“queriendo siempre estar en otra parte”

Tuesday night, Aug. 28th:

Listening to ‘California Love,’ and ‘Going back to Cali’ (Biggie)- back to back…. “say what you say, but give me that bomb beat from Dre, let me serenade the streets of L.A, from Oakland to Sac-town, the bay area to back down, Cali is where they put their mack down…”  <3

Ahhh. Currently dealing with a combination of stomach sickness and nostalgia. I think I may have eaten some bad cheese earlier today…. But that’s not what I want to write about. True, I’m feeling a little sick and maybe a little more vulnerable than usual…. Which certainly adds to my nostalgia from home. It’s going to be hard to get sick over here and not have my Mom in the other room preparing some of that bomb caldo de pollo or sopa de fideo to make me feel better. (yea! I miss my Mom, I’ll admit it! Thuggglifeee. ahahah)

But, I’ll be fine.

So, seeing as I wasn’t feeling so great…. I came into my room, cuddled into bed with my laptop and opened up my media folder & started watching “La Misma Luna/ Under the Same Moon,” Not sure if you guys have seen it… but it takes place in Mexico and East LA. It’s full of beautiful L.A. skyline views… and aghhh. That hit me hard. I felt like E.T. when he’s in that little basket looking up at the sky and pointing, “hommmmmeee!” Ahahahaha.

I remember when I was back in home, counting down the days to come here and one of my friends said, “you’re gonna miss it when you leave” (it=LA/home). And of course, I didn’t deny that I would. It’s only natural… I knew it would come to this sooner or later.

It’s hard to explain… I don’t have the urgent desire to ‘go back’ necessarily, well, not yet anyway…. But sometimes I do find myself thinking a lot about home. From simple things- like just laying on the couch watching Viernes en Concierto (“amor de cuatro paredeeeeees,”ahahah) with my Ma & Sneaks… to eating one of those delicious medium rare Umami burgers  and enjoying a nice, cold, draft beer (Mmmm). Simple things like those are now so far and out of reach…

I think about the day when I come back and how GOOD those simple joys are going to be. I feel like I will EXPLODE with happiness when I get to eat some of my tia’s posole, when I get to take Sneaker down for a walk around the neighborhood, and when I get to hold my nephew again. Maybe Sal and I will get to hit up El Pescador again with the boys and have another night of drunken karaoke…. Alomejor. Alomejor todavia me quera…

I think about this and I ask myself if I can live in the moment….? As much as I love and miss L.A., I realize that my future is not there. I will always be back to visit my family & my girls, but my career, and thus my future is not in LA.

When I was back in L.A., life was relatively easy… and I was pretty unhappy for a long time. I HATED serving tables (sorry for all those rants, girls! Ahah. ) and I hated my day to day grind. I felt like a bumb. I saw no real substance in the life that I was living. I couldn’t wait to leave and get out of the L.A. bubble and live LIFE.

Now, I am here. And while I am happy to be here …. I can’t deny that there are moments when the loneliness sets in and I can’t help but to think back on home. I know that these feelings are normal… especially since I am new to site, still adjusting, and missing my training group…. However, there are times where I scrutinize myself for seemingly always thinking about another place in time.

Seems like I’ve always been waiting for something, something else…. Waiting for the next step. Waiting to be done with undergrad (big mistake! miss UCLA like crazyyyy), waiting to QUIT that job, waiting for the PC to come through and ship me off. Now I’m here. 10,000+ miles away from my little apartment in the valley and …. It’s hard. Not going to lie.

I think it’s superficial to only share your UPS (never your downs) and try to paint this picturesque facebook-perfect life where everything is going great and you don’t cry or struggle. Obviously, it’s up to personal discretion what you share- and I’m not saying that if you never share some downs here and there, then you’re superficial. Don’t get it twisted. That’s not what I mean at all… People have different degrees of privacy, and I respect that…

But I think that we will agree that there is some degree of fakeness to our social media lives. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy.

… But, what I’m getting at is that I want to share as much of this experience as I can with the people back home. And I want to be frank. Real. Rawww (“ohhh baby, I like it rawww,” ahaha. Sorry, please excuse my musical outburst.)

And sure, this experience is going to be filled with great moments where I’m learning a lot and looking over gorgeous sunsets on the Indian Ocean… but there are also those days where it’s going to break me down… those days  where I think, “if another fucking kid comes up to me to ‘pedir’ (ask/beg for) something else… I swearrr to GOD!” or ‘if this fool makes that fucking kissing noise at me,….arghhh”

And then there’s today. Where I lie in bed. Hold my tummy. Watch some movies. Reminisce about home, …and gather up the strength to write down these thoughts before they eat me alive.

Ps.

My pai offered me some Gazelle tonight! As cool as it sounds, I politely declined considering the current state of my stomach (…I had an orange for dinner)… but also, because I have no desire to experiment with any bush meat. No gracias. Well… at least not without checking with staff first…