In the end everything is alright...

Ohh the uncertainties of life...
Life is amazing and painful all at the same time, it comes with ups and downs, sometimes though it seems like there are more downs than ups and that is usually because it is in our nature to focus on the downs, because somehow we think that focusing on the downs we will be able to get the ups faster and be able to keep the ups around longer. I mean we are creatures that learn from their mistakes (usually if we are smart enough). Naturally when we burn ourselves for the first time we try to not do what we did the time we burned ourselves a second time. We learn from the mistake and by thinking about what we did wrong we in turn avoid getting hurt again.
But that's not how everything in life works. We live in a world where we are not in control of anything (I have written this before), we are at the mercy of not only our decisions but the decisions that others make. The idea that everything will be alright in the end is our idea of hope, it is the idea that even when we do make a mistake and we get burned eventually the burn will heal and we will grow new skin and then everything will be ok. It is our idea of faith, whether you believe it is the work of a supreme being or the work of just how things flow naturally in the universe.
Lately I've been repeating those words to myself because lately I have been feeling that everything is not going to be alright, that things are falling apart and because I can't see past a few steps from where I am standing and because I don't have a full picture of the puzzle of my life, I am not able to see the outcome of it, I can't see the how the pieces fit or what part of the picture they are making. And that is why we get anxious... Because we want to see the final picture, we want to see the puzzle put together, we want to rush it and not wait the time we need to wait in order to see it form, it is one of our greatest faults: our inability to be patient, especially after a period when everything was falling into place, or it seemed like it was and then something sudden changes and it either stops the flow for a little bit or some of the pieces that were given to you are taken away.
So what do we have then? All we can really do is hope... For me I have had to go back and see how my life has unfolded, from the moment I moved to this country, leaving the people I loved the most and that would always protect me no matter what and ending up with an abusive father who I thought I knew but it turned out I didn't.
Then I see myself ending up with a drug addicted husband, and ending up with a 9 month old baby living in a room with no phone, no internet, no way of communicating with anyone and at the mercy that my husband would not get too high so that he would remember that he had to come back and get us so we could eat because we also did not have food in our fridge...
I go back to all those times and I think to myself: hell I have been through a lot worse than what I am going through right now, and back then all I had to do was listen to that little voice inside which ended up guiding me to better things... I listened to that voice and I was able to get out of that room and was able to see my baby grow, and to keep her with me during those first years of live.
I remember when I had lost a job that was covering my expenses and how after I lost it I had no where to go, and then I remember when I worried the most all I had to do was try and keep quiet and just listen to the universe and the answer would be given to me right on time... That is how I found a different job, one that I needed at the time, I needed to work from home and I needed a salary and I needed benefits so I went to sleep and I said this is what I need... I kid you not the next day I woke up and I felt like searching for work at home jobs on Google, the very first company I saw, I had not seen ever before, I applied and got the job. Few weeks later I wanted to move to an apartment on my own, not just a rented room like we had at that point. And so I went where I felt I was being called to, I don't know why but I just followed that feeling, two months later I was moving into my very own apartment, it was not the best place in the world but it was ours.
6 months went by and I visited a different city, I had driven on a Friday all day after having little sleep the night before, I got to my hotel and totally passed out... The next morning I had this feeling that I needed to move at the end of my lease, not something I wanted to do at the time, not the city I wanted to move to eventually, and most definitely without having any money to move to a different city. So I said well, what will be will be... 6 months went by and I came to the city I am now living in again, somehow the money was there to travel and look for an apartment, I did not even know where it all came from, being a person that lives month to month like most people these days, I really had no idea how I was going to pull it off and even less of an idea of how I was going to pull off the move, one thing was spending money on going to look for an apartment, another thing was to actually spend money on moving.
After I applied for the apartment I got a call a few days later, I had gotten approved, the deposit that was needed for the apartment was less than what they originally told me it was going to be and as an added bonus it was exactly what I had additional in my bank account after I had paid all my bills that month. It somehow worked, I had no idea how but it did, and so I just went with it... Things just worked out, I had no idea and I still don't have the slightest idea as to why I am in this city... I have tried to figure it out, sometimes I thought it was because the schools are better than back where I was, other times I think is because of the people that I've met so far, other times I think it is because here is where I will be able to find one more piece to my puzzle or maybe a few more pieces, I really don't know, it made absolutely no sense and it still doesn't.
All I know is that for this moment this is where I have to be, ups and downs don't matter because every up gives you hope and every down somehow brings you to another up and to another piece of your puzzle, you just don't see it right now, because we can't see the destination yet, we are not there yet. Life is like traveling, you can only see a few miles ahead of you, sometimes you see that there is a bad storm ahead, because in the highway you can see the clouds at the distance and you think how you are going to have to drive through that and then you reach the storm and only go through a couple of miles of rain, but we could not see past that distance...
So here I am again, closing into a storm and worrying about it while I don't yet know if it is just a mile of it or if it is a few miles of it. Here I am worrying about how everything is turning even when I felt like it was not going to, when the ride was the smoothest, now I am hitting a lot of bumps and getting hurt and exhausted by them... But that's when I have to stop and I have to think about how life has worked out before, how I am still on the road and the road is not always bumpy, how I have to learn to separate the fear of not knowing the next thing that will happen with the hope of what I want at the moment and with what my goal or purpose in life is which in the end is the only thing that matters. What we want to achieve, that final picture, the one we are being given the puzzle pieces to, the one that will give us the greatest joy, that is all that matters and if we forget for one moment about that and we decide to focus on what we want at this moment in time, or how we want the bumps of the road completely gone we will end up taking a detour and finishing that puzzle will end up taking a lot longer than we expect.
Don't listen to the fear of the storm, don't worry about the little bumps, listen to your voice, is this right? where the directions that you took correct and this is part of the road to your greatest happiness or did you take a detour because you decided that what you wanted right now was more important this moment in time than your final destination? You always have the answer, it is not always logical but you always have it, don't let fear consume you, don't let it get the best of you and don't let it force you to immediate gratification because immediate gratification always ends quickly, it never lasts. Great things and great places take a long time to make and a long time to get to.

A Failed Relationship.

Yesterday I got a message from a friend that said he had been cheated on by his girlfriend while he was away on a trip and while I am not very good at being empathetic with people because I believe everyone feels completely different even if the circumstances are similar or the same, I could not help but start thinking how I felt every time a relationship that I have had failed.
In the past I have been cheated on, lied to, and well men have had the tendencies to be disloyal in more ways than one, and by disloyal I don't mean just cheating I mean them talking behind my back, not communicating with me and plotting to leave me without me knowing while everyone else did.
Every time a relationship failed, I could not help but to think that somehow it was all my fault, that I must have done something extremely wrong to deserve the fact that they lied, cheated, or plotted to just leave and it did not come to my attention until yesterday when I caught myself telling my friend that I would not say that things happen for a reason because when things we don't want to happen  end up happening well the last thing we want to hear usually is "things happen for a reason" you always want to say well I want that reason, and is reasonable to want to know the reason for bad stuff happening to us, so instead of just accepting that sometimes things just don't work out and that the person we were with was not the right one we decide we will just take the fault for it.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have blamed myself for everything bad that has happened, and while I know that my decisions have probably put me in situations where I would not have otherwise been put in had I not decided to go against my very own intuition, in a relationship is the job of both people involved to communicate with each other about how they are feeling and for both to be open minded to the fact that sometimes the other might say things that they think to be true in their mind but that were just taken out of context when the other person said it and there is no better way to clear up any misunderstandings than by talking with the other person about it, if you don't then all you are ever going to do is wonder and wondering is never good in a relationship, I think things should always be as clear as you can possibly get them to be.
While I was continuing my journey through the day and wondering why I always tried to take credit for the bad other people did, I also wondered how many people out there, women and men, take the fault for what the other person did, how many say: well, if I was good enough my husband would not have done drugs and would have stayed with me; or if I loved my husband enough and the way I was supposed to love him he would have not gone to do drugs. My favorite one is: maybe if I would have been more out there and more available, or more free and more happy then he/she would not have cheated on me. I figured a lot of us probably do this, just by talking to friends that have had relationships failed and listening to people talk about their failed relationships I always sense that deep inside they take the blame, maybe if they would not have pushed too far, maybe if they would not have gotten pregnant, maybe if they did not go on trips too often then the other person would still love them. Truth is, no matter what you would have done differently there is no possible way to stop the other person from doing things that you wouldn't appreciate them doing, you just can't, that person you are with or were with is free to make their own decisions, they are the consequence of their own choices.  No matter how hard one tries to be what the other person wants them to be, or how hard you try and do the right thing, the choices and actions of the other person all fall on them not on you.
If someone cheated on you, is not your fault, it was their choice, in a perfect relationship the other person would have come and talked to you about how they were feeling and why and things would have come out in the open before any cheating happened.  If your partner, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, decides to go do drugs, to go and get in trouble with the law, then that is their choice, you did not make it for them you did not forced them to do it so it is not your fault, so we should just stop taking the entire blame for it, and stop trying to figure out why it happened, the reason will come to you when you are not as hurt, because there will come one day that you will not feel as hurt and you will see things in a completely different perspective.
A real relationship is based on communication, trust and respect; if any of those are lost then the whole relationship fails, in order for communication to work both parties need to be able to listen to the other without getting upset. Communication cannot happen when two people are angry, is usually best not to talk when you are angry at someone because you might end up saying something that the other person will not like or that you will regret later and words that have been spoken cannot be taken back.
So next time you try to figure out why things did not work out  with the person you thought you could trust, and learn to love more than anything in the world or thought that loved you more than anything in the world, just know that you will not know the reason right when things happen, in fact you might never learn the real reason and sometimes the reason just is that you have learned and experienced everything there is to learn and experience from that particular person and is time to move on. Don't get stuck trying to figure out why, because if you do you might never know the why and definitely will end up closing the doors for the next person you are supposed to learn from and sometimes that next person is the one who you can constantly learn from and teach to, the one person you can truly speak to without fear of making them angry or upset, the one person you can totally be yourself with and vice versa. Don't let one failed relationship keep you from the one true and real relationship that the universe has been preparing you for.