Me & 2018 (Part 1)

               This year has been quite an adventure.  I’ve seen and experienced things I never would have dreamed of when the year started.  There was new love and a loss of love.  Adventures and almost dying!  Well, I’m being dramatic, but it felt like I would die.  Either way, my year was a great one overall. 

               I began the year healing after a breakup.  I pretty much kept to myself the last four months of 2017 and the first four of 2018.  During that time, I took a lot of time for myself and tried to mend all the broken pieces of myself.  So that if by the off chance I met someone new, I would be a little less damaged and I wouldn’t repeat past mistakes.

               In April, I was fortunate enough to meet a wonderful person who would share my life with me for the majority of 2018.  We had our ups and downs as with any relationship.  We had the best late-night laughs and early morning coffee.  The arguments were heated and the making up so sweet.  He captured my heart with his violin and gave me so much joy.  It was an uphill battle at times and it felt like the best thing to do was give up.

               I believe the good outweighed the bad, however, sometimes people leave your life because it’s what’s best for them.  It’s what gives them peace and knowing that we gave it our best shot, makes this heartache worth the tears and sleepless nights.  Having the time to sit alone with my thoughts, I see where the fault is mostly mine.  I was the one with the uncontrollable anxiety and the one with the twenty-one questions and third degree.  I’ve realized that just because I can’t control it, it didn’t mean he had to put up with it. 

I’m at a place in my life where I just want peace, so I’ve taken steps to gain that peace and continuously sought it out.  I’ve removed negativity and unwanted clutter from my life.  I know it may seem small and insignificant, but to me, just making my bed each morning helps me with that.  I tidy up before leaving out the door and sometimes it makes me a little late to work.  It just gives me a calm feeling.  Knowing that when I get home, everything will be right where I left it and I’ll walk into my home with the smell of clove and cinnamon in the air.

               After gathering myself off the floor with the pieces of my heart I was able to find, I took a two-week trip to the west coast.  It was timely and well deserved by this point.  I began with the ambivalent thought of even going.  I didn’t know if the timing was right and if I would be in the right mind to take this trip.  After a phone call with my sister Rawan, I wasn’t given much of a choice.  It was pretty much decided and after all that was planned, how could I even think of saying no?

               After I got my tickets I called my mom in Bakersfield to let her know I was going to be there for one week and I wanted to surprise my sister Patsy.  I hadn’t seen her in ten years!  Of course, my mom asks, “why didn’t you surprise me instead?”.   Mom, you’re almost 60, I don’t want to give you a heart attack!  It took a little planning, but we finally got it together as we went to her job to surprise her.

 I walked in that door with my head down, so she wouldn’t recognize me.  However, as soon as I took even a small glimpse up, I hear from the back of that doctor’s office “Oh My God!”.  She had spotted me and as I approached her, she stood there in disbelief and when she hugged me, there was no letting go.  She held on so tight.  I could hear in her cries how much I needed to be there with her. In that moment I forgot that anything else in this world existed.  It was my baby sister.  The girl I once knew was a woman!  A mother!  It was as if I had walked into my old life where she was a little cheerleader with a big attitude.  I never wanted that moment to end.  I was lucky enough to spend time with her and catch up on things I’ve missed.  However, that weeks’ time was nowhere near enough.  It’ll be time for me to go back and see her again, sooner rather than later.

               That familiar laugh filled her lungs as she and I told our inside jokes and shared those old memories.  It was as if no time had passed and we picked up on the last conversation we had ten years ago.  Where had the time gone?  How had I let so much time go by without seeing her?  Why?  All these questions popped into my head as I sat there and just listened to her talk about all the things going on in her life.  I couldn’t help from crying as I sat there and watched that big, beautiful smile light up her face with a child-like playfulness I had missed so much. 

I stayed with my mom the entire time.  She was so funny with her pajamas and house shoes.  That woman is more of a millennial than most 20-year old’s!  She lives on her phone and loves to give me the chisme!  She’s discovered snapchat filters and sends the funniest videos of her with some dog ears or rabbit ears and I think it’s the funniest thing ever.  She still looks at my sister and myself as babies not being able to fend for ourselves.  Don’t worry mom, we’re grown up now, even though in your eyes we’ll always be in diapers.  We love you. 

I knew that week would go by so fast and that I wouldn’t have a chance to really dive into all the events that happened since we last talked.  I saw my niece and nephew for the first time and they are teenagers!  They’re so grown up!  The last time I saw them they could hardly say my name!  My Caleb he’s so big.  I got to tell him stories on how I would teach him Japanese word and phrases to tell people because we would joke he was Japanese.  Now, with his glasses and squinted eyes, he looks the part.  My Rissa, she’s so tall!  That baby, she has her mother’s attitude and she is a hard hitter!  Now she was the real pooper!  She would play with her soiled diapers and be so happy about it!  She gives her brother a hard time, but you can see how much she cares for him.  It makes my heart so happy to see them. There was a moment when we were leaving the mall where they both held my sister’s hands and all I could see was them as the little babies they were when I last saw them.  How I missed them and seeing them so grown up made me realize I’ve been gone for too long.  Uncle Julien will be back soon my babies.

               When I had to say goodbye, I knew it would be hard, but I was determined not to cry. 
                             I did