Cherishing my life

I always wanted to travel the world. I currently sit here in my room looking outside through my sliding door. I sit and ponder how the world looks like. Yet what I don't know is that I already set foot through out the whole world. I can close my eyes and I'm swimming in the beautiful alaskan hot springs as I stare at the morning view of the sun and enjoying the nice warm steam of the water that soaks me into bliss. As I write I'm already creating that feeling. I can also go back to my country and hug my grandma. The loving woman who took care of me during my childhood days and gave me the most tender love anyone has up to this date.

We are currently far apart. I have Temporary Protected Status so I can't travel outside U.S if I were I risk not being able to enter the U.S and be with my children. I don't lose hope to be reunited with her again. She's 83 years old and when i pick up the phone to call her I can instinctly see her smile. She tells me her Purple Mombin and Cashew trees are full of fruit and the ground is filled with yeallow colored decaying fruit. She wishes we were neighbors so i can walk over to her house with my kids and sit down in the table to enjoy breakfast while the sun is still rising hearing her rooster and her chicks singing through out her yard as we indulge in the beauty of it all. Her hopes of seeing us again in this physical world are diminishing, but I'm trying to keep the smile in her face by calling her and checking in. I know I will get to hug her again in this life time! God is good! Life has been a journey.

I’ve experienced all sorts of feelings. I was around 4-5 years old when I had memory come into my life, living with my grandma was amazing. I was a free soul in El Salvador I knew the whole town. I would go to my neighbors house or play on the hills behind the house surrounded by trees. I soaked in every moment of life. I always had bigger dreams of being surrounded by shiny lights and that dreamed always sparked when I stared at the beautiful night sky filled with twinkling bright stars right above me. I admire the stars every evening when I played outside as I listened to the night sound of the crickets and catch the ribbiting frogs. I so loved animals!

Somehow I think sadness brings me creativity and thats why I had to go through what I had to go through. I was 5 years old when my aunt came to the house, it was just another day for me, yet it would be the worst of my young life. She came and spoke with grandma for an hour and heard her say she was taking me with her. Knowing this I started screaming and grabbed myself tightly from the cabinets in the house. She spoke to me calmly and couldn't get me to budge when this was not working she yanked me off as I screamed for grandma to not let me go. I extended my hand for grandma to grab it and somehow I thought she would pulled me right back and embraced me in her loving arms. However that did not happen. I was broken hearted. I wondered why they were seperating me from my grandma for me she was my mom. My grandma had a sad look on her face but did not say much. They put me in the car and I just looked back, my grandma's figure kept getting smaller and smaller as the car drove further away. Adjusting to my aunts house was not easy everynight I would cry myself to sleep not knowing why they had seperated us.

I spent one month at my aunts house until the day to go came. I was no longer in El Salvador. I was now in Los Angeles! I glanced at the city and from a six year olds perspective It seemed like the shiny light city in my dreams. It was night time and all I could see was a city full of stars. To me the glowing city lights were just like the stars up in the sky that I use to admire back home. I felt like I was flying. Had never seen anything like this.

Reality soon sinked in. She said look thats your father far off in the distance as he came walking with my mom. They hugged me and gave me a horse back ride. I was scared and shaking. I did not know these people. We got to their home and there I learned I had two younger brothers. Angel and Chris. They had bikes and I immediately got on one. Next day I overheard my aunt saying she was leaving and was going to leave me there, she was going to pretend she was going to doctor appointment so I wouldn't want to go. Yet I knew she was lying. I didn't want her to leave me I wanted to stay close and not let her go. No more separation traumas for my young self. I did not know these people called my parents. Again that did not go my way. She left me and I cried and cried. Things were never the same again from that point. My mom and I never quite had a great relationship from the start, it was rough. She is a dominant woman and being surrounded by my dad and my two brothers made her the queen of the house and then suddenly her daughter coming in made things a bit weird for her. She would always tell my father why do you scream more at the boys and not at her. My dad would respond "well is she doing anything wrong?" My mom wouldn't see that she would just see that my brothers got my dad's angry side and she didn't think it was fair treatment. I being an over analyzer took all of these things into heart and started building resentment towards her. We would bud heads quite often.

Everything changed when I turned fifteen. She enrolled me in acting classes making it the perfect opportunity to visit her secret lover once classes where over. She would have me as backup to show dad that there’s no way she could’ve being seeing anyone when she had her daughter next to her. She was a very old school type of mom, always told me the first person you are involved with you have to marry. And because of this she had been marry to dad for seventeen years. They’re marriage was now on the verge of a collapse. She had started working for a realestate company late at nights after cleaning houses and dad was suspecting infidelity. He was also to blame if she was, he had cheated on her five years prior and she had never fully recovered from those wounds.

After my acting classes she would take me back to the town I grew up in Santa Ana, CA. I enjoyed going back. Since I came from El Salvador my parents apartment was in Santa Ana and this is where I grew up until I was thirteen and graduated middle school. I was heartbroken when we were moving to Norwalk. My parents had bought a house and so I would be starting school with new people in high school. That only lasted one year because I would be back in Santa Ana in a matter of one year based everything that is about to unfold. Like usual after my weekend acting classes my mom would drop me off at my good Santa Ana friends house Janice Valdivia. She would drop me off around 5pm and pick me up around 10pm or 11pm. This time she picked me up early and said she wanted me to meet someone really nice. She took me to a house and there I saw a man and his son. They each had flowers for us. It was weird but nice gesture. I knew something was up and probably this was my moms secret lover. And so from then on instead of taking me to my friends house she would now take me over to this mans house and leave me in the living room with his son.

Not knowing what to do everytime she took me there me and his son started talking more and more and then one day he asked if I would like to be his girlfriend. I did not know what to say and just said yes. A few weeks after texting with him for the most part my mom took me back to their house and left us alone. I felt close to him since we texted a lot and just the fact of being young and curious we started messing around. After the sinful moment passed I went to the restroom to soak my hair because I was hot and as I got out the bathroom mom was home. She came and said " why is your hair wet? What did you do? she freaked out and plainly asked If I was still a virgin which I said no and then she slapped me took me home said I shall not tell my dad about her and her boyrfriend and I was going to tell my father that I was no longer a virgin had lost it to a man I had fallen in love with from my old school which was such a lie but I did as told.

I felt like this was another separation nightmare. Mom had told me I now had to go and live with him since I was no longer a young innocent lady. Mom was surprised how my dad had reacted. He simply said he wouldn’t get in the way of true love. My mom however knew we were not in love we had just met. Mom had threaten my soon to be partner to pick me up and take care of me or my dad would take him to jail. Completely the opposite. My dad and aunts came to the house when all my luggage was packed, thanks to mom who helped pack my bags, they said I did not have to leave the house and that that boy would be the first of many. I really wanted to stay. I was only sixteen now. Yet my moms words came to play “ If you decide to stay it won’t be the same anymore, you will have to pay us rent” I replayed these words and thought if I stay I will have more resentment for my mom for doing this to me and so Saul my partner scared to go to jail came and picked me up.

This young man had to take resposibility of me even thought he was still in love with his ex girlfriend of four years. I found all this out the first month of living with him. He had her name tattooed, her picture of his phone screen. Heck my mom had even met her a few months before he was my boyfriend. This was just so surreal for me. Yet I couldn’t find the voice to scream at everyone from the top of my lungs and tell them how hurt I was. I was a very good girl before all of this I had straight A’s and B’s at school I had been offered boarding school opportunity in Willard middle school but because of my immigration status it was taken away from me. Now I had to somehow finish high school and having no parents by my side. I was broken feeling alone without any family support crying myself to sleep almost every night.

My mom would constantly tell me my partner wanted kids and I should give him one. He was very unhappy so was I always giving ourselves each other’s back when we layed in bed. It was an awkward start. I felt maybe if I gave him a child he would be happy. So we did try we were still living together so we try made it work. Seven months past and I still was not pregnant. I thought I couldn’t have kids. So I kneeled one day by the bottom of our bed and prayed with all my might. God please please give me one of your angels, many woman have kids throw them to the thrash, why don’t you let me borrow your Angel. Then I cried myself to sleep. Next month, it was now eight months of living together and trying to conceive. I was now pregnant! Wow I thought, god is good!

As time passed I ended up having a total of four beautiful children who brought love, family, comfort and support to me after the traumatic events in my life and the eight years of an unconventional marriage. My husband and I had somewhat made it work even if he saw me as a sister and I as a father figure we had our kids who bonded us.

I had gained telemarketing experience from my days of working when I was sixteen when I use to get up go to school then work and then come home to be a housewife. This experience led me to work as a customer service representative for a mortgage company New American Funding.

I had always dreamed of wearing a business suite and a briefcase when I was young. I knew I would be successful no matter what. Thats the destiny I had pictured for myself. After a year as a representative I passed my NMLS license and became a Junior Loan Officer. I was excited yet I had always dealt with anxiety issues diagnosing myself with Aspergers so when they move me from the seat that I considered made me a good representative I got simply got overwhelmed. I did not like change. I became so self destructive. My manager would say don’t mumble too much, but sometimes I couldn’t pronounce some words or feel as if my tongue was to big to talk properly. I started getting paranoid with how I sounded on the phone since my manager was right next to me, and would pop up on my phone conversation and tell me say this is I instead. My life took a down point from there. I let my anxiety and my depression get the best of me and I quit.

For the next few years I won’t be able to keep a job I would quit after 2-3 months due to anxiety issues. I would be called oddball, bozo and so I started drinking messing with weed. All to a low point where I overwhelmed myself, overthink things. I now take things one day at a time. I’m grateful for the husband I have no matter how the circumstances of how we got here, I’m grateful for my loving angels god let me borrow, my kids are my world. I hope one day they’ll be proud of me as they are wi to their hard working father who has faced many life challenges and always puts on a positive face. He’s his own boss has his own roofing company SG Roofing. He gives me the opportunity for me to stay home and care for my now big children. I know god is so good! I know our beautiful dream home is waiting for us to step in and I know we will make it big and all I ask is god never to let go of his warm loving support over my family and to bless my children! My sky is full of stars and dreams that can never be broken no matter what life throws! God is good!