The Beginning of the End?

 So, originally, this was written by me as a Facebook post (I call it a full blown rant, but apparently people liked it) on July 30th, 2020. I had just found my adoption file and some of the information was already known to me, but there were a couple giant surprises in there as well...ones that made me stop in my relentless search for any family and think twice about continuing at all. Being adopted and not knowing where I really came from for 30 years of my life had an enormous impact on me....this is just a tiny glimpse into part of that (ongoing) journey...

**Just a PSA: this is a long post about some personal shit. If you don't know me, and actually even if you do, don't offer your opinion/advice and I mean that with the utmost respect. For some reason, I just needed to get some of this craziness out of my head. Thanks**

I always thought I knew my beginnings.

I thought I could one day sit face to face with someone across from me in a kind of comfortable silence I had yet to know.

I thought if I fixed the ever present, ever growing anxiety and depression, I would feel and be "better".

I thought that when I faced every type of abuse at the hands of a couple different men, took any blame off myself and replaced the resentment and hate spreading like a wildfire in my heart with forgiveness and understanding- I would be "healed".

I thought when I became an opiate (pill) user that morphed into a heroin addict who couch surfed at best and slept under cardboard outside in the rain at worst...took risk after risk for people that left as quick as they came...I was resilient because I still kept fighting for myself, for my future, for the "old me" that would surely resurface in the aftermath of it all.

I thought when I was faced with what, as it was told me, a "choice" between (a) continuing an ongoing, but at that moment unwinnable custody battle for the heart beating outside of my body, or (b) voluntarily signing over full legal and physical custody that day, clean and sober as could be but bluntly put- not "good/well/worthy enough" yet.....and I chose option B for NO ONE and NO THING other than the well being and happiness of that beautiful, pure and innocent heart...............

......that I had reached the lowest point in my life, emotionally, spiritually...yet had now in a strange way far surpassed resilient and entered into fucking warrior territory.

I thought a warrior mentality meant I would never be where I had been before again.

And in an odd twisted way, I proved myself right. I moved away. Not cross country far, but far enough. Before this, in all my years of using, getting clean, relapsing, getting clean....wash, rinse, repeat...I had never had one "official" overdose. Enter one last relapse.

My self-awarded warrior's paint was beginning to crack and peel after 2 "close call" overdoses.

It shattered and ripped away any remaining splinters left from my soul the day I had that 3rd final overdose.

That 3rd fatal overdose.

No pulse. No signs of a heartbeat. No signs of breathing. No life left. No Narcan in the car I was in. No hospital close enough to do anything other than ID my body by the time I got there.

So seemingly, no hope.

I've heard words like "lucky", phrases like "it just wasn't your time to go", praises to THE high, holy entity in the sky...

Explanations, reasons for why something that shouldn't have happened medically, did in fact defy the odds and happen...for why I have a memory of opening my eyes and seeing blue, just beautiful sky blue everywhere at first. There was no sound, but after a few seconds I could see bright green leaves dancing around it like a moving picture frame. It was calming, almost hypnotic.

The sound began to come back to me though, erasing any sense of calmness and replacing it with confusion and fear.

Confusion because I no longer understood what I was seeing and why...I couldn't get why it felt like I was laying down on my back outside...why my hearing still resembled what it sounds like to be underwater.

Fear because all those questions got answered at once, with a flood of memory in the form of image flashes...the highway, myself using, the car...and an awareness of a voice yelling at me to Get up, Get in the car, Come on, let's go...culminating in that unmistakable combined sound of police, ambulance, and probably the freaking fire department sirens that will pierce through any fog.

I scrambled up off the ground and got back into the car...trying to hide the tears I couldn't stop from rolling down my cheeks. I had for real died this time. And what was making my body shake the whole way home was genuine, pure fear. Because all I remembered seeing was black. Like a blink, or a dream-less sleep that most 20 something year old people expect to eventually wake up from.

I was scared because there was no bright white light calling out to me, no warm, welcoming deity waiting for me at the end of a tunnel...there was just nothing.

I realized that day that my spirituality was misguided and contradictory, at best. I had no clue who I was still.

I didn't know what made my spirit sing.

I didn't know why my whole being vibrated when I did people's tarot cards, runes, palm readings, etc...

Why did I feel so strongly that I had a purpose, a destiny to help people, yet had no idea how to harness it when it became too much?

I can't destroy myself in order to build other people up.

I found out that I'm just about 3/4 Indigenous/Native American, but technically that doesn't really mean anything in this country because my recent family and ancestors did not come from this land. My birthmother was born in a place called Chiautla de Tapia in Puebla, Mexico. That general area was once home to one of the greatest ancient civilizations - the Aztecs. Their decedent's blood is running through my veins. It makes up half of who I am. But in finding out that information, I also found out that I will probably never know my paternal heritage.

You see, in 1989 my birthmother was 26 and had four young children already with her husband. I came crashing into her life as her fifth child, the second girl, but the product of a rape she suffered while still in Mexico. She said she did not know who the man was. Ancestry DNA can't really help me with that either.

I thought I had prepared myself for every scenario possible - maybe I'd never find my parents, maybe they would have already passed away by the time I found them, maybe they wouldn't want to be found... but being conceived out of an assault like that??....I mean, who would think something so awful would be the reason they were given up for adoption?

I am eternally grateful to her, Carlota I Aguilar, for giving me a chance at life. For coming into this country not a citizen herself, but so she could give birth to me in Los Angeles, and therefore be a naturalized citizen myself from the start. The first in my family to have that. And then also for putting her trust in a stranger to take me and raise me as her own. To try to provide me a chance at a better lifestyle.

And while I have that immense gratefulness in my heart, I'm at a point where I feel lost.

I thought after I made it through all the suffering and pain a person could possibly take, I would feel better, I would feel more whole. 

But instead, I feel more alone. I honestly feel like my culture was stripped from me and I have no one to guide me in those Indigenous ways.

Some people in my original culture might say that my suffering, my pain, was just preparation for an initiation to become a healer, a Shaman....that it was predetermined at my birth - my unavoidable destiny.

But usually someone like me, someone that was gifted/cursed with the ability to travel between this dimension and others, needs an elder healer/shaman in their community to help them through the initiation process and teach them how to control it.

I've been feeling more and more restless every day, even though I should be feeling physically, mentally, spiritually so much better. Something inside me is pulling me harder and harder in that direction, knows I need help before I have to suffer any more. And the more I resist, the worse I feel. Anyone that knows me, knows that I have a naturally calm demeanor, but lately there's been this foreign anger just building and bubbling up inside me. I can't sleep right, can't eat right, have no patience for anyone anymore...no emotion other than this anger. And I don't even know what I'm angry at.

All I know is I can't find any family member that will respond to me, but I need to go down there asap.

Whether or not I can get in touch with family, I need my community. I need to fix the feeling I've had my whole life of not knowing where my home is. I'm sick of searching from thousands of miles away, it's time for Mohammed to come to the mountain.