I didn't even want to write today, because I'm so conflicted. But I'm so conflicted, I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't write. For the past few months, Shango has been visiting me in my dreams. Not the physical embodiment of Shango, but I've been having dreams filled with people praying to him, playing songs for him, and his image appears on a random card or paper somewhere in the dream. I didn't know what to make of these dreams until I had one a few nights ago, and something "clicked". Shango is about focus, planning, and strategy, some areas where I'm considerably lacking. I can dream, create, manifest...but doing it in any kind of order often eludes me. I just like to "do"! Anyways, with this in mind, I've really been focusing on my life goals lately, figuring out what it is I really want.
What I was telling Codi this week was that I've always been very focused on location. I like to find certain places to be in order to have certain experiences. But I finally came to realize that no other place or thing can shape my experiences but me. That knowledge freed me. I knew that as long as I moved in truth, creativity, and love I could go anywhere because home was in my heart. Through focusing on what I really wanted, I understood that I wanted the following things for myself:
To marry Codi and start a family
To create art
To do socially meaningful and rewarding work
To dance
To travel
So my focus has become aligning my life around those things, which I have been doing. I landed an internship transcribing interviews for a documentary on the issue of oil in W. Africa, and I interview for NYC Teaching Fellows next week. I'll also be starting a new samba class on Sunday. At the same time, my heart feels heavy because I'm making all these changes and manifesting things completely alone.
And that was fine before, but some things have happened that have put things in perspective for me.
One of the things I've never really written about (because it's just too painful and I usually try to shut it out of my mind completely) is the fact that my father has alzheimer's disease. He's been worsening over the years, forgetting who we are, wandering out of the house in the middle of the night in his pajamas...finally my mother had to put him into a nursing home because she could no longer care for him on her own. He adjusted well there, and it eased my mother's mind as well, which was the other thing that gave me comfort to move. Since I've gotten here his condition has worsened, and he's basically on his deathbed. The doctors say he could last 3 days or three years, they just don't know. At the same time, my maternal grandmother, who has been in a home for several years, developed a lung infection and then several more infections on top of that, and she's very sick. She's suffering and tired, and no one knows how much longer she has.
And here I am. 3000 miles away, on a job I cannot take time off from, because it barely pays the rent as it is. It's not only the sadness of losing two people I love, but realizing how precious these moments we have are, and I don't want to spend them alone. So that has been weighing heavily on me the past few days. Then I went into work, and I got the dreaded, "Marissa, can I see you in my office" from the manager. He told me that my stock work at the store wasn't good, that I was moving too slowly through my sections, and he was going to work with me next week to try and help me pick up the pace, but if I couldn't keep up, I would no longer be able to work there. I told him I didn't feel the assessment was fair because I get called away from stock to cashier a lot more than most people (because that's what I'm good at, so they have me do it a lot), so how could I be judged against them? He just restated that I had been on stock longer than anybody else, and I was too slow. I didn't really feel bad, or so I thought. As I hurriedly stocked a shelf of agave nectar, I thought, "my family members are dying for god's sake, this is the least of my troubles," and I tried not to cry. At lunchtime, I wasn't hungry. I just began to walk. I didn't even have a vague idea of where I was going. I called Codi and told him what happened. I told him I didn't even know why I was here anymore, or what I was fighting for. "You have your internship, and teaching," he said. I bitterly told him that the whole thing was just looking like more time away from him and everyone else. We've been waiting quite awhile for a call back about his transfer, and it hasn't come through. And I hate to tear him away from his family and a secure job when I'm so unstable in everything. He said, "If you feel that way, just come home." I told him I didn't know.
Still walking, I called my mother. As soon as she answered the phone, I just dissolved into tears and said, "I want to come home!" She tried to get me to calm down. After all, this was the confident girl who had just called her a few days ago, all excited about her new internship. I told her about work and how I felt with everything going on with the family. She understood how I felt, but encouraged me to tough it out. "You have a lease, and this great opportunity to teach!" She reminded me. I told her about the decision I had come to a few days earlier: I'd told Codi (since the transfer thing was beginning to look bleak) that if I didn't get the teaching fellowship, I'd return home after I wrapped up working on the documentary, and if I got the fellowship, I'd come home after 3 years. But everything with the family was sending me into a tailspin. "You're just lonely because you're cut off from everything," she insisted. "Join the NAACP. Start going to church!" I decided this was not the time to tell her I was more interested in Santeria than Christianity. She kept trying to pep me up, but I just couldn't stop crying. She told me to go back to work, and that she'd call me later to talk more. I hung up the phone, still sobbing, realizing that I had walked a very long way off from work, and was now late to boot. I called and told my manager I had gotten some bad family news, and was pretty much a mess, so he let me go home. It took me a long while to compose myself before heading to the subway. I came home and started reading, going online, anything to take my mind off everything. I knew I was too emotional to think straight. But I can't seem to wrap my mind around anything else. I'm just sad and confused. I always told myself, if I left this place, I should leave better off than when I started, with something to show for it, i.e. internship credit, a master's degree...but those victories seem hollow without anyone to share them with.