Sometimes I Hide in my Shower.

I hope you're ready cause Yab is about to turn the heat up in the kitchen.
I have my period and I fucked up my birth control, so the PMS bitch is amplified x1000.

So, uh... LET'S GET CRACKING SHALL WE?!

I am angry. I am pissed off. I am tired. And I am annoyed as all fucking hell.

At this point in the night however, I have calmed down. So I begin...

Just Kidding, what do you think this is cinder-fucking-ella? No, Yaberiella. UHDUH. 

One quality I feel I have is being a good friend. It's something I have has always posesssed and it may be one of my most redeeming qualities (if I do say so myself). It has brought incredible people into my life. I feel what you give out to the universe, you get back.

I have always had good friends. And I try to be there for people. As much as possible. I feel that is the most important thing for a friendship. Being there. Whether it's on the phone, or showing up.

(I must also *note, I am watching the HBO doc on scientology, so I apologize if this starts to get weird)

But sometimes, Karma doesn't always work in your favor. I've had friends who have turned into frenmies too many times. At this point in my life, I don't do that anymore. I just don't put up with bullshit.
I'm 24. If you want to be my friend, wonderful, I'll gladly accept! If not, goodbye.

And being a friend to me isn't just shooting the shit, it's getting down to the nitty gritty and like I said being there. Supporting each other. If that goes away and fades, buhbye. I honestly have a lot of friends and I don't want frenimes.

Maybe, this is why me and my ex didn't work out. It was pretty physical and the support was seriously lacking. He wasn't there for me. So, I said, "buhbye."

But I will say, the one thing I hate about break ups is losing a person from your life. I like people. I like friends, I hate losing friends, even if that's what has to happen. I've never really kept in contact with someone after a break up. I think it's easier that way, but that's the only way I know.

I had like a really nice weekend and a really rough weekend squished into one.
Like I said, PMS monster is out, so I just don't really feel good.

My mother is probably the only person that knows what I mean, when I call her up and say, "I don't feel good."
The sound of my voice gives away if it's mental or physical.
When I was really, really depressed a couple years back I would have some very bad days.
 And all I would need to say to my mom is, "I don't feel good." And she knew what I meant.

I still have some I-dont-feel-good-days, as we all do.

Today was one of those days. I worked very closely with a student, that I'm barely equipted to handle, I want to drown myself in chocolate, I'm tired and I just don't feel good.

And this makes me feel better because it also is something only me and my mom understand:

These days, one thing that does calm me down, is water.
I don't have... an exactly clean shower, but I find myself sitting in it a lot. When things get too much for me, I sit in my shower and watch the water. Is that weird? I don't care. I don't cry. I don't mope. I just let the water hit me and forget about everything. There is something about water that has always set me free. When I was a kid, and still to this day, I can stay in the ocean for an entire day and not get tired of it. I love water and it calms and chills me the fuck out.

Some of this, 

...some of this. 

Today I sat in my shower while listening to olds school BS.
Such as:

and 

yup. Again, the period-ness.

I know what calms me. And that's what it is, 

water and BS. 

I would really, really like a rainy day. An excuse to post up in my bedroom and not leave. 

I love that it's getting sunny but I also want a day to not feel bad about posting up hard. 

I don't really think this blog was about anything particular, and I can into with more gusto than I came out. But hey, as long as you're not involved in Scientology, everyone is a winner here. 

I started off writing this in a very bad mood, but after eating some wonderfully done chicken, by chef Latona Jr., I am feeling less of a monster. Oh and there was also B&J involved, with a cookie core. If you don't know what I mean by that get with the mother fucking program (*hint: ben and jerrys).

It's baffling and amazing to me what writing does for me. It's not a way to always get a point across, or make total sense and prove the world wrong. But it's just a way to calm my thoughts and make sense of myself. I could compare it to my serenity with water if I was more clever... But it's way past my bed time and I can't. 

The Boy Who Vanished From My Life.

I wrote a couple months ago about how I let someone out of my life and I said, " I didn't realize it was the last time I would see them." Which in retrospect, was incredibly overly dramatic. I will see that person, probably sooner than later... And I can be a drama queen. 

But there is a boy, from my life, who has completed vanished, and I am more than heart broken about it. 

One of the founding stories, of the program I work for is called The Starfish Story. Here it is :

I loved hearing this story during training because anyone from my beloved summer camp could tell you that story. It was told during our campfires and would give me chills.
It wasn't just a founding story for my job. It was a foundational story of my youth and was incredibly inspirational to hear going into a new working environment. 

This job, has been nothing that I expected, but to be honest with you, I didn't know what to expect. 

I feel I am more of an open person, now and I'm jaded at the same time. 

But back to starfish and the boy who has left my life... 

I have spent the past school year with a seventh grade boys classroom so I have been surrounded by boys all day. For 7 months. Burping, farting, dick eating. I've heard and seen it all, at this point. 

From the beginning there was one child that I knew was gonna be my babuh.
He was Puerto Rican, little, curly voluminous hair and a mouth on him that could curse out a sailor. But he was adorably sweet with me, and probably only me because we were cut from the same cloth. Not in looks or background, but the way we viewed the world. And I loved him so much. He was one of the few kids I could always get to actually do work with me and even though he was so silly I could see him making progress, I could get shit done with him. He was my starfish.  

So a couple days before Christmas break he wasn't in school, which was typical- he had horrible attendance. He would tell me, that he would stay home from school to watch TV.... WONDERFUL. We were working on that, but it was unbeknownst to me that that was what I should have been focusing on. 

He never returned to school. 

And there is high probability he never will.

It's hard when everything you are working against, comes and knocks you upside the head. This is the opposite of Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds.  This is the kid I thought I could save, being the first one to fail.

I have tried to fight to get this kid back in school but I can't do much. 

Phone lines go dead, his brother's rarely in school, the mother's apparently in jail... 

A lot of teachers thought this kid was a pain in the ass and had his head in the clouds, but I really did believe in him, so much.

I give it up to teachers, especially the ones in tough environments and those who teach children with disabilities. It takes a whole lot more than patience. 

At the beginning of all this I was so pumped. Now I'm feeling like I did nothing this year except try to make myself feel better. How many other kids will I lose, without even knowing about it? How many kids have no one to lose them? 

I've always thought my life was so hard and yea, we all have struggles but I thank god every night I am where I am and I have the things I do.
My version of hard, is luxury for a lot of fucking people. 

To be honest, if I have just made myself feel better this year than I guess I am "making better happen" and I'll tell you this, I didn't make things worse.

I push my boys. I expect them to do better. And if someone sets that expectation then at least they'll take that away. If nothing else, they'll remember my laugh and I know that makes people smile. 

No, I haven't given up on humanity, I just see a little bit more of it. And I want to keep helping and stop losing kids to fucked up shit.

Although I will never know what happens to this kid, I will never forget him. Maybe, probably, I will never see him again but lord almighty, I will never forget him.

#3yearsstrong

It's been about a month since my last blog post, and it feels like it was yesterday. Which makes sense if you read my last post.

I don't even know what I want to talk about. I've had moments where I've wanted to post posts but

I've just been... well, really busy.
Which is good. Like really good.
So this next blog post, was written a couple weeks ago, combined with a post written a couple days before. It's a compilation piece, which happens- when you are busy.


Three years ago, I never thought I would be where I am now. And you can literally read that if you go back in time through this blog.
I remember, when I decided to get sober, thinking my best years were behind me. I don't know what I thought was ahead of me... I wasn't very optimistic. In my eyes, my future looked bleak.
I could not imagine what was in store for me- as they say in AA, "life beyond your wildest dreams."

I would not be the person I am today without the people in my life. Some of them have come and gone, the ones who've been here the longest mean the most, and the people who continue to enter, keep making me a more whole and confident person.

I've been very reflective of that recently. Just truly amazed with myself and the life I have.
And to be honest with you, a lot of people don't understand what I'm talking about, because they've only seen me successful.
I'm not a mess anymore and people can't even picture what that looked like. Which is so bizarre to me. Because, let's be real, I will always be a mess. Now, I'm like a composed mess. Like a nice big messy bun (much like the ones I sport everyday) but not a bad bun- no a very good bun.

There are good buns and bad buns in life, and I these days am a good bun.

I guess I'm feeling a little reflective because last week, I had 3 years. Each year has felt, shorter and longer than the last. It feels like I have more time but less time at the same time.

Although I am a strong, more mature, sober woman I am still...

I can today, say I am proud of who I am and who I am becoming.


I wrote this a few weeks earlier and I will share it with you now:

"I'm in a business where you can't get knocked down. I've written about pushing and pushing and in my line of work you've gotta fucking push. I'm sorry if you're tired of reading about that. But it's what I deal with daily so why don't you fucking push yourself to continue reading...

You can fall, sure there will be days when you fall flat out on your face. 

But you can't take it like a bitch. You gotta get the fuck up and give them the one, two knock out punch.

Make them wonder why you're still smiling, is a favorite motto of mine.

And maybe this isn't my line of work, maybe it's the path of life.

Maybe my work is metaphorical for life. Am I really going to let a class of seventh grade boys push me around? Or am I going to show them that I'm not a boss...but the boss.

I've let work, life, people, push me down and make me cry too many time in my life. And I'm #overit. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna break down and cry for a second every now and again, but that will not be a constant. It can be a variable but certainly not the goddamn constant.

My life has been a little all over the place because I've been a little all over the place the last couple of days, in and out of the city. But I am finally on my way home to my apartment to settle down- and if you coudln't tell, I had a rough day. But you know what? I'm going for a run and heading to a meeting. So yeah, go ahead life. Try to kick me in the ass, because I'm going to kick you right back"

And you know what? I ran 2.5 miles in 30 minutes. I went to the meeting, put my hand up and shared about my shitty day, and now I'm moving forward.

These kids that I'm working with are real shits sometimes. But they come from a shitty hand dealt to them. They don't deserve what they have, they deserve better. They deserve a good education, at the very least. And I am in the school I am in to help them as much as I can.
I believe in them. They are not bad people. Actions speak louder than words. And I can work to change their attitudes and get them on a path where they can get a better deck of cards.

I can't give up because, sometimes, I'm all they've got.

I hope this helps you, whoever you are ,to give it- whatever it is- an extra go.
Don't take it like a bitch- give it the one, two.