Dear Reader,
Today, I am dreaming of Miami.
It’s been nearly six months since I last stepped foot in that town and it changed my life. That was when I felt something break inside of me and a shift happen. There was bound to be change. That was June 26.
It wasn’t even a month later that my life completely changed. I left a rough and difficult situation for home, where I wanted to be for so long. Looking back now, had I continued in that situation, I’d be dead within six months. That’s where my head was.
I’m not ashamed of it now, I was at one point suicidal. There was a time I curled up into a ball and cried. The crying didn’t stop and I soon found myself being diagnosed in a psychiatric hospital.
However, I had help getting there. I know now the dark side of humanity and that it pleased some to create the situations that lead me down this dark path.
So when Miami happened and that shift happened, a new life happened. Happened. Happened. Happened. I have that clear in my head, the last year happened, to me, around me, and in my heart.
During the week of Thanksgiving, I wondered if I would have something to be thankful for. I was upset that I wouldn’t. Surely this is the bottom of the low of my life. But a phone call from a former student, actually several phone calls from former students, reminded me how close I came to ending it all. They reminded me how life in 2015 started one way but is ending in a completely different way and that’s okay.
Those phone calls reminded me that, to live a life worth living it is not about how much of one thing or another you have. It’s about what you contribute to the world. And it’s being here when it’s easier to not be. It’s about feeling the dark and the light.
These past six months have been the most creative in several years. I started a writer’s retreat. Did a live streamed reading. Won an award. Taught amazing students. Wrote a short story in a genre I never thought I’d write and I went to VONA where on June 26 everything changed.
I’m not done. If all goes well I will finish 2015 with three more submissions to publications and contests. And I’ve met my tribe. My beautiful Afro-Latinas who knew me before they knew my name. For them I am forever grateful.
Dark comes in anticipation of the brightest light. This is what I know to be true. (Click to tweet this out.)
Miami, I love you. With every visit, I learn something more of myself. This last one was a doozy. Thank you for that.
Miami dreaming,
Dear Reader 