My second coming - What I’ve learned at 40

Part 1

I’ve learned...

Dogmas and Doctrines color your life because they are your lens and receptors and parameters of analysis and understanding of the world.

It’s taken me 20 years to learn another way of seeing the world from the foundations  of my first 20 years.

I followed all the rules and excelled from age 5- 19. I was it. I taught myself to read and was a mathematical wiz at a young age. I won so many academic, social, and physical achievement awards. I was accepted to every college I applied to. The world was mine and I was “spiritually pure” según - a devout Jehovah Witness - the religion I inherited from my late father and the way I honored him in life. It served to guide me and my relationship with Jehovah and the congregation provided the fatherly and family love and unity I lacked. My first 2 years at UC Berkeley, I was an oxymoron that was becoming politically aware and politically active while I was supposed to be “no part of this world” undergoing the strict rituals of becoming baptized formally as a Jehovah’s Witness - a journey that takes years for many.

I was finally baptized May 1999 in Mountain View California at 19 years old and then went to a month long study abroad program in Cuba where I met so many in clandestine  Jehovah Witnesses.  I came  back to California to the news that JFK Jr and his pregnant newly wed wife disappeared over the Atlantic.

—-> being home and seeing the difficult patterns my family was in and the somber late summer-  I fell into a depression. I took my Fall 1999 semester off and dealt with suicidal tendencies of a family member - until I finally rebelled against it all. I wanted to escape my reality and now 20, I went to Cuba on a medicine mission before my semester abroad in Brazil. That three day trip to Cuba in 12/27/99 turned into a 10 day escapade where I rang in the new year with a hurricane love. I fell for a smooth-talking caramel skinned emerald eyed Cuban heart hustler - and I was never so happy in my life before - never having been in love. The whole world was so exciting exploring all of La Habana until daybreak and he was lucky to have been given money from some tourists that he splurged on me. I saw my whole life in a simple hut on a Cuban shore where he cooked me the most delicious food and I was loved and marveled at and praised all day.

It was a Beautiful Fairy Tale Fantasy that was fueled by Hollywood Movies like Chayanne’s and Vanessa Williams’ ‘Dance with Me’ and my fascination with Cuba due to my studies at UC Berkeley and my curiosity of the Caribbean Latin Lover.

My devotion to this man was unbecoming throughout the years but my life next to the lovechild of this relationship - my 19 year old son Carlo- has been God’s greatest gift to me. It has been my son that has saved me these last 20 years from so much disenchantment throughout my awakening of the falseness of this world.