It's Harder to Recall the Many Bad Times

Have you ever found a song that makes you sit back and think about your life? A song that makes you nostalgic, but the kind of nostalgia that you relish and want to hold on to? A song that elicits a flutter in the pit of your stomach and although you don't know what the feeling is, you want to keep it for as long as possible.

I think that moments like that are the reason music exists. Those artists that are truly talented and love what they do, chase those feelings and want to live and bask in them, which is why they make music for a living. And those same feelings are the criteria I use when I'm listening to new music. If it doesn't stir something up in me, it isn't worth my time.

Band of Horses has managed to blow me away with a few songs in each of their albums. To this day, I still claim "Infinite Arms" as my favorite song ever. We even chose it for our first dance at our wedding next month because when I first heard it, I thought of Victor and I thought of our relationship. The song made me catch my breath and it reminded me of the way Victor makes me feel and the way I feel about him. I never wanted to let go of those feelings and I still get them no matter how much I listen to this song. When I played it for him, he loved it too!

 I recently experienced something grand while listening to the new Band of Horses album, Mirage Rock, for the first time. I let the whole album play on Shuffle and when the song "Long Vows" came on, I had to stop what I was doing and sit down. Its a ballad with a sort of woodsy, bluesy country rock vibe and it made me feel a level of nostalgia I have never experienced before.

I put the song on repeat and I kept getting such a strong level of longing for happier times that it bought tears to my eyes and before I knew it, I broke down and I cried for a while. It was a very necessary cry, one that was cleansing, one that bought relief, one that was long overdue because I hadn't had a good cry in so long. I have so much going on right now that I haven't had time to just sit down and think. I didn't know that I needed to let it all out and I didn't know that I needed encouragement or assurance, but I got all these things from simply listening to this song.

I heard "All that you seek/All that you set out to find/Don't let anything change your mind," and got encouragement. I heard "But blankets fall, they don't stay in place just as they were made," and realized that things change and that I have to accept it. Lastly, I heard "And no one's gonna show you the way/When it gets cold you can find yourself made/Back in the hole from which you came/And everything will fall into place." I just needed to know that when all this mayhem going on my life is done, everything will eventually fall into place and everything is gonna be okay.

At the risk of sounding cliche, this is why some people say that music changes their lives...because it does. It really, really does...

PostSecrets

I have always wanted to submit something to PostSecrets, but I have absolutely nothing that is worth sending. I love reading people's secrets though. It makes me feel like maybe things arent so bad. People are going through way worse things than I am and it makes me grateful for everything I have in my life.

I guess my secret would be:

"Whenever I start to cry, I make myself think of all the other people in the world that have it a lot harder than I do and have every reason to cry, and the tears usually stop after that"

True story...

I'm Afraid To Live And Not Remember Why

Yesterday I found out that a friend of a friends mother passed away. News like this is never good and it really got to me. How does one recover from losing a parent? How does life go on after this? This girl is in her early twenties and has a sister that is no older than 5. Her whole world has flipped upside down overnight.

Life is full of changes and we eventually get used to these changes but losing a parent is a change that, I imagine, is hard to recover from. Losing anyone is hard to recover from. Death is permanent, there is no going back. There is no way to fix it or change it. It is just the end with no possibility of an epilogue or a continuation. Death is final and conclusive.

This news really got me thinking. Tomorrow, it will be one year since my grandfather died. He had lung cancer. He smoked his whole life and by the time they found out he had cancer, it had already eaten through his bones. I last saw him in January 2009 and he looked fine, healthy even....but two months later he died.

I didnt cry when I first heard the news. I didnt know this man. I mean, I've met him and spent time with him whenever I visited the Dominican Republic where he lived. I spent a summer over there when I was 7, but aside from that, I never had a conversation with him. I never knew the kind of person he was except from what other people told me about him. I know he would buy me ice cream when I was over there. He would give me frosting puffs to eat. He would give me money to buy soda from the colmado on the corner. One night, the electricity was out and we sat on the galleria out front and he told my sister and I a way to find our way home by a ray of light in the sky that came from a tower in DR.

These are the few things that I remember. This is all I personally know about him. My opportunity was gone. No second chance. When I realized this, thats when I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried and when I was done, I cried some more. I cared for my grandfather deeply.... I would say that I loved him, but he never knew this. I never told him this and he never told me how he felt about me either. The finality of death took this from me. The realization that it was too late was devastating to me. It still is...

When my parents came back from the funeral in DR, they brought back several cards they give out at funerals where it has a picture of the person and the dates of their birth and death. On the back of this card, it had a bible passage. It was Psalm 23. This is my favorite bible passage and the only one I know that affects me. I felt a sudden calm enter me when I saw this passage. I felt like it was chosen because my grandfather wanted me to know that I was on his mind. I know that to most it would just be a coincidence but I truly felt like this was a sign...more importantly, its the only thing I have to hold on to.

I went back to the Dominican Republic the summer of 2009, 5 months after he died. My grandparents house was not the same. It felt empty. It was no longer a home. The house now has an unexplainable void that his presence used to fill....and so does my heart.

RIP

Papa Tiodo

Pacing the Cage

"I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I can pillage
All the spells that I could see
Its as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later, you'll wind up pacing the cage"

Pacing the Cage
Paper Rivals

I cried yesterday. I cried in a way that I havent cried in a long time. I cried as if I had lost something, as if I was in mourning. Yesterday was one of those days where everything I try to keep together felt like it was falling apart, so in some essence I was in mourning.

I am so tired. So tired. Tired of being the glue. Im tired of playing mediator to people who dont seem to care whether they get along or not. Im tired of being so tired of doing this. Ive played this role since my so called childhood. So called because I never had a childhood and I cant even remember a time when I didnt think like an adult. When I was about 9 years old, my mom asked me whether I thought her and my father should get a divorce. How do you ask a 9 year old this question? Funny thing is that I answered like an adult would. I said "Well, can you afford to be on your own? If not, then I think you guys should work it out." Yes, I was 9....

After all these years of always being there for everyone else, I have to wonder: what about me? Who ever wonders about me? Who solves my problems for me? Who gives me advice? Who is my glue?

No one....

People dont even know I have problems because, not only do I try to avoid them, but I solve my own problems right away. Most would say I am boring and dont take risks but thats only because when shit hits the fan, the only one there to clean everything up is me. No one is there for me yet I am expected to resolve all the bullshit drama everyone else creates.

And Im just tired. Tired of keeping myself together so that others wont fall apart. There is only so much I could handle and at the same time, I dont even know how to be any other way.