My body is on its way to recovery. I’m healing. I’m healed. I’m 100% better today than yesterday.
My words have power. Today, I’m creating a new story about me and my future.
I stopped drinking coffee for a month, that is a story.
I am taking a happy pill, that is a story.
I remember a story about a beautiful woman, that is a story.
I’m done with the question, what will I write today? I’m lifting myself out of the rut I am in, or writer’s block, or my shadow self.
But that isn’t the story for today.
…
We went to the vet yesterday, every three months both Phi and Crocker need their anti-deworming and anti-fleas protection. While waiting, my partner and I were talking to some of the fur parents who were also waiting for their turn.
It is easy for me to find myself asking questions, or having a chit-chat with fellow dog owners, or dog lovers. It is something I was never known for, before having Phi and Crocker in my life.
I changed.
Before our turn, we recognized Bambino, the golden poodle we met a couple of months ago. He just finished his weekly bath and grooming.
When I first heard from Bambino’s fur parent that she takes him to the pet shop every week for grooming, my first thought was she must be rich to afford a weekly trip to the dog groomer, because it ain’t cheap.
And her reason was Bambino is too playful, and she only tried it once — bathing him, because she ended up too wet, it was too messy — her words.
When we saw Bambino yesterday, he looked to have grown a few more inches and gained a few pounds. He was bigger. The fur mom was trying to put his diaper on, while her mom tries to stop Bambino from jumping off his dog stroller. Yes, her mom comes with them when they do their weekly pet shop visit.
Bambino is a spoiled dog, no doubt about it.
…
On most days, I play with Phi and Crocker. I also get to spend more time with Crocker now that he stays inside the main house. Before you get the idea that we live in a big house, we rent two units in an old building, where my partner had been living for eight years, or I think even longer, he can’t remember.
When I moved in with him, I needed space for some of my things. I only had a few, but there were books, clothes, a cabinet, and an aircon unit. Luckily, the building then was almost empty during the pandemic.
This happened in 2021, eight months after mom died.
Crocker is the dog I adopted after we got Phi, who was a tiny little baby or should I say puppy, when she arrived at our home on April 2021.
A long story, about why we ended up with two dogs. I had a dream that I was calling a dog ‘Crocker,’ the next day a friend of a friend posted she needed a new home for a dog otherwise he would be placed in a shelter.
I took him. When he arrived he was bigger than I thought he was from the picture sent to me. It took weeks before I wasn’t afraid to touch Crocker. He wasn’t aggressive as I thought he was — he was afraid.
And because he had always stayed in the other unit on his own, I only interact with Crocker in the daytime. At night he goes back to the other unit. I made Crocker a play area outside, near the building’s laundry area, and it was ok until February of this year.
By this time, Phi is a year old and bigger. She also thinks that she’s bigger than her size. Some neighbors complained that my dogs were noisy, they have been quite noisy than usual, all because the neighbors kept on changing. Some would only stay for a month and leave, and even the people managing the building kept on changing.
They never got used to the people in the building.
When the building’s caretaker came to talk about it, it got me really upset. So upset, that I would have left the building as soon as the sun rose the next day.
It was the perfect storm, the stress of being sick, (which I claim to be not any more) the writer’s block, and the stress of life.
…
My partner is rational and I’m emotional — always have been.
After I calmed down, I decided that Crocker lives with us in the main house or unit. And we got to bond more, even if most days he and Phi will fight over nothing.
Phi and Crocker don’t see the neighbors, so there’s less barking. I don’t say we are the quietest among the tenants,.But unlike in the other units to which I have heard couples fighting or that tenant on the ground floor who would play music and games at full volume at the most unholy hour.
Except for our dogs, we mind our own business.
…
I suddenly woke up today, that I would make an effort to change what is on my mind. I have been asking myself,
what is there left to do?
A question that never really left my mind after mom died in 2021. I think of her every day.
Today is my nephew’s birthday, my sister shared with me a message I wrote for my nephew nine years ago.
My nephews and nieces are all grown up, charting their own lives. Even my grand nephews and nieces are no longer babies, but they will always be in our eyes.
I was also looking at my Facebook memories. On some days many years ago, I would write I was happy, or that I was in another place or I was eyeing someone. But there were also days when I was sad, stuck in a place or hardly thinking of anyone else.
Life happens regardless of what I feel about it.
…
But it is when I choose life, that life chooses me.
I have been here before. I didn’t know what I want to do with my life. One day, I stepped out of the house after two years of locking myself inside my room.
I went to study photography, and in less than a year I was in the US, a long flight away from home. I stayed on for four years working on cruise ships. I have been to at least a hundred countries.
I had never dreamed of seeing that many places, but I had.
There was a man I fell in love with during those years, someone who was the reason for me staying longer than my first contract would have allowed me, working on cruise ships wasn’t for me until I met him.
The relationship ended badly. When it was finally over, I was in the middle of a European itinerary, my first in Europe. It was a dream destination for me, and I would have wanted it to be a memorable experience not only for me but for us.
It wasn’t meant to be, and yet I got up on my feet and was able to enjoy Europe — alone.
It will take years before I met another man I would fall in love with again. But that too ended.
…
My life had been moving in circles, more so when I quit on life. Now, I know that even when I choose life, the journey does not follow a straight line and I have to make peace with that truth.
But no matter how narrow or wide the road is, life is taking me somewhere. Unlike when life leaves me behind in circles, I can only see the rest of my life from afar. Life continues without me participating in it.
It is why the people around me managed to have a life without me. My absence doesn’t take them away from the path they are meant to be.
…
I could have chosen death a long time ago. I would have loved for death to finally come and fetch me. I have always wanted to die young, but that didn’t happen.
Instead, I have seen mom die a beautiful death. I say beautiful because she felt our love in her dying days, she also made us feel her love. Her courage to face death brought back the woman I knew who was stronger than any woman I know.
She made it through a difficult life, and yet mom never ever quit on life.
And in the end, her reward was a life completed.
Her life’s journey was not through a straight line, it had its share of twists and turns.
But she waited. She waited long enough, all of 81 years to have met even her great-grandsons and great-granddaughters.
…
I often saw myself as a victim. I often say, that I was given a bad deck of cards or that nothing I wished for really does come true.
But if I would be honest, it is far from what really happened.
I made some very bad choices, and every time I did, life takes a new turn. It lifts me out of the consequences and had given me a fresh start.
I have forgotten what life had given me including miracles and the miracles were plenty.
I can no longer look back at my past, and live in regret or despair. Mistakes, I can longer take them back. The words I have spoken can never be retracted.
…
The hurt I still have inside belongs to the past.
I know life is winding down, and being in a circle isn’t the way to reach my final destination. And by choosing life once again, I again call on a higher power and claim to the miracles to which I am entitled.
Miracles aren’t rewards for being good or withheld for being bad.
They are our birthright.
…
As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon, I feel grateful for the love from my partner, Phi, and Crocker. That my family is whole, and that my relationship with my sisters had been restored after mom died. That today is my nephew’s birthday, a scientist who tries his best to understand where we came from.
I am stepping out of the circle. I don’t have to be stuck. I can take a small step to the right, and start a new course — a new line.
It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It can get bumpy. The weather will not always be sunny. There will be cold nights ahead. And there will be darkness but light will never be too far behind.
One step is all it takes, a very small one is all I needed to take.
By writing this story, I made a small move, a ripple.
I acted.
It is the cue God has been waiting for, to move me right back to where I needed to be because life ain’t over until it is over.
Thank you for reading.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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