Empty Words and Broken Dreams

I hate waiting.  I don’t want to hear about how patient, strong, and wonderful I am.  I don’t want to hear how brave I am to do this all on my own.  I don’t want to hear any of these empty words that praise me for staying alive in this God awful situation.

So you think I’m patient?  I’m sure if you went through my posts you could find multiple examples of the times I’ve flipped the fuck out because I surpassed my maximum tolerance for stress, or the death-grip I have on my emotions snapped like an overstretched elastic band.  Honestly it doesn’t take much anymore.  I’m sure Lance has many stories he could relate, but even he hasn’t seen or heard everything.  I’m too internal of a person to tell one person every single thing I think or feel.  Alberto is the only person that I never hid myself from.

I’m strong because I have no choice.  What good would it do to fold myself into a ball and weep copiously for what has been lost?  Who, in my situation, has the time to be weak and what kind of mother would I be to Ashley if she couldn’t count on her Mamí to always be there?  Alberto needs me to be strong when in the past he was always my rock.  I am desperately trying to hold myself together.  I’m trying to cover the hole in my bleeding heart that may never heal.  Should I let those bitter tears run down my cheeks whenever someone I know gets engaged, married, pregnant, their dream job, a degree, or even just goes to the movies with their loved ones?  Being weak wouldn’t change a single damn thing about this nightmare I live in.  No amount of tears or begging on my knees would ever bring my husband home to us, and the cost would be my self-respect.  I will not allow the government to take my family away from me just because my husband wasn’t born on this side of an arbitrary line in the dirt.

I’m not wonderful because I’m a gigantic mess.  I’m forced to live one day at a time, like the victim of some traumatic disaster.  USCIS crushed me and walked away like I was nothing more than an ant on the sidewalk.  Living doesn’t make me brave.  The concept of bravery has little to do with swimming against the current that pulls you toward a waterfall; it’s desperation, it’s the fight to stay alive long enough for someone to rescue you.  It’s surviving when everyone would understand if you gave up and went to pieces under the pressure.

I had a beautiful dream last night that afforded me the luxury of comparing what was to what is:  It was a Sunday like so many we had together; a trip to Blockbuster, Chinese takeout from Wong’s, and a lazy evening of cheesy action flicks and corny comedies.  We laughed and simply enjoyed being together.  He ate the rest of my beef lo mein and I retaliated by stealing the Valentina hot sauce.  We cuddled and were comfortable together even in silence.  It was like walking into the warm sunlight after huddling in the cold dark for some many years.  We fell asleep after the last movie and I woke up within my dream from a nightmare.  A thought surfaced in my mind that the nightmare was too impossibly cruel to be real when I heard Lili whispering in her room on the baby monitor.  I came fully out of my dream remembering his scent, half hearing the gentle snores, and feeling him beside me.  As I realized that the nightmare was real, the dream had really been just a memory; I dropped my head into my hands and wept.

Have you ever felt that empty where you’re not sure you’ll ever be whole again?

“Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake.  But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.”

Octavio Paz

Ciao