Life

Before It Could Blossom

~ Natal Galvan

In a concrete jungle, they had found love, their eyes first meeting the day she had discovered her neighborhood library. She walked in excited to have found a place where she could feel comfortable and at home. Since her move into the big city, she had yet to feel either. There was always something amazing about being surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. It was as if you were surrounded by so many different lives, being fictitious or not. She entered the library and walk towards the right heading towards the fiction section comma and that’s when she had spotted him. He obviously worked or volunteered there. His ID dangled around his neck while he sorted away the books on each shelf. Her heart jumped a little. Weird how that happened. He was cute …and tall …and mysterious …but there was something else about him. She didn’t know what it was but it was like a magnet.
Whenever she wasn’t at work she was at the library. What was there to do at home anyways? There was no internet and there was no cable, which meant all she had where her books. Some days he was there. Some days he wasn’t. By the second week of her routine visits, they had become friendly. They greeted each other with a warm smile and a nod, and soon it became a full-on wave with a, “Hey how’s it going?!“
Eventually exchanging phone numbers, they began to get to know each other. Their text messages were more silly than they were flirtatious. She absolutely loved that. They chatted throughout the day about anything and everything. It was not only easy to talk with him but it was also exciting. They could go from cracking jokes one second to a conversation on aliens and alternate dimensions the next. This was why, although she ended up finding out he was 4 years her junior when he asked her out to dinner, she happily said yes.
He picked her up in his old school El Camino. Her heart melted and it was from that night that the two were inseparable. Absolute best friends from the very beginning, they couldn’t have been any more compatible with one another. But sometimes, just because the yin had found its yang, that didn’t mean that their coming together would last forever. Throughout the time that they were building what could have been an everlasting and loving relationship, life behind the scenes wasn’t working out too well for her. Life in the big city had been rough and expensive. The jobs she was able to get hired for simply didn’t pay enough to cover her rent and utilities, let alone make enough for food and savings. It was a real struggle to make ends meet and the stress and anxiety would eat her up alive at night when her thoughts would run around her mind like wild horses. It was only when they were together that she felt something other than pain and heartache. He made her feel good.
They were sitting at one of their favorite burger spots. It was a beautifully sunny day and only she knew how sad of a day it was about to turn into. As they waited for their number to be called, he sat across from her telling her all about the first half of his day. They sat there in the booth on his lunch break, him chatting away while she barely listened. All she could hear were the roaring waves of sadness that were ripping apart her heart.
“Babe, are you listening? I know you’re not because that was funny and you’re not laughing.” He grinned at her. Man did she love those dimples.
“I’m moving back home in 2 weeks.” It came out barely a whisper. He just stared at her, at first making her believe that he hadn’t heard her. She didn’t know if she had the courage to say it once again but she soon realized that she wasn’t going to have to. His eyes misted over and as the lady working the counter called out their number, neither of them moved.

*

We never ate the burgers. We never even claimed them. Our hearts sunk deep into our bellies, heartbreak oozing into our souls. We spent as much time together as we could. We revisited our favorite places together. I went with him on his runs at the park (he ran while I waited on the sidelines). We hugged. We kissed. We cried. On our very last night together we laid on his bed in darkness our heads down towards the opposite end, and while staring up into the ceiling, we listened to all our favorite songs. Both of us being such great lovers of Motown, we listened deep into the night and I will never forget the last song we listened to. As if the Universe knew what we were going through, Kiss and Say Goodbye by The Manhattans came on and as if a switch had turned on, tears pooled into the corners of my eyes and overflowed, rolling past my temples and into my hair. The amount of sadness that was burying itself deep within my throat was overwhelming, so much so that it had sent me into a daze. The one last kiss as I left his bedroom, the one last handhold as I walked out of his front door, the one last hug before getting into the car, the last drive I’d take with him in his El Camino and the last time I would watch him drive away as he waved his last goodbye… I can’t even describe the feeling of what it was like to leave that piece of my heart behind.
I heard the song today and just like any other time I hear it, my heart smiled. Although it was so painful to leave before the relationship had a real chance to fully blossom, I love knowing that I got to experience such love in only just a few short months. I got to experience what felt like an entire lifetime in love and the memories of all that we shared will forever be in bloom, my heart a basket containing every petal.

Discovering YOUR Purpose

~ Natal Galvan

Even before being able to form a sentence we are discussed about to family and to outsiders as to what we are to later become professionally in life. Straight out the womb it’s, “Maybe she will become a lawyer like her father? Maybe he will become a doctor like his grandmother?” As we become older the question is always hovering above us, “What’s your life purpose? What do you think you’re meant to be or do here?” Because we are asked these questions from such a young age and then grow into asking our selves these very same questions on almost a daily basis, we are conditioned to give these thoughts way too much importance. We begin to believe that in this life we are meant to do something major or significant in order to have given our life meaning, and how do we even define for ourselves what is “major and significant”? If we don’t succeed in becoming that doctor or that lawyer then we are just a waste of a life. We begin to compare ourselves to those around us, who also don’t really know what they’re doing. Those who are also following this weirdly imposed set of social norms that in reality limit our potential to do the things in life that we actually want to do for ourselves and maybe need to do for our soul.

Graduate highschool the top of your class, attend college, meet your life partner, get married, buy a house, have kids, work, raise your family, maybe travel once they fly the coop, and then you die. 

Now let’s say your life up until now hasn’t followed these set of social standards. Maybe you have done things “out of order” or maybe you totally missed a couple “key steps” in making something out of yourself. You begin to feel lost and the little voice inside your head begins to tell you that maybe you just weren’t good enough for certain things. Maybe you didn’t try hard enough…

But what if…

…certain things in life weren’t meant for you. Maybe you’re actually better than that in other ways and it’s in those ways that you’re supposed to be shining. What if our life’s purpose is actually as simple as being here to shift energies within other people. In reality, such a purpose isn’t “simple”. To shift energies around you is a gift you are born with and its importance is grander than any job title you could study for. Maybe you are that person that walks into a room and immediately people are drawn to you. They lean to you for advice no matter how small, no matter how personal. A light follows you, casting positivity and radiating joy wherever you go. Such a person is a ripple effect, touching and reshaping lives on a daily basis. There is no small feat in that.

Sometimes we need to take a step back and question ourselves why it is that we are so hard on ourselves especially when it comes to things we pursue solely to appease others. Is it so hard to believe that maybe that’s why it isn’t working for you? It could be that while you felt like you were going with the flow of life in attempting to pursue something that would make a loved one happy, you in turn were actually going against the grain and disrupting your true journey.

I feel as though when speaking to many around me, this is a constant internal battle, the fight we have within ourselves about our purpose. So many of us feel so lost but it’s because we are focusing on all the wrong things. We aren’t really listening to our true selves. We are also looking towards others for answers that in all reality they don’t have. What you should count on are the signs from the Universe. Count on the fact that if you start believing in yourself and set aside the negative self talk, the hints and guidance from the Universe will shout to you what it is that you should be doing; what you should be doing for yourself and your genuine happiness.

Ripples of the Mind

~ Natal Galvan

One’s mind is as deep as the galaxy’s core and at times can get as dark as the bottom pit of the Earth’s seas. Raging internal wars will occasionally interrupt our external lives making life difficult and at times unbearable. We fight with ourselves, with others, and with imaginary entities.  It’s only when we learn to control it that we can make it calm. Still, that only comes with practice and only after we have even acknowledged that we need to do so.

I found myself swimming in unchartered territory last night. I was watching t.v with my pup when she began clearing her throat and at times, gasped for air as if she was trying to catch her breath. My dog isn’t some young pup anymore. She’s 16 years old so during moments such as these my own breath will catch and my mind begins to wander. Dark thoughts begin to toss around my mind. Images of her falling ill and me not being able to do anything about it. It’s a reality that continuously lingers in the back of my mind. A reality that isn’t far from someday happening. As my mind played the unwanted scenario, my body began to act as if it were really happening. My heart began to beat a little faster. My eyes began to tear up. It was as if I was experiencing a loss that hadn’t happened yet.

This is where meditation and learning to silence the mind comes into play. Where before my mind would have continued to run with the thoughts that began to plague my mind, now I find that I can slowly still it. I relaxed my breathing and the thoughts that swirled my mind and suffocated my heart began to subside. I took myself out of a future; a moment that hadn’t happened yet, and brought myself back to the present moment, sitting on the couch, snuggled with my puppy who had stopped gasping for air and was currently staring up at me with happy eyes.

The mind can be trick There have been many times when I’ve found myself having a conversation with people who aren’t there over encounters and situations that hadn’t happened. I’ve gotten as worked up as I would have if the confrontation were to be actually taking place. Meditation has really been such a great tool in helping me control my thoughts. It also helps when it comes to me being less reactive and when it comes to situations that frustrate me or are completely out of my control. It seems strange or silly when Ii talk about it for I am no meditation expert but over the years of me slowly leaning into the practice I have come to truly understand how great of a weapon it is to have in your arsenal when it comes to overcoming one’s own mind.

If you find that your mind is one vast ocean full of turbulent thoughts, waves of ideas that come crashing down on you, debilitating you when you least expect it, try meditating. Slowly, with practice, you can guide your mind towards the stillness of peace. A place where the ripples of the mind become calm and as still, and nothing but tranquility governing your mind.

Addiction and Its Trickery

~ Natal Galvan ~ 1 Comment

“He’s spiraling. I’d talk to him about it but I know he doesn’t want to hear it. He’s been so cynical and fake lately. It’s been driving me crazy. There used to be a time when I could talk to him about anything. Now there is nothing. It’s kind of like when you scream down an empty hallway and the only response back is total darkness.”

These are the words from a girl who lost her partner in crime; her best friend. Addiction can be tricky, and it has tricked me many times. From family members to significant others to my closest friends, addiction has taken the souls of many I love and in its place left me with an empty shell of a human being. The biggest loss of all was the loss of my best friend. It’s been almost an entire year since I first really noticed that he was no longer the same person I met a year prior. He had become my best friend almost from the day we met and my roommate not too long after that. He was like a brother I never had and it was nice to not be so alone anymore. At the time we met I had just relocated to a new area in FL and other than an ex, I knew no one in town. The bond was created almost instantly the day he was hired at my job and after a devasting breakup that he went through with his partner he moved into my one-bedroom apartment.

I learned much about his life as he was very honest and open with the struggles he had faced in life. He at the time was a year and a half sober although he had already started to dabble back into the scene. He had been a full-blown heroin addict and it had been a struggle to get himself clean. After meeting the guy he was with, it wasn’t long before he introduced him back into the party scene. His partner (being the irresponsible pharmacist that he was) was providing him with Adderall, Xanax, coke, booze, all the things a recovering addict had no place in partaking in. When I say it wasn’t even a full year before he was back into getting too intoxicated to even control his bowel movements, I mean it. Before I knew it I was fearing for his life.

The light in his eyes began to slowly fade as well as the love for life. He no longer was excited about the little things. Before we would have our dedicated “Adventure Days” where at least once a week we would go to new parts of the surrounding cities looking for places we had never been before. Now it was difficult to even get him to want to leave the confines of his bedroom. His hygiene at this point was almost non-existant and forget about him even trying to contribute to the day to day upkeep of our apartment.

The day he was no longer able to keep up with the bills was the day I knew he had completely lost his grip on reality. He was engulfed in simply trying to get by. His routine was sleep, work, home, drugs, sleep, work, home, drugs. I started to find random little baggies throughout the apartment. I would run into these baggies more often than I would see him. I’d find my cat playing with broken apart pens and pulled apart q-tips. Still, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was obviously in extream denial.

To make an already long story short I eventually had a confrontation with him giving him an ultimatum: either he went to detox or the moment he left the apartment I would change the locks and he would no longer have a place to live.

The entire ordeal ended up being too much for our friendship to bare. He did go and get help but that help hadn’t been more than a tiny step towards a very long road ahead of him. By this point, I had made a choice to move back home to Jersey and we eventually went our separate ways. He moved out a couple weeks before I hit the road towards home and from that day on I hadn’t heard from him again. I reached out a couple times with no reply and even tried reaching out to his mother to see if he was alright. The last I heard no one had spoken to him and sometimes I wonder if he’s ok and safe.

The fact that he is no longer in my life has made it selfishly better. My quality of life, sad to say, has improved because I am not longer fighting an internal battle between my logical side and my compassionate side. I felt that towards the end there was a codependent relationship that had been built between us and I was happy to walk away from that. Years before meeting him I had worked really hard at trying break from my codependency and I had begun to drift back into old habits. This friendship had started taking me back to dark places and all because I was trying to keep someone else from drowning.

For me, it’s a hard thing to accept that so many people in this life are battling addictions. It’s hard to accept because I was left so jaded and to try to build relationships with people who are going through such struggles is not easy. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it? Did the good times outweigh the bad? Yes. Yes, they did. I miss my friend, I truly do. I hope that he’s ok although my hopes aren’t very high.

One thing I’ve really learned when it comes to dealing with addiction when you lose people you love to addiction, you really are mourning the loss of a loved one almost as though you’ve lost them to death. It is painful. The heartbreak at times more than one can bear. Although it has been a little over two months I still feel the conflict of what used to be following me around. It hides in the outskirts of my mind popping in at odd moments to remind me of who I lost and what I lost them to. Still, I try to continue my days with hopes that someday the pain of this loss will ease and that this will become just another chapter in a long story called Life.

This Round of Retrograde

~ Natal Galvan ~ 2 Comments

Let me tell you a bit about how I’ve been fairing during this retrograde. It has literally been kicking my ass.

It began uneventful. I remember thinking to myself, “Is it possible? Will I be able to get away unscathed this time around?” The instant I thought it, I wanted to kick myself because at that moment I felt as though I had jinxed myself.

By day four life was still smooth sailing and I figured that maybe, just maybe that by realizing I had jinxed myself days before, I had inadvertently jinxed the jinx and it had just canceled each other out. I mean, in life anything is possible, right?

WRONG!!! SO SO SO WRONG!!!

Ok, so…

If you’re not big into astrology and universal vibrations, things of this nature, you must be thinking, “What the fuck is this person even talking about? Retro-what now?” I totally understand that. I also understand that many of you won’t care for specifics as to the details of what mercury’s retrograde is and other’s who have heard of it and find it to be a bunch of baloney. Short description for those of you who are interested is a 3 week period that happens every few months in which the planet Mercury shifts differently within its rotation throwing off the balance of how certain things operate. During this period communication with others is poor, electronics malfunction, travel plans become more difficult to follow through with, and every thing is more accident prone. Luck isn’t very much on your side, anyone’s side really. If you find the topic interesting or feel as though it’s pretty relateable to you, I do suggest looking it up and doing further research on it.

I am a HUGE believer in all of this and the last few days have been a testament to its validity. Its almost as if the Universe has decided to turn my life into the poster child of the unluckiness this period of time can be.

A week ago today is when it all began. It was my last day off before I had to return to work for the weekend. I took myself out to breakfast to my favorite local diner. After a delicious meal and a bit of relaxation, it was time to head out and continue with the day’s errands. As I get into my car and go to start it, dead. Alright, no biggie. I’ve got a power box in the back seat so I hook it up to the battery and jump it.

I continue on about my day without much of glitch until later on that evening I decide to log onto my bank site to check on things when I noticed that airline tickets were purchased with my card. Living in a metropolitan area one finds that this happens all the time. Since moving to South East Florida I have had to get my account suspended and card replaced numerous times. This time was no different, it would be 5-7 business days before I would receive it. I could get a temporary card from the bank to hold me over but unfortunately it was already late in the evening and banks were closed and I worked all day Friday and the entire weekend. It was no problem really. I would just patiently wait.

The next morning it became a problem. My car wasn’t starting and I had to get t work. I was running early to work until I spent 15 mins trying to get it to start. I gave up, went upstairs to wash up, and decided on calling an Uber and dealing with the car trouble later.

Uber: “Unable to process payment. Please reenter payment option below”

FUCK!

Since my bank account is suspended any links to it would be too. I have no other forms of plastic and therefore no other means of independently getting to work so I opted to ring a friend. I made it to work an hour late but just in time to help with the rush. A nice and busy day is what my wallet needed especially now with the unexpected car troubles waiting for me once I got home.

I had a quick dinner with a coworker of mine. After work we decided on grabbing a bite to eat and then went our separate ways, her on her bike, me in an old school taxi cab. On the way home I realized that, me not being used to having to call cabs, had used most of my cash at dinner so if I wanted to leave the driver a tip Id have to run up to my apartment to grab some. We arrived and I quickly explained the situation, exited the cab, ran up, and then down again in seconds. It hadn’t been until 30-45 mins later, once I polished off the rest of my left over dinner, that I realized that my phone was missing. I had left it in the cab.

Without my phone I have no internet.  Since moving into this apartment I hadn’t splurged on buying internet for a couple different reasons, one of them being that Xfinity is the only provider in this area and I REFUSE to use Comcast/Xfinity. Instead, I decided to just use my mobile hot spot. That choice was all fine and dandy until now. Without internet or my phone, there was no way of contacting anyone. So here I am, no car, no debit card, no phone, and no internet. Great….

I set the oven timer as my morning alarm and went to bed. I had to work at 9 am the next day and I would need the rest.

Its been exactly one week since things in my life started to tank. I was able to get through the weekend, getting to work and back with the help of neighbors and coworkers. I’ve had off from work since Tuesday (its Thursday now) but haven’t really enjoyed or relaxed because I have been having to deal with one thing or the other. I’m still waiting to get my card. I’m truly hoping (fingers crossed) that it arrives today. Cabs are way too expensive.

After battling with Verizon’s RIDICULOUS process of filing a claim on a lost phone, they shipped me a phone last night so I should be getting it today. My car? It’s no more. I’ve come to the final realization that it is truly time to sell her.

Has this week been an easy week? No, not one bit. Yet, I will say that up until yesterday I have handled everything pretty well if you were to ask me. I say “until yesterday” because after realizing that Verizon still hadn’t shipped out my phone due to “insufficient documentation” I freaked out a bit. Luckily it was just the pets and I that got to bare witness to my mini meltdown. As soon as it was over (it took approximately 5 mins from start to finish) I felt so much better.

I sat and thought about my entire situation, and although many wouldn’t agree with me, I say that it all could have been much worse. I was lucky that my car hadn’t broken down anywhere else, leaving me stranded. I was lucky enough to have had a dear friend of mine (really one of the only two I have here) help me with sending in the paperwork for my phone, rides to and from work, ect. I was lucky to have had the last 3 days off so that I had time to deal with all of this. I’m also lucky in the way that I love reading, and writing, and was able to entertain myself  through these while not having a phone or internet to distract me.

In the next couple of weeks I will be going through some major life changes. I can’t help but think that this period of retrograde was a true end to all of what no longer serves me. A tearing down of what was in order to make way for the rebuild of what’s to come. I am excited. Months ago I had begun to minimize the junk in my life. I wanted to not just start over from scratch but to maintain the lightness of what it feels to be free. Free of gadgets, materialistic shit I never use, freedom of always having to stay connected, freedom from obligations or expectations placed upon me, not for my benefit but for the sake of other’s happiness. This past week has shown me a lot. It has freed me from certain things and has reminded me that life isn’t what makes it comfortable. Life is about living in the moments, embracing its natural beauty of all that is around us. Life is also about the moments of discomfort, because those are the moments that allow for us to grow much taller and s Continue reading →

Summer Breeze

~ Natal Galvan

I’ve always said that I’m more of a “go with the flow” kind of girl. I don’t typically have much planned, at least not every little detail. I’ve usually got a general idea of what I’d like to do, but to say I’ve got my entire life mapped out down to the tiniest detail is completely untrue. Yet, having your whole life mapped out and having goals are two different things.

When I was younger I had my life totally mapped out. I knew what career I wanted, where I wanted to travel to, the type of husband I wanted to have, the style of family we were going to be (yes, I said style) and the home we would be creating in. All of this before I even knew who I was. As I got older and learned a couple of hard but meaningful lessons, I realized I was trying to live a highly contradictory life. Not contradictory because I wouldnt be able to live it, but because none of it was me. I went from a detailed plan to scratching all of it from my to-do list keeping only the traveling part.

I quit school and solely focused on working so that I could get from one place to the next. Finding love was importnant but there lied the problem. I was trying to find it, therefore I was constantly pointing myself in the wrong direction instead of letting it find me.

I also came to discover that I, in fact, was in no hurry at all to have children. As one does when on the road to self discovery, I asked myself Why? Why was I trying to find romantic love so hard but not with the end result of a child? The answer was the most honest and direct as I could be with myself.

I had a necessity in finding my best friend and partner so that I could enjoy all of life’s magic and splendor with someone. I would feel fulfilled with being able to share the journey of life and constructing memories of that journey with someone else. Having kids for me wasn’t a need. I feel as though for many, having children is a desire that most people have for they have a need to leave behind a footprint or legacy. I don’t have such desires.

So here I was, now in my late 20s. Only now I am beginning to differentiate what was important to me and what wasn’t. I lost most of my blueprint and only had one thing on my mind and that was to live life! During this time is when I lost my dear cousin in a tragic and unexpected accident which pushed me even harder towards living life for the now, fuck the later. The problem to this thinking? You begin to not set goals for yourself. You literally begin to live your days moment to moment with no thought to your future.

This is where I’ve been fort the last 4 years, floating.

Ok…. maybe “floating” is being a bit dramatic… or maybe… I’m trying to not be so hard on myself? I don’t know. What I do know is, after an immense break-down, I’ve begun to take my life back instead of letting it drift around with the breeze. I’ve started to make solid goals for my immediate future, because of course although “Summer breeze makes me feel fine…” to continuously allow yourself to drift along with it will most certainly be the death of you and your purpose.

Headed Home

~ Natal Galvan

As soon as I publicly voiced my plans on moving back home I had quite a number of people reach out to me questioning why.

“Why would you ever come back here? Why leave Florida to come back to this?”

It’s a natural question especially coming from those who have never left home. For someone like me who has been away from home for 12 years now, the question is a bit silly. My answer is simple. I’m ready to head back home.

I first left NJ when I was 20 years old. I had just gone through a very painful breakup. I was tired of my town and all of the surrounding areas. I had been born and raised in the same area and although I knew quite a few people from all sorts of different backgrounds, I was bored of it all. There was an entire world to see. I would be damned if I where to just stay in one spot my whole life.

I took off to Florida in February of 2008 and I have pretty much lived in every major area of South Florida except for Miami. I also moved within that time to California and lived there for exactly one year before heading back to the East Coast with my tail between my legs (you may have won the battle but not yet the war CA! *shakes fist dramatically in the air*).

I have experienced so many different kinds of adventures, and been on so many journeys, some bad, most good. I’ve gone through many lessons and although life lessons will never cease to exist, every single one I’ve been through up until now has helped me discover who I am. I believe that without discovering and learning about who we really are, not just as people, but also as individual souls, without knowing that you can’t possibly enjoy life for what it really is. How can you enjoy it if you are always questioning yourself, your likes, your dislikes, your boundaries, your desires? How can you create your reality when you barely know your dreams? Not society’s, not your family’s, but your own. Moments of introspection and self-discovery are key to experiencing and living life in the best way we can for ourselves.

I once left home because I was tired of being around the same old, to learn more about myself, and to see what I was capable of. Now I go home because I’m ready to be around all those that know me and love me for me and always have even before I truly knew myself. I am ready to be around familiar surroundings. I can take what I’ve learned about myself and apply it to my everyday life and do something special with with it alongside of the support and love of my family and friends.

I am running towards what I once ran away from. Although I will never lose my itch to discover, that is what traveling is made for. I will always be nomadic. It is in my blood. My move back home may not even be forever, who knows!? I, however, do know that home is where the heart is and I’m headed on back.

Contending With Honesty

~ Natal Galvan

My relationship with honesty has always been irregular.

As a kid, I would make up stories even about the most typical parts of my life. I had my reasons, though. It wasn’t because I loved lying. I used to hate to think about it as lying. I chose to think of it as storytelling. I told stories to fit in with the crowd. I used to think that all the kids I met had cool lives. I wanted a cool life too and so I would spruce up certain things about mine just to make me feel like I was like them.

I did eventually grow out of it. It was exhausting, not only portraying someone that you’re not, but it was hard to realize that others would in turn read me wrong. I felt like no one really knew me, let alone understood me, and how could they? I wasn’t giving anyone the real version of me. As I got into high school being honest soon started to become my new addiction. So much so, that I became brutally honest. That began a totally new battle. Instead of before when my battle with honesty seemed more internal, now it was starting to become a more physical battle with others.

I became explosive with my honesty. If I was feeling a certain way about something, I was letting you know whether you wanted to listen or not. There was no sugar coating anything. What for? To add confusion? To allow someone to believe that things were one way when in reality it wasn’t, or to soften the blow? I felt as though that was all wasting time and why do that? Arguments with people would ensue, be it with friends or family. Then that too started to become exhausting.

It wasn’t until my 20’s, once I moved away from home and began to really look into my self, that I began looking at life and how to handle it differently. Soul searching provided me with a different view on how to approach certain aspects of life, especially that of being honest. I learned that it was important to share your thoughts and your true feelings with others so that there would less confusion and more understanding. It was OK to be brutal but just as easily OK to soften the blows, and that there was a time and place. Yet, since then I have come to understand that I now have a new hill to climb. I now struggle with the patience that must be had when it comes to others and their understanding of honesty.

To me, I see honesty as a privilege that we should be allowed to have. It should be our prerogative, as human beings, to want to express it as well as be able to receive it. The thing is, people only see life and everything about it, from their own perspective. Human beings are so self absorbed in their own lives and feelings towards it, that they tend to forget that others that they are sharing this existence with my have a different spin on what they share as the same situation. That’s how feelings get dismissed and how lives become discounted and discredited.

Take, for instance, a “break up” (if we could even call it that) I had about 4 years ago. A good friend of mine and I were becoming reacquainted again after my move back from CA. We began going on dates here and there, which later then turned into midnight escapades. It was fun but only until I started realizing that he was falling hard and I, simply put, just wanted to have fun. I was honest and explained that him and I were on two different planes in life and although everything was fine, I simply did not see him “in that way” and felt that it would only be right to end what was going on. It was difficult for me to do because I knew of how he felt for me. Who wants to break someone’s heart? Yet, I couldn’t lead him on or waste his time nor mine. His reaction wasn’t good. He hated me of course and called me every name in the book. He went on to talk shit about me to all his friends, spewing all sorts of negativity to anyone who would listen. I was in shock. I knew he was going to be upset, but to the point that he had spoken so ill of me? I was in shock because I hadn’t understood what he had wanted me to do. Had he wanted me to lie to him and put up a charade all so his ego’s needs could be met? It took so much patience to not lash out the way I wanted to about that situation and that’s only one example. I see it everyday with the people I come in contact with , the battles we all have with honesty and all the internal and external struggles it comes with. So are battles with honesty that irregular then? Or is it actually more common than we considering human beings and how we think, which is in mainly an introspectively self absorbed way.

I place a high value on honesty when it comes to terms with myself and others. I choose to be a woman of integrity and want for my character to always be able to be described as open, honest, and approachable. I want to be receptive because if I want to be heard, I too need to listen in order to understand.

I guess maybe these aren’t even battles with honesty at all. It’s just learning life.

Welcome Back

~ Natal Galvan

Death always has a way of stirring up thoughts and emotions that one sometimes ignores.

My grandmother almost died last week. The little firecracker put a real scare into everyone. All seven of her kids flew to Colombia to be by her side. A couple days later she made almost a full recovery. As full of a recovery that an 86 year old lady who just happened to catch a bad case of pneumonia could. She also had blood clots forming in her lungs which is what made the doctors question how much longer the little lady had to live.

The scare reunited the family together. For a week they all stayed by her side, laughing, crying, reminiscing over the good and bad times they have shared together. For me, my grandmother’s close to death experience made me think long and hard about all of the sacrifices this woman had to make in life raising 8 children, losing one of them, all while married to a husband who hadn’t loved her as much as he should have. It made me think about my life and how I never wanted to sacrifice my entire existence to please others instead of pleasing myself.

I hadn’t realized how unhappy I had recently become until a few things happened that triggered a shut down. When I say I shut down I mean I shut down. Other than getting up for work and robotically moving throughout my workday, I couldn’t muster up any energy to do anything else. No writing. No painting. No socializing. All I wanted was to come home, crawl into my bed and get lost in a world of Netflix and YouTube videos. The night would end and the next day would start, the same routine all over again. I was depressed and I hadn’t even realized it until an argument was had with the guy I was seeing which really placed things into perspective for me,  which was then followed by the news of my grandmother’s declining health.

I decided to take certain matters of mine into my own hands. I made a firm decision to walk away from a situation that wasn’t working for me. It’s been a few days and I can’t say I regret doing so. I hadn’t realized how stressed out I was before, and now that changes have been made it is like my days are a little brighter and I go about my life like a summer breeze, cool and calm. I feel like I am almost back to being me again. Even as I sit here and write this I wonder how I could let such outside forces really determine whether or not I have time to do the things I love to do. I blame myself for giving so much of me that I had no energy to then give to myself. It is a lesson I learned before but I guess I had forgotten about. I will not forget again. I will not lose myself or lose the energy to do for myself to simply make others happy.

Hi Me.

Welcome Back!

 

Yes We Are And This Is Why

~ Natal Galvan

I was apart of a very interesting conversation not too long ago which included my boyfriend and one of his good friends.  They were speaking of the best method to clean car headlights.

“Bro, all you have to do is spray your headlights with OFF bug spray and bam! They’re clean!”

“Yeah, you told me that but when I looked it up it said that it doesn’t last very long. It’s a short term fix. I’m just going to buy the special kit and clean them. I can clean yours too babe.” My boyfriend smiles, turning his attention from his friend to where I was sitting.

“Awe, I appreciate that! But don’t worry, I can just do it.” The statement spilled from my lips without a second’s thought. It has always been natural for me to do things on my own. For one thing, I’ve never liked to burden others with tedious duties, especially if it’s something I could easily just do my self. Plus, I’ve always been one to just take care of things on my own. Not so much because I want to but because I’ve been conditioned to. My boyfriend’s friend, who I just met a couple months ago, wouldn’t have a clue as to the reasoning of my reaction though and he quickly starts to lay it on thick…

“Lord.. all you women now-a-days are so independent! Can’t you girls just let us do things for you? I mean, it’s because we actually like to do things for you. It’s how we show that we care, seriously…”

He is not the only man to feel this way. I feel as though the majority of men see women as wanting to be Miss. Independent, yet to be honest, I don’t think it is so much of us wanting to be independent as it is that we have been conditioned to be this way.

My generation is the generation of the baby boomer parents. Baby boomers are the generation to have really started a new trend in parenting, instilling different values and ways of life. Whether you were married and then divorced, raising children that way, or never married to begin with and having children out of wedlock, one of the major lessons taught, be it beaten into you or subconsciously taught, was the lesson of being independent. Doing for yourself so you would never have to solely depend on others. This lesson being especially directed towards females. Men were always raised as being the “men of the house”. Families have always depended on men to bring home food, to help build and maintain shelter and order. Men were always looked as the bosses, the ones who truly ran the household. It has only been in the last 50 years or so that women have begun a new sort of revolution with what they wanted their contributions to be. More freedom to choose what, where, when, and who when it came to decisions to be made in their lives. Even women who have been in a loving marriage for decades will say that they wish a sort of different life for their daughters, one with more leeway to do what they want to do and without having to depend on anyone other than themselves.

My parents divorced when I was 4 years old. At that time, my mother had depended on my father so much that she didn’t even know to fill out a personal check on her own. She had been so utterly dependent on my father that when they split up, she felt as if she had been thrown into a world she knew nothing of. It was a struggle for her to get back on her feet and succeed as a single mother of two young girls. Her mantra always was, “Do for yourself. Depend on no man. You are all you need.” and as a kid, watching and observing, I took this in and applied it to my life. Before I knew it, it was my life.

I am no extreme feminist by any means. Yet, I do understand the thoughts behind those that are, just as I understand the frustrations plaguing men when it comes to the evolution of women and the roles men now play in their lives. But as it is a struggle for men to adapt to a woman’s newly found independence, it is also a struggle for women to find a middle ground with wanting to be independent while also allowing room for someone else to help take care of you. It is a small battle that presents itself regularly in life. One that I don’t ever see being won by either party but one that can be a bit more manageable.

For me it is a struggle to let go of the reigns a bit and allow for someone else to take on  more than what I am used to giving up. I have to remind myself that yes, although I am very independent, I also have to allow others who love me to do things for me, not because I can’t do them myself but because for them, it’s a way to show that they care. It takes effort and awareness to be able to allow for this to happen but it’s a challenge worth accepting if it means bringing a bit of joy into someone else’s life. I hope that for the women who read this post it allows for you to take a step back, however slight that step may be, in order to allow someone else to do for you. Allow them to care for you in ways that they would like to express. Give them that chance to express. I also hope that for the men who read this you may now understand that maybe it isn’t so much that we hate your help. It is that we have grown into independence and truly know nothing else.