Utah-July 24th

He who digs a pit will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall.

We arrived to Utah a few days ago. We hadn’t been back here in about two years. I must say that I had forgotten how nice it is here. I love it. I have had some great quality time with my family. It has been great.

Now, you must be wondering what the quote I have at the top is all about. Well, I guess it resonated a lot with me right now. These past few days…

I feel sad.  I just feel like there is something broken in me. I am not working right for some reason and that is causing me a lot of disability. I wish I could be all put together and write about very deep things with metaphors that are eye opening or cause people to be amazed by them. I just don’t know… I know good from wrong and I keep on digging a pit to then jump into it on my own accord.

I feel a lot of dissatisfaction in the responsibilities that have been given to me and I wish I could simply drop everything and do my own thing. I know that is not what growing up is about, in fact is the exact opposite is taking on the hard and difficult responsibilities of life and pushing on. pushing on forward no matter how heavy it all may seem.

I think back on those days where I felt fully myself. My new life is asking me to leave everything and forget about who I am or who I want to be and take on different responsibilities. My new life is asking me to forsake myself and a part of me is and has been holding on tightly to who I think that I am and want to be.

There is a longing in my soul that is like a growing monster eating me inside. I have a thirst that is not quenchable with anything. I think that a relationship is what I am looking for but I fully know it isn’t. I had one. I had a relationship and my dissatisfaction and emptiness did away with it. Now, there are people who care about me and who want to be there for me but I keep on feeling empty and gloomy.

I worry about the future…

I look back at people and resentment grow. An evil type of resentment. A resentment that I know should not be there and doesn’t have any room inside of me because I know that I deserve every bit of what I am feeling right now. I drove myself here. I made the bed and now I am laying on it. I dug the hole and now I have fallen inside it. What is most interesting is that I know all of this and even being inside here, I keep on digging deeper as if there was a way out underneath but I am fully aware that the only way out is through the top. I am trapping myself more and more…

In spite of all this, I am keeping all this hidden. It’s like a secret I can’t let go of. A secret I don’t want people to know. I don’t want to see everything fall apart and I think it would if people find out I just want to get lost for a while to then find myself again. I want to go on without any restrictions.

Like Jack Reid’s song, I just want to go back to me. I want to go back to myself. I want to go on alone…

July 13th

I am back home from house sitting. It was a good week. It was a crazy week. I enjoyed it. I learned things about me that aren’t necessarily the best about myself; I might have done things that I am not too proud of to mention; and it was the first week that felt like I was truly on my own.

I know that my last post wasn’t very bright and enlightening about life like I wanted this blog to be when I first started it. I guess I wanted to make this a place where people could be entertained, yet at the same time see things in another light…  Then again, that was almost a year ago. Truly, I don’t want to pretend my life is perfect and I have all the answers to everything that happens around me. I don’t and there is not use to pretending.

I finished reading this book called, The Perks of Being a Wallflower  and I really enjoyed it. I must say that it was a very interesting book. I felt like I could relate to a lot of what Charlie was saying and the instances where I couldn’t, I would think of my friend Bob, who is in a sense somewhat, if not a lot like Charlie. It made me think about my middle school and high school years before I got adopted. I was more… free. I was more myself… Yet there were many times where I didn’t dared to be myself. It made me think of the friends I had and the silly things we did. It is funny how when you look back on things and memories come back to you, only the funny and happy ones come first. It is easier to remember the good times rather than the bad. Then this makes people think how things where better in the past and how much we long for those times to come back. Then we think about the future and we think that we need to make it to wherever it is we are targeting to get or accomplish whatever we are trying to accomplish to be able to be happy. The point is that we are not content. We are never satisfied with the present that we look back reminiscing the past or look forward anticipating for the future. The problem is that meanwhile we are neither in the past nor in the future. We are in the present and we are completely unaware of how we are letting it slip by…

I wish I could keep writing, but I gotta go help around the house with the never ending housework. I promise to write soon again.

Gear-ing up to go…

It is Saturday, July 10th very late at night. 1:03 to be exact. I have been house sitting for a whole week up in Las Cruces, NM-current and soon to be future home, and this is my last night here. I am eating a Klondike bar and I have the greatest golden retriever in the world laying next to me. It has been a very eventful week. I must say that being alone in this house made me realize a little of how life will be when I move out of my parents and start living on my on by August 1st. I am excited yet a little apprehensive about the change. It seems like one door is beginning to close and other good and bad ones presenting themselves. Spooky.

Man! I wish I could write everything that is in my mind or everything that is going on but I have never been able to do that at its full extent. I guess that even though I know not many people will get to read this, and those who do, pay no mind whatsoever about my life, I am still a bit scared of people reading everything that goes through my mind. There is a certain amount of fear of exposure where people find who Aben really is and all the walls and appearances shatter like a glass dropping on the ground. And it is not the appearance part that I am worried about is about the sharp and edgy little pieces that will spread everywhere cutting whoever touches them. I am very confused and messed up person. At the same time, however, I think that every single person is a very messed up. Are we messed up people then…? Everyone has a part of us that is private. Everyone has a part of us that is not showable to people. Everyone learns to cope with it and use mechanism to cover or simply ignore such broken piece inside.

I have also been thinking about relationships. I have gotten very upset abut this topic as time goes by. I just think that is very sad how everyone is trying to find true love and everything they have is some misleading emotions that make us do crazy things for people or because of people, that is not the problem though. The problem is that I just keep thinking ok, follow your emotions, your feelings and love someone, do something crazy for that someone, spend every waking moment thinking about that someone and have awesome times together, then what? It seems to me that everyone is chasing after hot air. everyone is wanting to pursue that great thing, they think they need or want to only last but a minute and then be gone for ever until the next person brings back that novelty of “falling in love”. I know it sound pessimistic but I just think it sucks. I think that is not cool to have amazing feelings and times to then just break everything up because that novelty of romance is gone. Do you know what happens afterwards? HURT. Hurt that will impede you to moving on. Hurt that will cause you to desensitize your heart and keep you from actually opening everything you are to another person. Relationships suck and people suck. I have come to the resolution that I will not do the relationship thing for a long while. I do not have time or desire to be open and vulnerable with somebody to then end up in the dumps for several months because whoever I “loved” has gotten enough of me. Now, it is not fear of getting hurt what is pushing me to reach these conclusions it is simply the lack of time, energy and desire of this happening over and over with whoever I think its the “right person…”

This week has been a pull out of reality. I have been whoever I want to be. A thought that came to my mind as I was running on Thursday after thinking about the whole love ordeal and the things I am so afraid to write about, was…

“It doesn’t get any better than this…”

Pictures…

Summer is back! What a better time to dust off the old pettily failed blog-attempt than now? I know I could have done better than two posts before I just didn’t take it seriously enough. On top of that, I was very concern with correcting and editing that writing a single post was always a 2 to 3 hour endeavor. Sad I know. Anyhow, summer is the perfect time to spend time. Even with a job at hand, family madness and little rest I think I can dedicate more time to trivial activities as writing my brains out. I also noticed that having more time to mentally wander (not worrying about homework, schedules, meetings, tests, work, etc.) my mind goes into these rabbit trails of thought full of questions and realizations that if I don’t write about or share them with anybody, can stagnate my mind for weeks making whatever subject matter it is, more and more confusing even for me to understand. Producing this mental puzzle that would tease my mind to the point of huge, hard HEADACHES!!! So… for my own mental sanity and for the sake of using my time wisely-writing. I am here again.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I have a big family. We are twelve children. Since we potentially are the size of a military squad, my parents decided that it was a good idea to remodel the house mostly ourselves. “This will be a working summer guys” my mom started repeating in February and so it’s been. We have been working on the house for some time now. Moving stuff, painting stuff, cleaning stuff, digging stuff out; it has been a task! Don’t get me wrong. I find it quite relaxing and entertaining to do, it is just that it can be too much when it overlaps with work and sleep deprivation. My expectations of summer as the time to catch on all my neglected sleep during the semester, was murdered with the amount of work we have to do in the house after I got back from Florida the last week of May.

Anyways, the reason I’m telling you this is because as I  was painting baseboards the other day, my mom was going through some pictures that were laying around, probably still waiting to be sort through and allocated in its designated albums… Looking at them made me think about life. Our lives. I saw some pictures of my grandma’s parents and my dad when he was only about 4 years old. Then I saw some of my parents when they were dating, when they got married and some of the family reunions they went to in the early 2000’s. I was thinking oh that was only in 2002 and then realizing that it is already 2016 made me think: wow, time certainly flies by! You see, when I was living the early 2000’s I was a kid. I didn’t think of myself being 21 anytime soon. I remember being excited with the idea of reaching 16 but 21 was adult life-out of bounds. But now 5 years later, I sit back and think, that was 5 years ago… Ain’t not going back! I see my grandma and I see my grandpa and I think about my own parents. I can’t imagine them aging. Sooner than later they will be the ones my kids will be calling grandma, grandpa, or whatever they want to be called. And if that is not enough, the thought of myself aging is simply crazy! Our lives are nothing but a wink! We are here for a moment and there we are gone. There is nothing that we can hold on to because nothing we have will last. I think about Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Julia Roberts, all these beautiful and foxy women who are no more… Maybe Julia Roberts still is doing some acting but she is not the American icon she once was. We hold titles and positions only for a moment. We are designed to be here for only a season and then we are no more. That is just the way it is and trying to fight it, means trying to fight the way of the universe is made.

Don’t you see it people? We are so busy trying to be something, trying to get places that we miss the most important part of it all. Life. We are not design to live until we are something or accomplish a certain goal. Life is happening already everyday. As we go to school, as we eat breakfast or lunch or dinner, as we spend time with family. We people, are so dissatisfied that we think that to be able to fully live and enjoy life, we need to get, be or accomplish something. That is a lie. What’s the point? The point is to accept and love and enjoy. We need to accept who we are and what our story is without envying anyone else’s.  We need to love God and consequently each other no matter how we can get to be. And accepting the story that we have been given, loving others we need to enjoy; enjoy every second. It will last only a second anyways! Enjoy the life we have no matter how hard it may be. Being grateful for the small and sweet gestures that God does for us. There are always small and sweet gestures that He does, you just need to observe more carefully.

And so, looking through pictures made me think, life is like a straw in the wind. A blink of an eye. A second gone by. There will be other people after me and then after them. But that shouldn’t discourage us… In fact! That should encourage us even more to think that we need to get moving. Stop wasting time. What are the tracks and traces people in the future will see about me? Who or how am I being to others? We need to look at our story and try to make an impact with the little time we have. Don’t get too wrapped up with the distractions of the moment, look at the bigger picture! You may be running out of time!

Dreaming Together

After a week in Washington, Seattle-area to be more specific, we are now in the second part of our trip, exploring the interesting lands of California. 

I have never been too fond of California as some friends of mine but I must admit that I am enjoying my time here.

I enjoyed the green forests of Northern California-despite the peculiar smell of something like saltine-where the trees are as tall as the skyscrapers we saw in the great cities we were in, Seattle and San Francisco. It was a magical place full of peace and serenity. It was almost mistical. Like a place you go to find yourself and get away of the business of life. 

I enjoyed meeting my mom’s aunt and uncle. They were awfully nice and hospitable. Not to mention they lived in a fancy gated community with a back yard that led to a really nice golf course. We loved their house and meeting them-there is some kind of spark when meeting family; it is always nice. It’s a feeling of unity that even when you haven’t ever met them or seen them, you know there is a link, waiting to be shared. It’s a cozy feeling. 

I enjoyed going to San Francisco and being able to see the appartments and roads, trying to imagine how people do life on a day-to-day basis and what their way of thinking probably is. Seeing how even when San Francisco is similar to Seattle, is not the same. 

And with all this, I think about my life. I reflect on all the gifts I have been given and dreams that kindle inside of me. All these places and people give me something to think about. Thoughts flood my mind and dreams are born out of these thoughts. Dreams that I know are attainable if only motivated and work hard. Like uncle Jean said, “if you want something, you gotta go out and get it!” He also said something really true that goes along with that, “after HARD work, comes good luck.” Nobody will give me anything and I shouldn’t expect them to. I need to be motivated and work hard to get what I want. The opportunities are there. It’s up to us to take a hold of them and make the best out of them. 

And yes! My little lady is part of those dreams. Dreams of traveling and showing her all these places and peoples that although different, are similar in so many ways. 

I want to venture with her alongside me. I want to explore with her. I want to go to from the remote fields of the South West of America to maybe even the crowded streets of India, if she so desire. See the good an the bad, the fancy and the not so facy.

Exploring together…

 Learning together…

Dreaming together… 

  

Hello World!

They call me Aben. I’m just a guy who decided to write, so here we are. It’s summer! And as every summer my family embarks in some family adventure to like my mom always says, “make memories together.” However, some of those memories, I’m sure we would’ve been better of without! It can be combersome driving up about twenty-something hours in a fifteen passenger van full of people that on top of it all, are related! But, alas, that’s what makes it excited, right? If not, at least it gives me something to ramble about in this blog.

We live on the border between Texas and New Mexico, on the New Mexico side. And for this years’ adventure, intead of going to Utah like every summer, we are headed to Vancouver, Canada.

Although I’m really excited about the trip, I’m also have this great dilemma about what to do. I do want to go to Canada and hike along the coast but I also would love to stay in Seattle with a really good friend of mine named, Wesley. I haven’t seen him in about three years and he has offered me to stay with him at his uncles’ duplex. Haven’t made my mind about that one. I’m just going to play it by ear and see what happens…

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you a picture of a nice park we stopped at when we were in Arizona:

I think that this is a good post starter for the blog.

Let’s await for craziness to happen.