right thing. When I was back at home and asking, demanding and expecting my dad to pay for my every whim I felt no qualm, no regret or second thought. But to take money from my mom when I knew where it came from, when I knew her body ached everywhere… I just couldn’t.

So I walked toward the doors that held my new job on the other side. I walked sweaty-hand and shaky to my first job interview. I was 19 years old. I opened the door and was cheerily saluted by a cacophony of voices and beeping. I said hi to the man in the long sleeve shirt and tie that was waiting for me and shook his hand with my sweaty one, and sat down when he pointed to a chair behind me. He smiled an encouraging smile and I responded with a shaky one. “So, let me start by asking you… why us?” He asked pleasantly, either feigning interest in my answer or actually curious. “Ummmm (shit!) I’ve always liked your products better” I answered, not knowing enough English to bullshit my way through that one and trying to sound as sincere as possible. His chest swelled with pride and he laughed a good-ol’-boy chuckle and shaking my hand said: “Well, that is good enough for me! Welcome to McDonald’s!”

Suddenly cleaning toilets doesn't sound so bad.

FIRST LESSONS

That first year of my new life, as corny as it sounds, was a journey to self-discovery. I found out more about myself in those strenuous 12 months than I had in my whole previous life. I found out I could cook and quite well! I learned it all from watching my mom all my life, because it was a household chore she never gave up even when we had a maid.

I became the designated chef for the family and felt less of a burden with something to do while everybody else was at work and school. I learned that “er” and “est” (as in better and best) can only be used with two syllable words and that applying them to any word longer than that makes you sound like the stupidest person on earth.

I discovered how great my cousins were and how much fun it was to talk to them all night long. And that I could actually laugh and enjoy life with them without feeling I was betraying my past by enjoying my present. I learned to be afraid of the Florida rain after one my cousin’s school mates died after being hit by lightning while walking to school in the rain. I learned (even though I tried not to) all the jingles from the commercials (“You bet your sweet asspercream” was my favorite).

I learned that Miami was owned by its Cuban community and nepotism ran rampant. I learned while driving north when we moved away from it, that driving a few hours away from Miami, feels like traveling to another country and convenience stores called “Donde Pancho” and repair garages with signs that read “reparaciones baratas” completely disappear north of Fort Lauderdale. I learned to read in English and that I was being too ambitious when I chose “Timeline” to be my first book because not even in Spanish I can understand quantum physics. I learned that there’s a chance to spend money each time you so much take a steps out of the house and that “2-4-1” is a gimmick that capitalism has perfected.

I learned how to ride a bicycle by myself. Hopped on a brad new one that my mom got me for that first Christmas here and bent the front tire with all the tree crashing I did. But proudly learned how to do it. I learned that my dad was the sterling example of “out of sight out of mind” and that our only source of income dried up, alimony checks stopped and learned not to be embarrassed about living of my aunt and uncle’s charity (neither one of which was related by blood to my mom).

I learned to my eternal embarrassment that I was a complete and utter snob. When my mom found herself without money she told me it was bad enough to be living rent free but we were not to become a burden to anybody. Having to work turned into a reality that I know I should’ve considered before. I know now that I should’ve started working as soon as I got over my month-long depression. But I didn’t. My life thus far had not prepared me for this. I had not been equipped to think that way; I was hurled into a world where money was the means for our survival instead of something I had no interest in earning and all the interest in spending. I was spoiled rotten and life had finally come to slap me around and teach me a lesson and I was not ready.

When my mom said we were going to start working I wanted to say “ew” or be exasperated. But my mom’s despair was too keen for me to complain about it. I stuck my chin out and fancied myself a heroin to the rescue and tackled the new challenge. Riiiiiiight.