I tried reading "Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War." I opened it every night as I snuggled down into my single-sized bed. The children had been fed. Their homework checked. They had bathed and were bedded down. My nightly obligations as a single mother were complete. My daughter might enter my room to talk about something that was on her mind. My son might pass through on his way to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. But in general, the atmosphere was one of peace, ease and relaxation as I catapulted my attention to another time and place, to extreme conditions that were alien to me, to men plotting violent acts for the perceived greater good.
Around this time, I got hung up on a man for a while. Super hung up. Obsessed, one might say. My affections were not reciprocated. And I spent many a sorrowful night hugging my pillow, crying like a teenager. My development was arrested at age 18 when I became involved with a man whom I eventually married and with whom I had two children. This personality permafrost lasted 16 years, 8 years longer than was necessary. I wonder about this time. I wonder why I chose to freeze and why I nearly chose to die.
I tried reading Che Guevara's writings about the Cuban Revolutionary War. My attention would fade, my eyes would close and in the morning, I would awaken to the site of Che Guevara's face by my pillow. Sleeping with this book sums up so much of my life. I could not quite bring myself to absorb the writings of a revolutionary, though I felt the spark of a revolutionary spirit living in my heart. Would it have been fully nurtured had I moved to New York straight out of high school as I had planned? Would I have become a public figure worthy of quotation?
As it is, I have lived a life of a shadow revolutionary, stepping into the light only occasionally. There is a strong pull in me to disrupt the status quo, to tear things down and build anew. Yet, there is a stronger pull for me to sit down and be quiet. I examine how I came to be who I am with some degree of regret. And while I recognize regret is of no use and we make decisions in the present, not in retrospect, I feel I cheated myself. Up till now.
At this point, it is time to come clean with myself and everyone else. It is time to own my mistakes and push onward in the spirit of burning all the old to the ground and from the rubble, building the new life that needs to exist.
