A Choice

It has been over a week since I've written...anywhere. Yesterday, as I was sitting at La Diosa visiting with my cousin, Amy, reality (again) slapped me in the face. As I was discussing my Master's thesis, I felt somewhat snobbish. You must know, that I am the first in my immediate family to ever graduate from college. In any event, I have multiple degrees, yet this still does not erase the person I was. Before I moved in with my grandparents, I lived in a mobile home with my mother and step-father. Each day before I stepped onto the bus with wet hair and smoke (an herbal mixture, if you will) permeating from my clothing, I would secretly hope the drug dogs did not come to school that day; I always feared my parents' addiction would be my eternal embarrassment.

As I sat there, sipping wine and eating butter olives, I remembered how much I hated school. I hated living a lie and cliques and loving to read, but mostly, I hated going back to that trailer park. The stories I wrote while sitting in my bedroom were the only means of escape from the world I fought so hard to deny; those stories were only meant for my alter ego. Now, aside from that trip to the Himalayas--I discovered them in a set of encyclopedia my mother had bought from a door-to-door salesman, and lived there via pencil and paper--I am actually her; I am actually that little girl with opportunities.

For what it's worth, I am an educated woman with a future, who, as a child thought she was destined to a realm of nothingness. For seven years I worked two jobs and attended college full-time so my daughters would not have to sit in their rooms and wish for Armageddon. For seven years, the Himalayan mountains became a metaphor for my struggle to break a cycle; I have reached the summit, giving my daughters the same opportunity, but for different reasons.

Yesterday, at La Diosa I had an epiphany; it matters not where we come from or the lives we lived prior to today. Although those moments may have made us stronger, that cliche cannot heal the past. We can never recreate our childhood, nor can we always control what happens in the future, but we can manipulate the negativity that some use for an excuse to never progress beyond their past. We have the capability to evolve. It is a choice.

Until next time, ciao.