Hearted Brain

To start from the beginning, I’m not even sure if I wanted to be born. I do remember as a little girl that I did not want to be a part of this world, where I felt I didn’t belong, like I was misunderstood or, more likely, misplaced in this time and context in life. It was a feeling I had since I was little, where I could not pinpoint or figure out why it was like that, always the misfit, where I felt I carried the burden of being overwhelmed by life and emotions, where my only way out was to burst into full tantrums. I have always asked myself why I cried so much since I was little; it was like a call for help, a desperation that I would express through full tantrums until I was about 11 or 12 years old. And now, at 40, the only thing I can recall is that it might have been a way to let it out or to have something in control that was mine. I do remember they stopped around 11 or 12 years of age, when I can recall that my frequent question was about life. I always wondered what life was about—profound questions not bound to a child—and at that age, I had a gift where my questions started to give me a glimpse of responses by teaching me about life with the gift of death. A big pain for me with a great lesson, where I felt uncertainty in a nice way, gave me the first sense of calm of what life is about. It was hard, but I loved to feel the emotion, where for the first time, it was okay to feel without being punished. While it was like time stood still, days passed by. This moment was a before and after in my life, where somehow it started to give purpose to life.

I have many holes in my childhood; I do not know why—it can be either a blocking mechanism, or it can be that my childhood was very boring. I recall my greatest and best part of my childhood was playing outside almost daily with my friends from my condominium and the big Christmas parties with my mother’s family at my aunt’s house. However, that came to a stop when my aunt, the other sister of my mom, along with my uncle and 14-year-old cousin, went on the traditional Christmas trip to Cali, Colombia, from Miami, and the plane crashed 9 minutes away from arriving at the airport. Our lives changed, although it was weird that it gave me, for the first time, a sense of tranquility and belonging. It wasn’t right away; it took time. But this moment, as much as I loved my aunt, uncle, and cousin, and that I can still smell them and have them in my thoughts and heart constantly as part of my life, this itself was a gift. And now, as I’m living the life I’ve dreamed of, I can see clearly that everything I ask of the universe, the universe responds in wonderful ways. The main things in life that have shaped me into the most prosperous human being have been what I’ve always asked for and what has touched my heart profoundly. Like when I was a child and constantly asked about the meaning of life, God granted me multiple close deaths that showed me the meaning of life; and when I asked, as an adult, for the unconditional love of a parent to a child, it taught me to love myself unconditionally. So, even if the answers are not literal, they are direct if we have the vision to see them and the heart wide open to receive them. I am a deeply sensitive human being who is immensely grateful for the life I have been given, I have lived, and I have created.

I am blessed and grateful for who I was, for who I have become and who I’m still figuring out who am I.