Excerpts from November

Everything, Not at Once

My mind is a nervous system and my life’s work is to tend to it. This makes me inconsistent and unreliable but it has to be this way, for now.

Greenville, SC

These are excerpts from what I wrote last month:

Sunday, November 3rd

I often hear a voice after a social gathering telling me to talk less. I remember when I used to eat Wheat Thins and watch Rocket Power. That was before the voice that tells me to talk less.

Friday, November 15th

I open the door to Pau. We haven’t slept because we spent the night in the emergency room. She tells me to go lie down; she’ll play with Mateo. She tells Marcello, “Este año te ha ido más o menos”. He comes in the room to tell me, and we crack up. So-so is an understatement, it’s been the hardest year of our lives. We have yet to tie the knot, but we know in sickness and in health more intimately than most newlyweds.

I’ve been prioritizing my nervous system. Prepping it. For the travel ahead, the holidays. Instead of worrying I make a list of things I’m looking forward to. As I add things, places, people to the list, I feel better. I feel excited.

Last week was very wonderful until it was horrible and then fine again. On Tuesday I met with Pablo Palma, an osteopath that comes to Cabo once a month and works out of a local Montessori school where all the buildings are small domes, each with an oculus. The classical music that played was intense and dark and as the light poured in from the ceiling and his hands worked on me, I felt healed, almost completely. On my way out we hugged with the kind of intimacy only a stranger’s touch can evoke.

“El impacto se recibe en el cuerpo,” he tells me.

Later that day, restorative yoga with Eli at El Ganzo. She incorporates some Qi Gong moves and I love it.

The next morning I go to the bakery for produce, bread, eggs. There is a Mexican woman talking about the influx of immigrants ruining her country for families like hers. Immigrants like me. She goes on to recommend bread from somewhere else, in the baker’s face.

On Thursday I see my new functional medicine doctor. Her name is Alexa, she’s from Canada. She has two little kids. She sees me. We go over supplements, lab work. I’m slowly but surely assembling my dream team of healers. It feels good. I’m so grateful. All day and all night so so grateful. Nervous system — regulated. On top of the world. I put Mateo to sleep, I thank God, I post a photo of us on Instagram. Thirty minutes later we’re in the emergency room.

He began coughing and I sent Marcello to go check on him. Then I hear this is really bad. He can’t breathe, he’s turning red. I’m throwing a hoodie over my pajamas, Marcello is throwing his back out. We get to the hospital and he’s doing better but when the doctor on call hears his cough, he calls our pediatrician to come in, at midnight. And she does. And once she did and checked his lungs and said he has croup and you did the right thing coming and that must have been so scary for you both while Mateo smiles and plays with her stethoscope, I can see again. It wasn’t until she went to write up the prescription that I cried. And Mateo wrapped his arms around my neck and smiled, and we went to two pharmacies before finding the medicine and back home and back to bed.

Today is the 1 year anniversary of The Miami Native and of the piece I wrote on the evil eye, Cuban women, and motherhood. The piece was originally titled Bésale el Culito. I feel proud disoriented relieved and paranoid. At some point over the weekend I write this in my diary:

Antes me sentía mucho más cubana.
Ahora no.
A los 28 años, ya no.

Tres años en México rodeada de americanos, canadienses, argentinos y venezolanos.
Nunca en mi vida me había sentido así: sin país.
Entre dos países. Ninguno de los dos, Cuba.

No me siento americana como las otras americanas.
Lo que siento es demasiado.

Pienso mucho en la isla de mis abuelos, de sus hermanos, sus amigos.

But I keep studying it, Cuba. The history of yes, and. Where two things can be, and constantly are, conflicting and true. I hold it close because if you forget the past you’re doomed to repeat it.

I tell Grazie and Chloe that I got evil eye-d and it makes me not want to share things online. So does that mean I shouldn’t or I should? They both tell me to write about it. Grazie offers to get me an azabache. I have one. I tell them I’m scared to write fiction because I’m afraid of manifesting it. But I also tell them that everything is going to change tomorrow — for the better.

Because I’m done giving any energy to invisible opposition. I’m done being scared. And because Pluto has left Capricorn for the rest of our lives.

Saturday, November 16th

I’m a nostalgia thief. I rob other people’s memories, every glorious tragedy, weaving them into mine. Because if it’s not all connected then what is the point?

Sunday, November 17th

Will I ever finish anything I’ve begun?

Cuddle my sick toddler and read three books at a time and keep up four Instagrams at a time and attempt to run a magazine and work for a marketing agency and look hot when my boyfriend comes home and cook every meal and workout and meditate and keep up with all my loved ones and check in on my friends. And with my crumbs of time, the pressure to create. The podcast I’ve abandoned. The piece I’m working on, without the budget to support it. There’s just SO much creativity to go around and never enough money. But money is a faucet that needs to be turned on. So I buy the expensive eggs and the farmer’s market chicken and the SOY based candles.

Neuter the cats and make sure your taxes are done right even though the man you spoke to said you didn’t have to file, because you didn’t make enough money. Pack for a month in Miami and look down at your hands and your hands look like shit and you know this but you also know you shouldn’t speak to yourself that way. And you are starting to feel better because the music feels good again — so you make a new playlist and dance in the shower. And you planned to go to the market and the farm but you don’t, you go home and scroll through an Instagram account called @nostalgicholidazee and watch Disney Channel and ABC Family commercials from the early 2000s and that’s the only thing that truly settles your nervous system that’s free. Because you already spent money this week on an osteopathic treatment, restorative yoga, an appointment with the new doctor, craniosacral therapy.

Mateo cries, I get hives. The tiniest scar from the tiniest incision burns, still. I turn on the music and get in the shower. I read him Peter Pan, twice. I answer a few texts, never all. Always behind, never ahead. So much to write. I need to rest. So much to be.

Stay grateful and present.

Stay grateful and present.

Stay grateful and present.

Stay grateful and present.

Thursday, November 28th

We’re in South Carolina, giving thanks and frolicking in the woods and drinking sour beers on tap and red wine shipped from Napa.

I found a vintage toy shop and bought Mateo a metal slinky and a balancing bird. The slinky gets tangled and thrown away that night. The $1.99 bird remains and becomes a symbol for me. It balances wherever its beak is placed. I brace myself for the month ahead, outside of our home and routine. I make lists. I try to crowd out the anxious thoughts. I need to control my energy field. I need to balance myself, wherever I’m placed.

Saturday, November 30th

I have reason to believe there is a woman on the plane that is not supposed to be. A cat meows loudly somewhere in the cabin. Two rows in front of me, a mother and son, about 15 years older than me and mine. He is in a black and pink beanie and reclined his chair as soon as he got on the plane. He seems to hate himself, his life, and his mother. At the check-in counter, I watched him take out a pen and puff smoke right in front of the American Airlines agent. They were already seated when boarded and the mom looked down at Mateo and up at me, rolling her eyes. An airport employee runs up and down the halls trying to find the person who isn’t supposed to be there.

The energy of his flight is overall, NOT great but nonetheless I am great. Happy. My son is to my right and my sister is a few rows behind. Tonight we will sleep in our mother’s house. There’s something very safe about that.