With every coming birthday, there are societal traditions that are performed. Your loved ones sing the out of tune chords as they count you down to the moment you blow out the candles and make a wish. You close your eyes, breath in and in the seconds before you swiftly release your breath back out, you conjure up a dream that would satisfy your current strife in the mere moments leading up to opening your eyes back again. The commotion of the celebration of life continues and you envelope yourself in commemorating your time on earth. A short while later, you are back amongst the hoopla and there is only a faint hint of remembrance in the wish you made to enter your next turning year. If you are lucky enough to open your eyes, take a momentary breathe of appreciation, exhale the doubt and take a look at the view again, not only are you blessed but you’re ahead of me in life.
That minute amount of time I have described in reality is a magical one if you have the ability to awaken from it. In my life, Seconds have turned from a miniscule amount of time to a redundancy in suffering minutes. With baited breathe I have desired for heavy-handed change, a categorical turn in luck, copious amounts of positive amends yet to no avail, I wake up every morning holding my breathe waiting for an exchange in fate. My eyes have been sealed shut over time, begging to flutter open and embrace the commotion; to celebrate another passing minute, moment, year. I swallow my pride and with lips dry and cracked, I yearn to inhale again. To feel the excitement that I once was a part of, the sensation in being alive with energy that could fill a room of emptiness but instead that vacancy in space has consumed my soul.
It’s been months since I’ve written and while the intention to disperse my thoughts over my keyboard were there, the vulnerability in feelings with embarrassment of displaying them have forbidden my hands from typing. It’s as if seeing the words makes the already very known reality of my reality more harsh in comparison to what I try to deny is happening. When the year mark of being in Florida hit, I woke up to watch the sunrise on the beach, replicating the significance in landing on the shoreline 365 days prior to start my new life in the sunshine state. But instead of the positive smile I should have been wearing, sadness had draped over my strong shoulders, shadowing over the sun rays and light I once exuded. I dug my feet deep in the sand, cocooned myself in my towel and the guilt I felt, and did exactly what I do everyday of my life… watch the rest of the world live.
Six months ago, I wasn’t this girl. While I was pretty beaten up from the past 2.5 years, I’ve always been THE STRONGER ONE. I would get back up, brush it off and find a way to make things work… but after being blatantly robbed from my bank account and future coupled in dealing with the people of Florida, I lost all hopes of trying. I snapped. Tore. Shattered. Fractured. Fragmented. I have literally felt the blood drain from every part of my vivacious existence to leave my lifeless body barren to the cold reality I face everyday. The old me…every ounce of it was weighed out to be a fighter. My core structure bonded from sheer fortitude and a steel resiliency but now I just write about those characteristics like they are distant memories instead of honorable traits. I memorialize my ghost as if death has bestowed upon me and while I am blessed to be alive another day, I am not living but more a spirit of my once titan self.
For half of a year, I have diligently searched, applied, networked, interviewed and been denied a career here. And with a recent turn of events, I have had to do something I have been dreading with all of my heart…find a job and leave the idea of career success at the way side. South Florida is ridden with shady and unscrupulous people, finding out many times over that my realness or heart doesn’t boast well with the cliquiness that the sunshine state admires. But, what has been done by others has been done and now I must once again take the high but tougher road. I had to swallow a huge fear of mine to deal with reality, and in doing so has made my heart go from torn to completely ripped apart… oddly though still gifted in beating.
After taking one to the chest, I set out to the streets in search of the best place to get quick cash…the restaurant world. Being that I started in the business shortly before my 14th birthday, I was clearly adaptable to any type of environment but I had trepidation in finding a suitable place. Even though South Florida is abundantly filled with flourishing restaurants, I was worried no one would want me considering I have spent the past half of a year interviewing. I was wrong, landing 2 of the busiest kitchens in Ft. Lauderdale in one day. After many levels of back to back meetings with different higher ups, I received word that I had obtained 2 serving positions at very lucrative businesses so I should have been over run by joy… no…far from it…and heres why.
During my dark, drinking years I was a waitress. I worked multiple places, sometimes 4 doubles a week…opening and closing kitchens to make sure I had a home, money for bills and a ways to satisfy my partying habit. I would spend the other hours drinking, when I wasn’t busting my ass serving many rude customers and occasionally get in a 10 mile run. I would perpetually exhaust every aspect of myself to erase the sheer bitterness I felt from my young life. Whether it be in the bottle or laced up in my running shoes, I drowned myself to suffocate the voice that constantly said…failure. When I finally said enough is enough, I left behind the urge to satiate my thirst with cuervo and my need to make quick cash in the restaurant biz, vowing to myself I would never return because I wanted to prove to my reclusive parents I was not the failure they left me to believe.
Fast forward to 30 years old and I’m sitting in the parking lot off to the side of this bar saying to myself “How did I get here?” I have unfortunately programmed myself not to cry but there was a crushing sadness that had consumed me. Years ago when I promised myself I would provide a better chance at success in my life, I said I would never come back to this world yet here I am, regressing back to the place that brings the flood of things I tried to forget. My PTSD from my youth flooded into my brain and heart like a tsunami and I battled at the thought of which was better in this instance, sinking or swimming. I had gone from literally changing my life from bitter, angry, scorn teenager to independently successful, driven, mentally unstoppable young woman back to a tired, churlish and scathed soul. I swallowed my pride, put on my best saleswoman face to sell the shit out of a fake smile and it worked. I bagged 2 of the most lucrative restaurants to work in Fort Lauderdale yet not a single ounce of me felt relief of any sort because I was fighting back the notion of dereliction. I am not tempted into that partying lifestyle anymore. Not one bit of me desires to cover my pain that way any longer so it’s not that I worry about working in the restaurant biz getting me back to the bottle…nope no way… It’s the thought of this being my life that scares the shit out of me…because I am not one to settle. Also, This is in no way an insult to others who have this job, but for me I have worked so hard in trying to obtain a career…a sense of stability in my gypsy life that I feel as if I’m severely backtracking to a horrible time in my life. While I’m sure I will be making great money, the evident thought of not fulfilling my goals and hearing the echoing voices of my sad excuse of a mother, makes it hard to see the light at this time.
All I want is relief. A break. A fuckin smidgen of blessed energy, similar to what I have given to the world. I made a ton of mistakes when I was younger but since then I have been as cognizant as possible in rectifying my wrongs but making sure I stay true to myself. I’m real and raw which I wasn’t always. Before I started writing in this blog, I was a robot who just set a task, performed it and didn’t permit emotions because that would just deflect from the direction I needed to go in. Opening up allowed me to change myself into a human, giving me allowance to feel certain aspects of pain to grow and evolve but it also opened this dark window of vulnerability…one this steel hearted chic isn’t a fan of.
My writing style is one to make you sit and think. Makes you envision the circumstances and try to get you to evoke certain emotions within you that you possibly weren’t aware of. Perhaps feelings that influence positive change, inspire a brilliancy in attitude, stimulate your sense of character and in doing so, can help make a positive change in at least someone so that I can have purpose in all that I have been unfortunately given. To know that I have helped someone may give me the momentum in the long hike I have back to inner happiness, providing a much needed charge to my lifeless batteries.
I crave my own meaning of success like a thirst in the driest of suns; Where I wake up with the inertia for life I had once upon a time. Where I take the lessons from having nothing, turning it into something, and losing it all again to be able to step back and breath in the irony of it all. That spirit that gave me the Titan name is in there somewhere, I just need all of this faith I’ve been praying on, to bless me with a chance to fight again.
I deserve to open my eyes after releasing my breath to have one of my many wishes come true.
O.M.G. on my grind 