Words I dread to write

An icon dead 

-but I am still here-

What have I done for the world?

The worst condition of poverty and chaos is

the need of selfishness

So much time invested in me, me, me, me, me....

me surviving abuse, me holding on to education, me graduating, me moving away, me avoiding loosing myself, me building a family, me enjoying life, me, me, me, me.

There are two islands of selflessness that I can see, surfacing over the water. 

Beacons of hope.

My children.

My students.

To them I give the best in me, but how long has it taken? 

How long? 

Almost half a century.

Will I have enough time?

Will I have the patience or determination to be more selfless?

so much energy spent licking my wounds, becoming a whole. 

not enough time put into the writing, the thinking or the enlightenment....

Can you believe what is going on?

So the year started slow and steady, as years tend to do. But it was actually more like the year was sneaking in like a hungry snake trying to eat a rat, my rat. Twenty-twenty is the year of the rat in the Chinese calendar. I was looking forward to a nice year. I am a rat, the rat wins the race.

Instead, we saw the possibilities for steady and predictable happiness dwindle, sometimes even disappear. Death and destruction, the real thing, not the imagined one, surrounds us. Death and disease piles up around and it is all one could do not to surrender to it. Paranoia sets in and we suspect every surface and person, every movement and intention. Questioning "who is in and who is out?" the game of living is not for the softies. I had already learned that life is not the dressed rehearsal, life is the thing that happens in front of your eyes, every second, like now, like now. Like now.  What is the thing to learn now?

Optimism is starting to look naive. I do see many silver linings. For one, we finally have to quit the BS. Plans are not enough, actions are required. BLM has been brought to the front, perhaps because we now have a common enemy in the WH. This I have learned, I now understand the outrage. The burning of the Wendy's, I get it. Ok, more silver linings... I am getting an inordinate amount of time with my most loved ones. I am still not tired of them. Yes, it is challenging, yes I feel like the invisible woman most of the time.  But I also have had two heads resting on my chest while watching a movie, I have also given them  warm homemade bread and we have talked to each others, sometimes as people. Yes, there will be good things coming out of the first half of the 2020, but we won't see them just yet. This is an egg, we are developing something that we cannot quite see with clarity yet.

Optimism is starting to feel forced. There are layers and layers of stress on top of other layers that started in November of 2016. They never went away, we just kept turning our faces away from the horror and we have now gone 360 to find out that we are surrounded. Who is in our team? Everywhere you look you try to find an ally and identify the enemy. Why the binary? Refuse the binary as a lack of imagination and as unnecessary anxiety. The world is vastly hued and being conformed with duality is simply the curse of simple minds. Reality is complex. Honor it. Then, truly meditate this time because there is no place to go but inside. Inside the house and deeper inside our chests and minds. Lots of stretching are needed because what we need to touch is not our toes, it is our true self. Chase the true self. That part where I might not quite be the agnostic I normally am but quite a believer. That part that is me, and that is you, and that is beyond both of us, but pretty close to the flowers and the snow.

This is the Pre DNA results post

Alrighty, so....

Last night was Super Bowl LIV and the half time show had Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.
I was already feeling proud of them being on this big stage with such large viewership, but after seeing the show, I felt even more proud of being "one of them". But, am I "one of them"?
Here the "them" is Latina women. Women who identify as Latinas or Latino American. Shakira was born in Colombia to a family that also had Lebanese roots. Jennifer Lopez was born in the US to Puerto Rican parents. I was born in Costa Rica, to Costa Rican parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents (Ok, my one grandfather was born in Honduras with Spanish and Mayan ancestry). And yet, I look nothing like Shaki or JLo. This has been a consistent issue for me. Ever since I can remember, in Costa Rica very often people who had just met me spoke to me in English. This made me feel like an outsider. It does not help that women are constantly harassed on the streets for being... well, women. I also stood taller and whiter than most people. I also have blue eyes. Even though many people in Costa Rica are whiter and have blue eyes, we are not the norm. I also happen to be whiter than those white people.
Most people have heard me talk about the relief that was for me to move to NYC and to be part of the "mass". To be able to blend was great. Anonymity felt like freedom. But what happens when I open my mouth? Most people are able to tell that I have an accent. Very few people realize that the accent comes from growing up speaking Spanish. Most people think I am Polish or Russian, groups who live in the region I live. My phenotype, to get technical, is that of someone who should have been born north, way north of the equator. My genotype is currently being analyzed by Ancestry.com (thanks to a Christmas present). I have never been too curious in finding out how I happened to be me. Both my grandmothers were blond haired and blue eyed. I know one set of my great-grandmother's grand-parents were a German man and an Equatorian woman. I do not know on my father's side why was my grandmother so white and blond. But now that I have entered the process of finding out the origin of my genotype, I am curious. Not of what is obvious, but about what is not obvious. Am I also afro-american? Am I also part of the indigenous people in the Central American region? I want to know. I want to share commonalities with Shakira and JLo without feeling like an imposter. After all, I bet we all grew up eating rice and beans, cafe con leche for breakfast. We all dance since little, we all speak Spanish.
See, that has been a theme in my life, feeling like "I don't truly fit". Too white for the Latinx, to Latina for the whites. I think that "mixed raced" people (not at term that I like, there is no such thing as race... etc...etc) have a similar plight I have read. But I am not mixed as far as I know. I am 100% Costa Rican. But let't see what is the regional ancestry of my DNA. Not that it will necessarily change anything, but it might help to make me feel that I am who I am and that it is ok.
I have declared 2020 as the year of me not apologizing for who I am or what I think.
There will be a post DNA test results post, I think.