My beautiful land

I came back from Ecuador eight days ago. I brought two bags, a big one, and a middle-sized one. I unpacked the smaller one right away, but I let the biggest one stay there lying on the floor as part of the decoration until today, I unpacked the big bag just now. 

I have been here for eight days only and I already miss my country so much. I wonder what is wrong with me though because even when I miss my country I don’t see myself going back to live there. Even when I am there, all I think about is living there.

Photography by Madelaine Bustamante

I visited my country after being three years away from it. If I have to be honest I was a bit worried when I took the plane back home because I was wondering how will my country receive me. I wonder if I would sense some distance, some coldness, some rejection towards me, against this citizen that abandoned her for so long. I wonder if the weather would harm me, or if the food would still be appealing, I wonder the people would be unkind, I wonder if my country would put up a tantrum like a spoiled child for having been left “alone” for so long. I was scared of feeling foreign in my own country as many people that go to live abroad do.

Photography by Madelaine Bustamante

My land instead was as warm and as welcoming as always. I felt the sky receiving with open arms, with his clouds, with its rain, with its sun. I feel the mountains greeting me after so long. I felt the food as tasty as always. I felt the people are as kind as usual. And I felt overwhelmed with the beauty of my country one more time. I felt at home because Ecuador will always be my home, even if I leave for one hundred years. I might get a double nationality one day, and grant my Ecuadorian citizenship a sister, but I could never leave my first nationality. I would never stop feeling proud of being Ecuadorian. There has never been anything that would make me want to have been born somewhere else, even with all my country’s corruption and poverty. I am just grateful for having been born there.

Photography by Madelaine Bustamante

I can almost swear the mountains were singing to me when I was on the roadway, and maybe not to me but to all of us, and the trees were happy, just like the flowers and the animals around. Or, at least, that is how it felt for me. I could almost feel myself mixing with nature, becoming one with my surroundings. I believe I could achieve that goal there, I could be one with everything if I were to stay a bit too long around those beautiful mountains. If I were to plant trees one day, I would like that to be in my country. I would like my voice to join those singing voices.

Photography by Madelaine Bustamante

I missed the beaches though. I grew up surrounded by beaches and rivers, but this time I didn’t have the time nor chance to visit a beach or a river, my time there was too short and I had very little time to look around; but, now I have no doubts about the water there will welcome me too. As huge and soft as my country is, its waters will embrace me and let me hang there in absolute peace. I yearn for that day.

Photography by Madelaine Bustamante

Thoughts at ten, thirty six.

René Guenón (1973) “Insights into Islamic Esoterism and Taoism”

I am re-reading this and all I think is:

“Oh God! I must be in a really bad place because as aware as I am of spiritual poverty, I don't seem to be able to be conscious about it and detach from manifested things. I must not be doing the job! Oh Saturn, how hard will you hit me?”

I am lost again. I am back to stage one, and as if I never moved forward, because I run in circles, I keep on moving back where I started. I am not a teenager anymore, not supposed to be so distracted by existential questions while being too busy dealing with life, but here I am! Because my brain refuses to leave me alone.

I see myself going down that hole that takes me nowhere but to my own disaster. I can always go there for sure, but for the sake of what? It is a comfort zone certainly, but to what price do I stay there? I am turning twenty-nine years old this year and my reality is asking over and over again to be the adult I am expected to be by now. Then why am I still this crying baby complaining about the meaning of life? As if complaining about the meaning, or lack-of-meaning, would change anything. 

If I have to be honest with you all, I just want to sit down and cry, and cry, and cry until I am done crying; but, I have done so way too many times, and by now I fully comprehend that it won’t make a difference. I would just release, and then regain the strength to keep on going but... right now I need a little bit more than that.

Did I let darkness cover me? Was I ever in the light? I mean, it is truly hard to know and I feel I have no time to waste in trying to find that out, but hey! Here I am writing my thoughts about the matter, wasting time, of course.

I am tired. I guess we can summarize all my babbling to that. Or maybe I am minimizing my feelings and rationalizing everything, reducing it to nothing, when in reality, I am falling apart as usual. The good news, for those much younger than me reading this, is that it has gotten better throughout the years. As bad as it is, it is not as bad as it was when I was fifteen, or even twenty. It is much better... well, better is a big word. I’d be humble and say that it gets bearable, what about that? It gets, somehow, bearable, because you understand and take your decisions upon what you moderately know instead of the absolute unknown. Not that the unknown will become known, but it will have the decency to clarify some matters that at an earlier age refuses to share.

Dead

“Your daughter is dead.”

“Your daughter is dead. Your daughter is dead. Your daughter is dead.” My daughter is dead.

There had been many things happening the last couple of days, but they are all blurry in my mind. I can’t remember anything. I can’t distinguish anything in my ocean of thoughts and memories. All I know is that my daughter is dead. She passed away the day before yesterday. A Wednesday. I will never feel the same about Wednesdays now. Silly, as if it was “Wednesday” that took my daughter away from me. It was not.

My daughter is...

My daughter is...

My daughter was. My daughter was. Was? My daughter was 30 years old. Why was she? Why isn’t she? People her age should BE now, in the present. Not in the past. Why is my daughter a “was” and not an “is” today? It doesn’t make sense.

Why do people 30 years old pass away anyways? Cardiac arrest they said but what does that mean? What do they, actually, mean by that? What do you mean her heart stopped working? It can’t be possible. It just can’t. Also, if my daughter needed a different heart, doctors could’ve exchanged it with mine. I have lived more than enough, but my daughter just turned 30. She was supposed to live longer, or so I thought. So I thought.

My daughter had a crystal heart. I knew that, I knew it very well. She had the tiniest yet biggest heart, I found it out a July night when she asked me if she could sleep with the little dog we just adopted because he wouldn’t stop crying at night and he must have been scared. She slept with him until he stopped crying at night. I should have found ways to help her strengthen her heart, instead, I taught her to take good care of it and so my 30 years old daughter continued to have a 9 years old’s heart. Maybe that is why it stopped working. It must have gotten broken. This planet isn’t a place for such hearts.

Photography was taken by Madelaine Bustamante

Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8:30pm.