Dear Cris

Dear Cris,

It's over, my love. Once again you have, somehow, manage to carry around your broken pieces into another year. By sheer stubbornness, you have managed to stick it to 2017 and continue living like the highly-functional hot mess that you are. So here we are, cheers to you:

For the many times you figured out how to keep breathing when you thought you couldn't anymore.
For every night when your tears were drowned by the stillness of exhausted sleep.
For the strength it took to get out of bed when it felt pointless and hopeless.
For the determination to scream back at the anxiety crawling from the back of your mind.
For the unanswered prayers that kept you praying unceasingly.
For the utter satisfaction of a broken body after a workout.
For tending to the gushing wounds of a broken heart with a broken heart.
For having to unlearn how to love someone despite yourself.
For looking at yourself in the mirror and smiling despite the scars.
For shouting at the crucifix knowing that you're being heard.
For crying and crying and crying and crying.
For tuning out the voices demanding you to be what you're not.
For choosing to live when all seems dead around you.
For laughing so hard to forget and never forgetting to laugh.
For having a beautifully broken soul that throbs with longing and love.
For being a bloody badass in general.
For flicking off the world when it flicks you off first.
For loving me intensely to make up for everyone who doesn't.
For being the most unapologetic, ridiculous, over-the-top of Cristinas that you can be.


Here's to you, Cris. Keep your eyes open to see beauty. Keep your hands open to receive grace. Keep your heart willing to hope that between all of the lashes there will be balm. Keep on keeping on.

With all my love,

Cris

Gratitude

Oh, hi there. Fancy meeting you here! So, Thanksgiving was yesterday and I have been thinking about writing something along the lines of being thankful. This week, however, I started reading Dorothy Cummings’ brilliant book, The Closet Is All Mine. In it, she talks about being single and how we really should embrace it. You know, standard thing I would read. In one chapter, however, she talks about man-hating and how irrational that is.  Then she goes on to talk about the great men in her life. So I though, you know what? I want to express my gratitude to the men in my life that have made up for the countless ones that were horrible (exes and nice guys included). Moreover, as I was writing these snippets, I realized that the presence in my life of these men are what makes me embrace my “pickiness”.

The reason why I am picky:

When Hurricane Rita hit Houston, thousands of people found themselves stranded in the congested freeways trying to run away. That night as the hurricane made landfall on the coast, my dad took our family van and drove to I-45, which is about 10 minutes away from my parents’ home. He parked the van on the side of the road and walked up to people waiting for the storm inside their vehicles, asking them if they would want to leave their cars behind and go to a shelter. For several hours, he took many people to our parish for shelter.

***

My grandparents were married for over fifty years. In the last years of her life, my grandmother suffered from different ailments and was, with reason, cranky at times. My grandfather retired and learned how to cook, clean, and to help her around the house. A Mexican man bred in the old-school gender binary, he never once hesitated to take on the role of homemaker. Moreover, he constantly teased grandma and tried to make her laugh, even when this would back fire and make her even crankier. He was with her every day of the 60-day hospital stay before she passed.

***

My brother has a way of lighting up a room whenever he walks in. People are drawn to him for conversation, advice, or simply a good laugh. It wasn’t always like that. There was a time of his life when darkness clouded his mind. But when he found himself semi-buried in the thick mud of his sin and depression, he took God’s hand and let himself be pulled out of that. God blessed him with a keen sense of kindness and compassion for those who suffer. He sometimes goes door to door on the streets of Detroit asking people if they have a need for prayer or conversation.

***

My friend Raja lost his mother last year, unexpectedly. The first time we spoke about this tragic event, I realized the profound emotional wound that his mother’s passing had had on him. It was as if the beautiful light of his soul had been blown out. I realized how deep and enormous his love for his mother was. He was incredibly distraught and he didn’t attempt to hide it. But it didn’t stop there. His fervent adoration for his mother became his sole motor. From the pain of this loss he drew strength to carry on. He couldn’t disappoint her. He couldn’t give up. Everything he did had to be done to honor her memory.

***

I grew up living next door to my mom’s sister and her family. Since my immediate family was not inclined to sport-playing, watching, or anything remotely having to do with sports, I often found myself next door at my tia’s house. Her husband, my Tio Roge, taught me many things about soccer and would even take me to watch our favorite team play at the stadium, or to his own soccer matches. He never once questioned my desire to play, watch and learn, or told me that it “wasn’t for girls”, or discouraged me in any way, even when other people in the family raised their eyebrows in disapproval.

***

When I was in Poland in 2016, I made the terrible mistake of having a horribly heavy backpack on our unfortunate 20-mile walk. About six or seven miles in, I knew I wasn’t going to make it because my feet were completely blistered from the previous days and my bag was easily thirty pounds or extra weight. One of the guys in our pilgrimage group, Daniel, could see the pain in my face, and, without asking me, took my backpack away from me and threw it over his back-- for the next 12 miles or so. This person wasn’t really my friend. He was just an acquaintance I had met during the pilgrimage. Once we got to the site where we were resting for the night, he fell to his knees with exhaustion and I embraced him as we both cried for a long time, overwhelmed with emotions.

***

When my friend Michael confessed to me that he liked my friend Elisabeth, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if she liked him back, or if he would be able to ask her out, or how anything would work out (they were both introverts and quite shy people in general). Somehow, he managed to do it. Three years later, they are married. Michael is not precisely the most openly effusive of people. But when he is around her, ah... When he talks about her, his face lights up. When he looks at her, everyone else disappears. He is warm, sweet, proud. Watching how he loves her is endearing. Seeing them together is like basking in the glory of the sun shining when it’s cold outside.




These are a few of the men in my life. They are kind and brave to love. They make this world better in their own small way. I love these men, and will continue to hope that, if God's will for me is marriage, I may find someone with a heart shaped similarly to theirs.