personal

Exile: What Dreaming in Cuban, Baldwin, Bell, and Díaz Teach Us About America Right Now

~ Natal Galvan ~ Leave a comment

Over the past couple of months, my reading list has unintentionally turned into a syllabus on identity, displacement, and the messy business of becoming American. I’ve gone from James Baldwin’s searing essays to Derrick Bell’s unflinching legal parables, from Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, to my current read Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban. Apparently, I’ve been curating a literary support group for people who live in the in‑between, the exiled, the hybrid, the children of diaspora who carry histories we didn’t choose but still feel responsible for. And honestly? It’s been hitting a little too close to home. As a Colombian‑American born here but raised in the gravitational pull of another homeland, I’ve been reading these books like someone looking for a map of a country that doesn’t exist on paper, only in memory, imagination, and family stories told over café con leche.

Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban is a multigenerational novel that follows the del Pino women, a family split not just by geography, but by politics, memory, and the emotional aftershocks of exile. The story moves between Cuba and the United States from the 1930s through the 1980s, weaving together the lives of three generations of women who are all, in their own ways, trying to make sense of the past they inherited and the futures they’re building. At the center is Celia del Pino, the family matriarch, whose unwavering devotion to the Cuban Revolution becomes both her anchor and her undoing. She writes decades’ worth of letters to her lost lover, Gustavo, letters her children never see until long after her life has hardened into myth. Celia stays in Cuba, but she becomes emotionally exiled from her own family.

Her daughters take opposite paths.

Lourdes, the eldest, flees Cuba after a traumatic assault and reinvents herself in New York as a fiercely patriotic, hyper‑American entrepreneur. She loves the United States with the intensity of someone who needs that love to mean something. Her Americanness is a shield, a performance, a survival strategy.

Felicia, the middle daughter, remains in Cuba but spirals into psychological turmoil. Her life is marked by an abusive marriage, mental illness, and a desperate search for spiritual meaning. She is exiled inside her own mind, and her children grow up trying to understand a mother they can never fully reach.

And then there’s Pilar, Lourdes’s daughter, the bridge between worlds. Born in Cuba but raised in the U.S., Pilar feels a psychic pull toward her grandmother Celia, a connection that transcends distance and politics. She grows up caught between two homelands, two histories, two versions of herself. When she finally travels to Cuba as a young woman, she finds clarity but not belonging. Her identity remains hybrid, layered, beautifully unresolved.

The novel moves through their memories, letters, dreams, and visions, showing how exile fractures families not just across borders but across time. Every woman in this family is shaped by what she knows, what she doesn’t know, and what she learns too late.

Cuba, Then and Now: A Country That Won’t Sit Still

Cuba has been in the news again, protests, shortages, political crackdowns, the same cycle of hope and heartbreak that has defined the island for decades. But none of this is new. Cuba’s modern history is a story of revolutions that promised liberation but delivered new forms of control; of families split across oceans; of people forced to choose between homeland and survival. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 reshaped the island, but it also reshaped Miami, New Jersey, New York, every place where Cuban exiles rebuilt their lives.

García’s Dreaming in Cuban captures this history not through dates and speeches, but through the emotional wreckage it leaves behind. Celia’s devotion to El Líder, Lourdes’s fierce rejection of Cuba, Felicia’s unraveling, these are the human consequences of political upheaval, and so, reading this now, in a moment when Cuba is once again erupting, feels like watching history refuse to stay in the past.

This is where García’s novel becomes almost too real. Exile isn’t just about leaving a country; for me it’s about leaving stories untold.

Celia’s unread letters.
Felicia’s daughters piecing together her life like detectives.
Pilar longing for a grandmother she barely knows but feels spiritually tethered to.

This is exile as inheritance.
Exile as a family secret.
Exile as a silence that shapes identity as much as any homeland, and if you grew up in a Latinx household, you know this intimately. Our families are full of stories that only come out in fragments, whispered, half‑remembered, or revealed decades later when the damage is already done.

What’s struck me most in these past months of reading, Baldwin, Bell, García, and now Díaz; is how their ideas braid together almost effortlessly, as if they’ve all been sitting at the same table arguing about identity, exile, and America long before I showed up with my highlighters. Baldwin reminds me that identity is forged in tension, in the friction between who we are and who the nation insists we be. Pilar lives in that friction. She isn’t American because she rejects Cuba; she’s American because she refuses to amputate any part of herself. She holds both worlds, both histories, both longings, without apology. Bell, on the other hand, exposes the contradictions baked into America’s racial and political systems. When I look at Lourdes through Bell’s lens, her hyper‑patriotism suddenly makes sense. Her Americanness isn’t naïve; it’s strategic. It’s armor. Reinvention becomes her survival tactic in a country that has never been neutral terrain for immigrants. Then Díaz enters the chat with the language of inherited trauma, the idea that history clings to families like a shadow you can’t shake. Pilar’s psychic pull toward Celia, or Luz and Milagro trying to decode Felicia’s life, feels like pure Díaz: the fukú of diaspora, the blessing and curse of carrying stories you didn’t choose but still shape you.

Together, these writers form a kind of chorus, not always harmonious, but always truthful. They tell us that identity is layered. That exile doesn’t end with the person who leaves. That belonging is a negotiation, not a birthright, and that America, for people like us, has never been simple.

This is the part we don’t like to say out loud, but we all know it’s true.

America loves immigrant labor, immigrant food, immigrant culture, but historically, it has not loved immigrants. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the treatment of Cuban rafters in the 1990s to the rhetoric around Latin American migrants today, the pattern is painfully consistent. Immigrants are welcomed when convenient, scapegoated when politically useful, and rarely granted the full humanity they deserve. García’s novel shows us the emotional cost of this. Lourdes builds her Americanness out of discipline and defiance because she knows this country will not give her the benefit of the doubt. Pilar grows up negotiating two identities because America demands clarity where her life offers complexity, and in today’s political climate, where immigration is once again a battleground, their stories feel eerily contemporary. For those of us who grew up with one foot in the U.S. and one in Colombia, Cuba, the DR, Mexico, or anywhere else in the world, García’s novel feels like a mirror.

We know what it’s like to inherit stories in fragments.
We know what it’s like to feel nostalgia for a place we’ve only visited in memory.
We know what it’s like to navigate a country that loves our culture but not always our people.

Exile, for us, isn’t dramatic. It’s subtle.
A hum beneath the surface.
A reminder that identity is something we build and rebuild every day.

In the End…

Dreaming in Cuban doesn’t give us answers. It gives us language. It gives us permission to be plural. It gives us a way to understand the silences in our families and the fractures in our histories. In a moment when America is once again arguing about who gets to belong, García reminds us of a truth Baldwin, Bell, and Díaz have been shouting for decades:

Belonging is not something the nation grants.
It’s something we live, claim, and carry, across borders, across generations, across time.

Work Cited

Baldwin, James. Going to Meet the Man. Vintage International, 1995.

Bell, Derrick. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Basic Books, 1992.

Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Riverhead Books, 2007.

García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. Vintage Contemporaries, 1992.

Gott, Richard. Cuba: A New History. Yale University Press, 2004.

Pérez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 2014.

A Yearbook, a Couch, and the Strange Softness of Looking Back

~ Natal Galvan ~ Leave a comment

This weekend, while I was dog‑sitting, I stumbled across a yearbook from the late ’90s. One of those thick, glossy bricks with neon fonts and awkward group photos, the kind that smells like dust, old glue, and a thousand teenage insecurities. I wasn’t expecting it to hit me the way it did, but there I was, sitting on someone else’s couch with someone else’s dog snoring on my foot, flipping through pages of kids I didn’t know… and suddenly thinking about the kid I used to be.

It’s funny how something as simple as a yearbook can pull you straight back into your own hallways, the ones you thought you’d outgrown. I found myself wondering what my life would look like if I had set myself up differently back then. Not in a dramatic, “rewrite my whole timeline” way. More like… I wish I had joined a few more things. Tried out for something. Let myself be seen a little more.

But the truth is, I stayed closed off for survival. Middle school was rough, the kind of rough that teaches you to shrink before anyone else can make you feel small. Being bullied at that age doesn’t just bruise your confidence; it rewires the way you move through the world. Research actually backs this up: kids who experience bullying are more likely to struggle with trust and social connection later in life, and they often carry a heightened sensitivity to rejection into adulthood. It’s not weakness, it’s the brain learning to protect itself.

And then there was my parents’ divorce. I was young, but old enough to understand that something permanent had cracked. Studies show that children of divorce often grow up with a deep awareness of impermanence, a sense that relationships can shift or disappear without warning. It doesn’t doom us, but it does shape us. It teaches us early that nothing is guaranteed, and sometimes that lesson sticks a little too well.

So when I look back now, I get why I didn’t join the clubs or the teams or the after‑school things. I was busy trying to stay safe in a world that felt unpredictable.

Still… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes crave the friend group that so many people seem to still have, the ones who grew up together, stayed together, and still gather for birthdays and barbecues like a living scrapbook. There’s a part of me that aches for that kind of continuity.

But here’s the silver lining, and it’s a bright one: I do have a handful of close friends, the kind you can count on one hand, the kind who show up, the kind who feel like home. And honestly? I wouldn’t trade them for a whole cafeteria table of people who never really knew me.

The Final Act

~ Natal Galvan

Panic attacks. I used to get them periodically and what always triggered them, it was never anything else, were thoughts of death. I guess that’s what happens when at a young age you begin to lose people.

The attacks would always start with a small thought, something innocent like seeing roadkill, or hearing a piece of news on the radio about some celebrity’s passing. I would start to think about how they’re no longer able to soak up the day’s sunrays, or ever appreciate what it feels like when a spring’s breeze kisses your face. I’d begin to think about how their loved ones somewhere out there in the world would be heartbroken for what it would feel like a lifetime to come. The thoughts would then trickle into my personal life. What if I lose my mother?… or my sister? What if right now someone crashes into me, T-boned, and POOF! Lights out?

THAT’S when the panic would slowly slither in.

It would start with a slight flicker of the pulse in my neck. It felt like a double click; trigger being pulled. My throat would feel constricted by only a little at first, making it an actual thought to swallow instead of the instinct that it is. My hands would begin to get clammy and would ball up in anticipation of what was to come, and a cold sweat would soon then follow. Thoughts all the while tumbling around my mind, detailing the sudden death, a death that hasn’t happened yet.

This went on for a number of years at times being almost debilitating, but with the help of things like meditation and such, I slowly was able to control these attacks. Instead of having such a fear of what is death, I in turn decided to change my mindset and learned to adapt a healthy respect for it. Regardless of the respect, there are times in which I simply do get caught off guard by what is the final act in this play called Life. Especially when someone so amazing suddenly goes.

It makes no difference the way in which a loved one passes, it’s never easy. I do find it excruciatingly difficult to grasp when someone who is young and full of life dies without one ever seeing it coming. I’ve lost many people in my life this way, more than half of them being when I was still too young to fully understand the permanence of what was happening. Recently however, the ones in my life that passed have really taken me back, almost to those moments of panic because now I do understand the permanence of it, as well as the randomness. I see and logically comprehend that amazingly good hearted people, wise souls that shine a light onto this sometimes dark and violent world, aren’t immune to being taken early. Emotionally I cannot understand it. My heart doesn’t compute why the good ones go so young and as I get older, I don’t think it ever will.

No matter how hard I try to put words to how I feel about my friend’s recent passing I simply cannot. When I tell you that this world lost an amazing person, I cannot describe to you how much I seriously I mean it. An intelligent, compassionate soul who truly did make a positive impact on this world, because anyone who came across him would forever be changed in their most positive of ways. To extinguish that torch was to make this place just a little darker, but if you believe in heaven, it just got a heck of a lot brighter.

However sad and painful, I still try to find the silver lining. I guess it goes to say that I haven’t really lost them, but if anything I now have quite a crew waiting for me to get back. I am in no rush, but I do find comfort in that. Until then, all can really do is clichély live my life in tribute to them and seize the chances and opportunities, living for those who could not.

A Letter To Self

~ Natal Galvan

You are so imperfect, its perfection. Don’t doubt who you are or what you’re becoming. Simply live every day getting yourself to the highest level of good feeling frequency that you can. Living positively is the force that will take you where you need to be. Believe in your intuition and if something gives off a negative frequency, steer clear. Take steps with love and kindness in mind, with no regard to race, gender, religion, or any other sort of diversity, and understand that that path will never lead you in the wrong direction. 

Life isn’t a race. You’ll get to accomplish the things you want and need to accomplish at its own time. Don’t compare where you are in life with those around you. See them as their own individual example of how others live their life. Contemplate the lessons you may take away by admiring their situation but don’t compare, for you are on your own journey.

Be mindful and stay present. The best way to live your life is to live right here, right now. Feel the breeze that just brushed across your cheek. Touch the petal of the flower that just caught your eye, give it a “thank you” for blessing you with its natural beauty. Listen to the laughter that erupts from children playing as you walk by your neighborhood playground. Let their giggles uplift you and ride its innocence to the depths of inner joy. Have no thought to the past for why reminisce and long after what no longer is. Don’t live in the future for there is no real future. You’re not promised the next 60 seconds let alone an entire lifetime.

Waste not your energy or time on things, people, or situations that bring you no joy. Forcing yourself to do things won’t strengthen anything other than the bond others will have a hold on you. Don’t allow the social chains to hold you back from taking advantage of this journey you’re on.

Laugh as much as possible and if you cry, cry from deep within your soul and let your tears nurture the ground below your feet. Allow its nutrients to strengthen the foundation for your rebuild. Don’t simply get over your problems, work through them, and move on.

Happiness is a choice and you have an abundance of it at your disposal, but only if you make the choice to seize it. Have faith in yourself because you are worth more than you know.

XOXO

Me.

A COV(ert)ID Silverlining

~ Natal Galvan

When all of this “virus” chatter began, I will admit that I wasn’t fully convinced at the gravity of it all. I blame our government and media outlets for that. They have broken my trust on many levels, so pardon me that it took me some time to believe what was being said. Lucky for me I learned at a young age to look outside of mainstream media sources and to dig deeper when seeking out the truth. Slowly I began to ingest what was truly going on and instead of brushing it off as, once again, another media-driven hysteria, I began to heed what was being warned. For me, it went from being “virus” chatter to serious virus talk.

I am currently on day 8 of our “official” lockdown and although I have been able to see friends and family periodically, it was only in the last three days that I have chosen to completely isolate myself, and not for the reasons that you may think. 

Amid all the calamity this virus has brought to our front doors, I’d like to think of all this as a necessary evil for society and what’s left of this starving planet Earth.

I might get shit for calling this pandemic a “necessary evil”. How could I say such a thing when so many people have died? But like a war, a battle being fought for the greater good, it has its deaths by the thousands of the guilty and of the innocent alike; it is exactly that, war. This type of war, however, isn’t to bring together land and eradicate manmade borders. This war is an internal war, not only physically but spiritually and emotionally. It’s a war to remind us of where we came from. It’s a war for time, because humanity needed time. Humanity needed a break from it all.

The last three days have been filled with a lot of self-reflection. I’ve been taking a look inside myself, asking myself questions, and having discussions that I should’ve had long ago. I limited my T.V time and within the silence, I have found sparks of creativity. I’m able to connect with nature better and I even feel as though the Universe speaks to me louder and more clearly without all the every day static I had grown conditioned to. I have learned to be a little more resourceful and a lot less wasteful. I’ve become more aware of the immediate things I must change to improve who I am.  I’ve become aware of the things I will gradually give up in order to live my version of a better life.

Some people end up finding themselves while lost at sea. Some find themselves after veering off track and getting lost in the wilderness. We have been given the chance to find ourselves within the confines (and comfort) of our own home. We have been given that extra bit of vacation time. We have been given the chance to learn from crisis hoarders, that greed leads you nowhere other than to the land of Overloaded and Nowhere To Store It.  We have been given extra time with our family, with our pets, with our crafts. We have been given the space to work on ourselves; the time to detox from everything that has been pumped into our senses.

I have read that for us here in the U.S it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. I also hear that “getting better” still means that we’re going to be set back about a decade.  Whether any of that is true or not, I don’t know. We’ll call it what it is, speculation. I say that if at the end of all of this there is more genuine happiness within homes all around the world, genuine happiness within our own home, and with one’s self than I’ll pay that price. In the end, we are all going to be going through it together and there is comfort in that. This is a covert opportunity to change humanity in wonderful ways if only we begin to choose love before greed. We have the ability to rebuild a stronger and better world by going through such adversity together. I wish that through all if this social distancing and social isolation, after all the souls who have passed on because of this virus, we end up choosing to do good to one another.

“We will have suffered together, we will have fought through it together, and we will overcome together.”

 

 

 

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.

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 →

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.