Finding Solace

Ohh man last night was a bit dramatic! Totally unexpected. My Abuela and I had a long day, and I went in to take a shower after I thought she was in bed asleep. I'm not really sure why, but I totally lost it. I started crying hysterically! There was no real reason other than the fact that I was going to have to release all that pent up emotion at some point. I figured I could hold out until she at least went back home. Nope. Wrong. So anyways...I'm in the bathroom sitting on the floor with the shower running, crying uncontrolably and in walks my Abuela......can you see the expression on my face...ohh yea, fucking busted! There's no getting out of this one, not with her around. She's more stubborn and persistant than I am! So I had to tell her what I had been thinking about and what was bothering me so much that I was having a total meltdown!

I explained to her that being in NYC and meeting all my friends(family really), and seeing all the places I had lived, and visiting all the tourist attractions, seeing the sights, her asking about September 11, it all made me think of Jess. Every step on that sidewalk, every mile in those cabs, every bump of the subway, every blade of grass in Central Park,every smell, every sound, everything, everything, everything. Everything in NYC reminds me of the life I used to have and the wife that I lost and, GOD I FUCKING HATE HOW I FEEL! NYC is the only home I have ever had up until about a year ago. Everything that has ever happened in my life, happened there. All the good, all the bad, and all the inbetween. My abuse throughout foster care, my rape, my wife's torture by her father, seeing Jess alive for the last time, THE LAST TIME! I got my GED, went to college, worked my butt off, had a nice place to live, fell in love, had awesome friends, an active life, lots of interests, lots of ways to fulfill those interests, a wife!

Throw into the mix that for the first time, I stood face to face with a woman and a group of other people...who shared the blood flowing through my viens. I went to another country, the place I would have been born, and met my family. Not foster famly, not friends who are like family, FAMILY. The woman standing in front of me gave birth to my father. She is my mother, one step removed. She saved my mother from a horrible experience and took that upon herself. This woman has lived so much and knows more withought being schooled than I ever could wish to obtain in two lifetimes!

What's wrong she asked me...I'm on overload and I'm grieving my wife, and facing the abuse I endured. Flat out, there it is. I told her everything. How could I not? She stared at me with those black eyes that seem to know everything. She held my hands in hers, her hands that for over half a century have become perfect. They are tough, and wrinkled, and soft, and gentle, and skilled. She hugged me in her arms, arms that once hugged my parents. She told me that she understood. She told me I would be okay. She told me-what lasts forever is only what I choose. She explained that no matter how bad things are around you, you need to find something good. That's how you survive, that's how you fix things that need to be repaired. Every person is a mechanic of sorts, they all learn how to mend the wounds of themselves and others, dude is she amazing or what, I never would have thought that she would say things like this, or be able to comfort me this much.

Somehow in all of her speaking, which is soft and deep and low and a bit raspy, but so comforting, I stopped crying. I focused on her voice and her touch and without realizing, I focused on myself, something I am not very good at. Her accent and her spanish words rolled around in my head and sank in. They made more sense than anything I've heard since Jess said "I love you" just before she stopped hugging me to board the plane, I never heard her speak again after that. My Abuela is the only person who has been able to reach the woman I locked inside of myself since Jess died. It had slowly been happening, this locking away of a human soul, but Jess' death was the straw the was just too much, it made me lock the door and hide the key. She didn't even need the key to unlock the door. She just pushed it open. I let her in.