ROMANCE AMONGST BAD NEWS

I wish there were happier news to read than Libya being bombed, the food in Japan being full of radiation, Knut the polar bear’s sudden death or the fact that Charlie Sheen’s show has sold out in all cities.

But alas! Here were are, almost done with March and bad news keep pouring in. DH and I had a wonderful weekend, however, celebrating two years together of legally bumping uglies, I kid, we celebrated two years of our love…sigh. We have been together for four years and it feels like it was just yesterday when he told me I had cankles and we exchanged phone numbers. Romance was in the air that night.

We had a fun day of sun at the beach where we baked like lobsters and the water was perfect for the visiting Canadians (a balmy 65) and the sharks kept us out of the water for most of the day (not kidding). I am, thankfully back to being an attractive toasty color and not the yellow pastiness I have been sporting for the better part of a year. We also went to a comedy show where we laughed until we cried and came out, amazingly, with a sense of having learned something.

If any of you, my few faithful readers, has the opportunity of seeing Christopher Titus standup comedy, seize that chance and have a blast. If you aren’t easily offended that is. The man is a genius and so full of energy one is left reeling and hurting in the abdominal area. I felt like I did 100 abs after we came out of the show and for that alone I like Mr. Titus.

Sunday, we went to see the Marlins kick some spring-training ass belonging to the Mets and then back home to pass out from sun poisoning and happy we had each other to rub cold aloe on our leathery backs. Basis for an awesome marriage right there!

Two days have passed since the sixty days cut off for us to receive the letter giving us a date for our interview. I found it kind of fateful that the cut-off date was the date of our anniversary. Dreams of Hawaii drift faster and faster away, but what is there to do but wait? I never believed I was going to be able to go, but I am sure when they all board the plane that will take them to paradise I will be home, beating my head against the wall and being a bitch to all around me. I actually feel more badly for DH who will feel too guilty to go without me (by that I mean I will kill him if he leaves and goes without me).

This shit (I am tired of calling it a “situation” or “my circumstances”) has turned me into someone who I am not really proud of, an angry (angrier) person, a bitter woman with no hopes left about her future and what it will bring. I have come to resent all the people I know that get to travel. I have never been an envious person.

Envy is in fact, the only cardinal sin (greed, vanity, lust, wrath, sloth, gluttony and envy for those non Christian friends) that I have no understanding of. I understand feeling and committing all the other ones, but envy has always been in my opinion the worst of those sins to commit. It seems so petty and dangerous, so ugly a feeling. The fact that I am rolling in envy, swimming in it, every time I see some friend’s picture on Facebook in Italy, or France, or London, makes me ashamed of myself. Hell I am okay with being a greedy, glutton, vain, prideful, lustful, lazy bitch, but I will not be an envious one!

So, DH is going to abuse our lawyer a little bit today and find out why he isn’t doing his job, why we are still waiting, why we haven’t been interviewed, why I am seating here with nothing to show, legally speaking, after two years of marriage.

I can’t wait for this shit to be over, so dear husband and I can take a deep breath and plan for the future, move from Florida, buy a house with a yard, get another dog, travel the world, etc.

In the meantime I will remind myself that I am alive and well, healthy, hot and in love so there is nothing for me to really complain about. I am not Knut, I am not in Libya, or in Japan or related in any way to Charlie Sheen. That is truly something to be thankful for.

Happy New Year 2011

Another year is almost over, another year in this country, struggling to belong, struggling to get my affairs in order, struggling to organize my life, to start the life I want, struggling to find enough money to pay for some things, struggling to find a way to go to school (etc)

And in the middle of all that I am so happy. I am happy because I am healthy and in love, surrounded by family and full of friends. I am thin (yay diet), I am happy with myself, happy with my family, happy with the visitors I got from Colombia, my aunt and cousin whom I hadn’t seen in a decade.

I never thought eight years ago that there would come a time when Christmas wouldn’t depress me, when New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be a time to cry. Yet here I am, looking forward to tomorrow (and the insane skinny white dress I am wearing) but also looking forward to the bittersweet feeling when is midnight and I find myself still here for one more year.

While it sounds scary, the truth is that way of thinking has made me enjoy life and what it brings in a way that only uncertainty can. I feel so blessed (ugh for the nonbeliever in me) and so lucky I feel like I am bragging.

I will get teary eyed tomorrow. Teary eyed for that land that I truly belong to and I haven’t stepped on in a decade, I would get sad because its music stir my souls and makes my heart ache, I will be sad because I will remember all those other years when I was younger and sharing with other people I haven’t seen in so long and probably will never see again. I will cry for those moments lost, for those moments I didn’t appreciate because I didn’t know where never coming back. And still I will smile, smile for the plentiful in front of me, for the beautiful luck I have, for the overwhelming abundance of beautifulness that is my life.

This time, I celebrate New Year’s not only with my sister and brother, mother and husband, sister and brother in laws but also with my aunt and my cousin. I wonder if anyone but someone who has been separated from family can understand how monumental this moment is, how special it was seeing each other after so long, how touching it was that time and distance never made us strangers.

So, happy New Year readers, whoever you are. Enjoy your day, near you family, wife, husband, partner, friend, cat, dog, and TV set, whoever and whatever you have in your life that makes you happy. Think of the year ahead and expect the best.

Smile, laugh, love, live.

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

THE INEXORABLE PULL OF RESPONSIBILITY

I wish I had coined the phrase since it seems to describe my very existence. I am, it seems, trapped by a sucking, drowning, black-hole of responsibility. There are, I know, people who seem free of such a crippling emotion, because that is what responsibility is, an emotion. A feeling in the pit of your stomach, in the center of your heart that makes one do things we don’t want to do, but we do nonetheless because it is expected, because one has to.

Girls always dream of being Lizzie and holding out for love, for passion, for someone who is going to understand one’s quirks in personality. Girls dream of being Lizzie and being brave and holding out for Mr. Darcy, but I am afraid I would have never been a Lizzie Bennett and that I am destined to be a Fanny Price, my most hated of Austen’s heroines.

I am afraid that my sense of responsibility keeps me from doing what I dream of doing and sending everyone to hell and being utterly selfish and caring only about what I want and what I need and what I expect of life. But I am, no matter how hard I try, going ‘round and ‘round doing what I have to do.

I would’ve married Mr. Collins. I would’ve married a totally unsuitable person to save my family from destitution. I would have had sex and bore him children and endured the attentions of Lady Catherine de Burgh simply because it was expected of me.

There is no rebellion in me, no overwhelming passion, because responsibility shadows, swallows, overwhelms everything else. I am doomed to be responsible. I am doomed to swallow my wants and do what needs to be done. Why do I have to? Why can’t I just ignore everything that needs to be done and simply be? Is it my lot in life to take care of what needs to be taken care of disregarding completely the hungers in my soul that need to be fed?

I wish I was more ambitious. Ambitious enough that only my interest seemed to matter, but my ambitions are simple: Health for those I love, to be loved, a house of my own, a job that I like and occasional travels that show me the world out there. I don’t wish for riches and grandeur, I don’t crave fame and fortune. I work for a multibillionaire and I know that money does not necessarily mean happiness. I can’t help but think that if I wanted it more, wished for it more, ignored others more I could have everything I wanted.

Sometimes I want to run away from everything, expectations, family, friends… and myself. Let’s combine those two and really put together what I want to run away from: Family expectations.

Sometimes I wish I was more like my brother, who has no regard for anyone but himself. No regard but what he wants. Sometimes I wish I could grab my credit card and disappear into oblivion in a small town in the middle of nowhere U.S. and work at some dinner where my name is not my name and I can spend my days doing something little and meaningful and write and get up knowing that I will write some more and do something with my days that does not include disappearing in anonymity in an office, doing nothing worth wile and being invisible.

I know the feeling will disappear and tomorrow I will get up and do what is expected. Dry, cold, reliable, and responsible Melissa, doing what needs to be done, no matter what. But right now I want to be more, do more.

I know it’s silly. I get to the end of this post and I realize how many times I have said in the past, “With privilege comes responsibility” and I am oh so privileged with a big family. I just wish there was someone to share those big responsibility’s with.

They feel so heavy sometimes.

IN KEEPING WITH THE SUBJECT OF LOVE…

I have a confession to make. I am a sucker for romance novels. It might come as a surprise to those who do not know me, and have never been in my house, or been overwhelmed by my ever filling bookcase, but I am. I think is a funny, inexplicable trait in me because I am in general an untrusting, glib, and sarcastic no-bullshit kind of girl, but there is something about true romance that makes my cold heart go gooey. I am not talking about grand gestures and candle light dinners, rose petals in bed (who is going to clean that shit after?!) and big movie proposals. I am talking about true romance. About the true meaning behind holding a hand, yearning that unreachable someone you think you can’t have. Covert glances, whispered confessions, secret rendezvous, and such. I am talking about Mr. Darcy & Lizzy, Mr. Rochester and Jane, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, Catherine and Heathcliff, Wall-e & Eve.

Whatever happened to that kind of romance? Did we all grow bitter and cynic? Whatever happened with writing sonnets and dueling at dawn for a lady’s honors? Whatever happened with slaying dragons and… okay I might be getting carried away but there is something so sweet in the innocent, all-abiding, all-consuming and inevitably tragedy of love stories of before.

I was doing my hair this morning while watching Reba reruns (don’t judge) and a Tresor commercial came on with Kate Winslet in all her Oscar performance glory running across a bridge to reach her love. The misty veil in which the commercial was shot gives you a hint of separated lovers, through hardship or simply a long commute one does not know, but when they hug and you see the blissful look on her face you cannot help but assume they have been reunited after a tragic something. There is no way that it is just a hug of “this was a long weekend”, it was a “we are finally together” hug.

I am a sucker for romance because I can’t wear perfume without having a head-splitting allergy attack and I was ready to go buy the damn thing!

It’s romance, only romantic when tragedy, difficulty and peril plague it? Is it only when couples have to overcome something that we find ourselves sighing? Lizzy and Darcy had to fight their prejudice and pride, Jane and Mr. Rochester his betrayal and his insane wife, Anne and Captain Wentworth the distance that almost 10 years had forged between them, Catherine and Heathcliff the sick tendencies of their personalities and death, Wall-e and Eve had to fight 700 years of technological evolution.

Have we been programmed and taught to believe that only difficulties can make a romance romantic? There is something to be said of struggle that makes everything after accomplished taste sweeter, or is it just the thrill of the chase? Is it simply a brain induced pleasure after deprivation? God knows a piece of chocolate tastes sinfully better if I haven’t had some for a while.

If that is the case then are we fooling ourselves into falling out of love simply because we have a comfortable, pleasant romance instead of a movie, tragic, dramatic one? Is overcoming the impossible necessary to have a fairy tale romance? Have we been brainwashed into thinking that struggle is the only way a love can be romantic?

Or is it simply that life has become so easy, generally speaking, that nothing can get between two lovers? Before there was social convention, war, famine, social stature, disease, long distances, race, gender, everything to get between two lovers. Life is so easy now that nothing tests love anymore. Before people pined for weeks waiting for a letter that would hold a precious lock of hair in its folds and would be kept close to the heart to be read, perused and wallowed over while wasting away with lovesickness. Now we text, shoot an email, call.

Is that a good thing? Did marriage last longer before when the possibility of tragedy was ever looming? Are we so used to everything being so easy that we get bored? Are we missing something? Are we lacking that bittersweet pleasure of loving at a distance? Or are we better as is, enjoying, gorging on the person we love without fear of anything?

I rather enjoy Dear Husband to the fullest without drama, without tragedy, without anything tearing us apart. That said I will keep being a sucker for romance, shed a few tears for those tormented separated souls…and sigh.