今日の

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
-Steve Jobs

the desert has changed me. 

it was here that i found myself, it was here that i allowed the sands to mold me, it was here that i let go. 

it's december and i feel the chilly desert winds carrying me off to somewhere unknown. i don't know what i want to do with my life and i certainly have no clue what life has in store for me. before i left los angeles to resume my life in the desert, i had a chat with a friend. it started as any normal conversation: we talked about the weather, how our families were doing and how our respective thnksgivings went. however, it was this seemingly "normal" chat that changed my attitude for the better.

i met N in the spring of 2006. we had spanish together and like a magnet, her charisma attracted me. her passionate take on life and social issues forced me to rethink my conventional ideas....she made me uncomfortable with her confidence and i loved it. as the years passed by, i watched her graduate high school and enter the "real world." for some reason, i always kept in touch with her and we would met up for birthdays (usually mine) and talk over dinner or coffee. everytime i saw her, she saw a different carmensita. she saw the selfish child grow up, she saw her fall apart after her dating life went crazy and she saw her get up and keep moving forward. in the summer of 2011, i packed my things and moved to arizona to attend college at asu. i left home with the notion that i knew it all. i knew what i wanted to study, what i wanted to become and who i loved. yet, here i was, months later and i was once again...a changed person. however, this time the change was completely different. 

she picked me up from my house and we went to our favorite coffee shop. we sat at a table and started talking about life. we hit a bump where i told her i had applied back home. at first, she was taken aback (hell, upset!) but after explaining that i was moving back for my mother's sake, she understood. i said, "N, it's not me placing my dreams on hold. it's just me taking a different route but reaching the same end. what that end is? i don't know. but hey, what's the point in life without a few detours?" she looked at me, those big blue green eyes staring into my soul, and replied "and that is why i love talking to you."

i didn't realize how much i had changed until that very moment. i was no longer this child who ran to mommy when things got rough, i wasn't this adolescent girl who thought she knew everything and was all that and a bag of chips. no, i was a young woman keeping a positive attitude no matter how hard it rained outside. i learned so many things from N, how to keep your passion aflame, how to brush off other's stupid comments and opinions without getting angry, and most importantly, how to move on in life while keeping your sanity. she may be a "straight edge" but her and i have clicked on a level that many will never experience. without her in my life, well...i would be a very different girl. 

in the spring of 2006, i thought all i had to do was get through high school and coast on by on my intelligence. i never worried about money, social problems, or heart break. it's now 2011, five years have gone by in the blink of an eye and yet i can still remember meeting her for the very first time. few people make such an impact in your life...and manage to stay in it. N is one of the few people who knows the real me. her awesome birthday cards, her gifts of countless books, and her ability to say the right thing at the perfect moment have demonstrated that she is someone who i could not live without. where would i be without my blond, blue eyed argentina? in the selfish phase that's where. 

Natasha Dominguez, thank you for hearing me rant about nonsense. thank you for seeing me grow, thank you for hearing me change my mind about how i feel about life more than a girl changes outfits for a party. most of all, thank you for being the person who has seen me go through so many phases and never (not once) judged. salud! a toast to the most amazing woman i have ever met...heck! will ever meet! may the sails of your ship take you to where you need to be and may your passion always rage, rant, roar. may you never be still but constantly move in the sea that we call life. for a man sitting still will miss the endless possibilities that await him. 

it's the beginning of the end...of 2011 that is. i am not over the sadness of many disappointments but i am moving forward. i have no clue what the future has in store for me, yet i am certain that the past will never be the same. connecting the dots from the past opens the doors to the future. may the winds of fate carry us both to our destinies and may the world shudder in fear for what we will change. keep on changing the world, one person at a time N.

今日の: today...is a fucking beautiful day.

dawn.

2 AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,
"Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don't love him. Winter just wasn't my season"
-"Breathe," Anna Nalick


it's a sickening feeling. i can't eat, i can't sleep, i can't write. all i do is think. think about how i let down my guard and let him in. all i want to do is be numb but it seems that all i can do is fucking think. 


"it's the best thing...for the both of us."


i wanted a choice, i wanted a chance to prove that when the going got tough...i could make it work. alas, relationships are not one sided and if they are well, then they come to an end. it's a sickening feeling, to know we were perfect for each other and i was the only one who thought that. i can't make someone try if they don't want too, all i can do is say goodbye and make my peace with the situation. 


peace.


i can't find comfort in the things i love. writing? hell, i can't even conjure a sentence without it sounding ridiculous. all i have to show for this love is this: pieces of a heart i never knew existed. ultimately that's what i am the most thankful for. he showed me a girl i thought had died many, many years ago. he showed me a girl whose passions did not burn out but merely grew faint. he showed me a girl capable of really, truly loving someone. he showed me the real me and i can never repay him for that. 


perplexedhippie.


i am what i am. a girl who was never meant to be tied down, who was never meant to stay in one place for too long, who was never meant to fall in love. love, it complicated things, it blurred my vision and ruined everything. still, i saw a rose colored world which captivated every single one of my senses...a dream world that i never wanted to wake from. I don't know who i am or what i want but i've finally realized that it's ok to be lost. no one knows what they want. all i can do is seize every opportunity life offers. i found love and i let it engulf my entire being and i have no regrets. though it may hurt today, perhaps in time, the pain will lessen and eventually even go away. time flies, i may not be alive next year or ten years from now so why waste a day wallowing in sadness. i am feeling what i need to feel and that is good enough. 


2am.


it's 2am back home and i am sitting writing this while thinking to myself "is this necessary?" yes. with happiness comes pain and unless you experience both life isn't worth it. i hit the crossroads of my life and i was pushed into a path. i thought i wanted a choice, i thought i wanted to make the decision for myself but as i walk along this path i realize it's exactly what i need. i need to be far away from home, i need to create myself, i need to learn to be alone. unless i go through life alone and happy with myself, how can i expect to make someone else happy? i need to look at the brighter side of things instead of hiding behind my "realism." i need to move on.


breathe.


the night was cold, the air was still, the world has gone dark and i lost all hope. i thought the sun brought me happiness but i forgot that a shooting star can only be seen at night. a shooting star that carries the weight of my ambitions without hesitation. 


thank you Thomas, i wish you the best in life and i know you will be an amazing doctor someday. as for me, i will be ok one day. i finally love myself. 


one day, when i least expect it, a man will find me in a local coffee shop. my cup of coffee will rest delicately next to my book while my hands move furiously to get my thoughts on paper. he will ask to sit at my table, i will look up, and fall in love again.
i hope that man is you Thomas, but if not...know that you have made me the perfect girl for my perfect man. 

a fork in the road.

I was feeling sad,
Can't help looking back
Highways flew by...
Run, run, run away
No sense of time
I'd like you to stay,
Want keep you inside
-"Runaway," Yeah Yeah Yeahs


as thanksgiving approaches i can't help but feel as though i should be grateful for all the things i posses in life that others do not have. for one thing, i am alive. i woke up this morning in a warm bed, in a safe apartment, in a vibrant city. i have food in my fridge, i have clothes on my back, shoes on my feet, and family who loves me. i am going to college, i have friends that keep me feeling alive, i have glasses that help me see the world. i have countless books and movies, i have countless cds, i have my hearing and my sight. i have a wonderful boyfriend and i have my sanity. all these things are only the tip of the iceberg of the countless things i am thankful for, yet something keeps eating away at me. 


am i where i need to be or have i settled?


maybe i'm suffering from a severe case of homesickness or maybe it's my gut that's telling me this can't be it...this can't be the place where i should be for the next three years. i like asu i do but did i settle for this school? my thoughts are consumed with second guessing myself. i tried talking to T about it but alas he has his own preconceptions about the subject that venting perhaps isn't meant for me. no matter how hard i try i find myself at this crossroads. 


did i make the right choice?


i don't know if i can ever come to terms with the decision i made. i miss my family, i miss my friends, i miss my city bubbling with life at all hours of the day and night. being here...i feel so out of place: i feel utterly and hopelessly alone. i cannot seem to "fit in" with the culture here, with this confusing vibe. i'm going home this weekend and for the first time i am grateful for that home. though for many years it seemed to be the root of many of my problems, today it is the only place in the world i where i yearn to be. i look out my window and see nothing familiar. familiarity is what i want, it's the comfort i seek and cannot find in this state. strangers pass me by all day without ever getting close enough to become familiar.


going back home.


i don't know what the future has in store for me, i don't know what tomorrow will bring, whether or not my plans will go accordingly but i do know that my priorities have change. i am not this fierce girl who can pack up and leave everything behind. no. i am a scared kid who wants to have mommy around. pathetic i know but it's the truth i have been trying to conceal. i want to be close to home and know that i have somewhere to come back to when my life breaks down. i want security, i want love, i want to be back in my room alone with everyone. 


thanksgiving is coming up and i'm grateful for many things, but i am most grateful for one thing: the ability to feel what i need to feel.


i may not have ended up where i wanted to but perhaps i ended up where i needed to be. this distance has made me grow up in a manner that i have never encountered...i am afraid to grow up...alone with no one. 

going the distance.

"Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side"
-"Hey There Delilah" Plain White T's


two months. 
i can't believe i've been here that long. everyone has gone back to school and i've already had my first midterms. weird how time goes by so quickly after high school. it was only last year that i remember wishing to be out of that god forsaken state...now it seems that all i really want is to go back home. 
but is it for the right reasons?


my life changed this summer. i met T again and nothing could ever (or will ever) be the same again. there have been many moments where i have felt that i have been in love, where i have uttered those words because i felt obligated to do so, where those three words meant nothing. then there was this...this moment where i said those words and it's meant more than i could have imagined, where those words only scratched the surface of what i felt for him. i find myself waking up in the morning wondering how he is doing or how he'll plan to spend his days, other times i find myself lying awake in bed yearning to be near him. i have never felt this way before. i have never felt so complete.
is it real?


T has seen me at my lows and yet he hasn't given up. i have slowly begun to bring down barriers which i had believed where there to protect me but have come to realize only inhibited me from actually falling in love. is it all ponies and rainbows? of course not! that would be ludicrous, yet the times when it is only the two of us, we are both happy. not happy in the way a piece of cake or a new video game makes me happy but happy as a state of being. though at times our arguments can escalate to a boiling point, when our eyes lock nothing else matters. he has become important beyond comparison and i can honestly say that i have fallen in love. it's a rather strange concept for someone like me to wrap their brain around. why? well, perhaps because i've never had a model example of what love is.
how do i know it's not just a phase?


i have had other boyfriends and i have sadly said "i love you" when i didn't mean it. what's to say this isn't the same case? it's just something i know. call it intuition or what you will but it's different. I am different when i'm with him. the world is different. i find myself tapping into a girl that i have placed on the back burner for years and frankly it's spectacular! as i grow older i find that emotionally i've grown tremendously and i have managed to find someone willing to go through that growth with me. surreal at times, i can't help but feel grateful...blessed that i found him once again. i have never trusted any man with something so fragile as my heart, heck, the only man i did trust died a very long time ago. still, T held out his heart and placed it in my hands without asking anything in return. i had never experienced such trust, such commitment before which caused me to spiral into a state of confusion. 
what was i to do?


i did exactly what my barriers told me not to do: i gave in. i handed him my heart and told him "i know my heart my be bruised, a little scarred but if you'll have it, if you'll keep it safe...i'd like to give it to you." turned out to be the best decision of my life to date. being so far away should have made things difficult for the both of us and yes at times all i want is to have him hold me in his arms but it has also made us stronger. not having him around has made me appreciate the wonderful man i have back home and has made me think twice about the decisions i make on a daily bases. it's a real life changing experience if i do say so myself.
what'll happen now?


i don't know. i am no fortune teller and i certainly cannot predict what will happen tomorrow or 5 years from now. however, i do know this: i am in love with Thomas Albert Garcia. no matter how far i go or how many months go by before we meet again, i will not stop feeling this way. i still get butterflies every time i see him, i still love to hear him talk (even if i have no clue what the heck he's talking about), and i still cannot get over the fact of how wonderful he is. he may be conceited (only in a playful tone though!), he may irritate me at times, and he may hurt my feelings more than anyone else but he's mine and i am his. distance is only a physical measurement. my heart will always be there right beside him (still, having skype doesn't hurt).


i want you more than anything in my life,
i need you more than anything in my life,
i'll miss you more than anyone in my life,
i love you more than anyone in my life.


see you very soon T.

i'm not the girl you think i am.

"I wont hear one more word about changing, changing 
Guess what I am the same man, same man 
Same man I've always been"

-Airborne Toxic Event "Changing"


eleven years.


i had not seen him in eleven years, and suddenly there he was on my computer screen. T.G. had sent me a friend request. 


after the death of my father, my mother could no longer stay at home to homeschool my sister and i and thus placed us under the supervision of christian fanatics. Faith Christian Academy was my prison for a year yet all i have are fond memories. i had never been in an environment with children my own age so i tended to remain silent. what people mistook for shy had been my silent observations. i watched everything, everyone. i especially liked to watch T. as a typical book worm, i reached the top of my third grade class (with T not too far behind). we would walk to the fourth grade classroom to have our work graded all the while T attempted to make conversation and i remained silent as a stone. my first crush, and i couldn't even say hello without getting flustered. alas, i left at the end of the school year, moved into a new neighborhood and never saw him again.


eleven years and i still remembered him.


sometime during november i had left a friend a comment regarding not attending practice (yes, i do prefer breakfast instead of running 10 miles thank you!). a boy named A sent me a comment saying how he knew me. i listed all the schools i attended with no avail. A then types "faith! i knew you from faith! i had the biggest crush on you!" sadly, i had no clue who this kid was. when i told my sister what had happened she asked me if i remembered anyone from faith. did i remember anyone? surely i had to have atleast one friend right? there was N and S my best friends at the school...and then there was T. i clearly remembered T. i began to wonder what had become of him. what college did he get into, how did high school treat him, did he change schools as well? six months pass by and i'm laying in bed at 2:30 am when i get a friend request. T found me. 


eleven years and i'm not eight anymore.


we talked for hours online and i decided it was alright to give him my number. we met up the next day and grabbed some thai tea boba at my favorite joint. if i were a boy, i would be T. we somehow managed to grow up liking the same things. from music, to movies, to our style of dress we were almost identical. he still had his boyish charm and well i fell head over heels (again and again i find myself saying the same thing). i drove to UCR to visit him, stayed over, met his friends, and helped him move out. i had been through so much in my life that meeting a gentleman seemed like life had finally stopped fucking with me. however, life had a lot more up her frigid sleeve for me. things began so unexpectedly that we didn't have time to figure out who we were. our pasts are still a mystery and assumptions are made on a daily bases. could a relationship work when the boy is in love with the eight year old version of his girl? in a perfect world it would but this is reality, my reality and in my world i can never get what i want. Changing, i have a problem with changing. D scarred me, making me bitter towards anyone and anything that demands i change to fit them. if you tell me not to party, i'm going to party harder! if you tell me to eat junk food, i'm going on a diet! it's the basic "teenage rebellion lash out" stage that i never had. is it a bad thing? of course, but it's my method of coping with the mess inside. my barriers protect me from getting hurt and my disregard for any advice on how i should live my life allows me to feel free...to feel as though i control my life. a the song by Talk Talk says "it's my life, don't you forget." i can't seem to stress the MY LIFE aspect of that statement. had T talked to me before hand about issues that bothered him, had he nottaken it upon himself to "show me a lesson" by ignoring me, had he never said "i love you" i would not be in this predicament. instead i'm here, writing on this online blog because i'm too stubborn to call him, because i went to talk to him earlier today and left knowing i would never be good enough for him, because i love him but he loves the eight year old Carmen. 


eleven years and he's going to pass me by. 


i leave for ASU in three weeks and i don't know where i stand with T. i don't believe in coincidences and there is a bigger reason as to why i met T when i did. maybe it's to remind me that i've been living a lie. that partying, drinking, and doing drugs isn't my scene. that i don't need to get hammered to have fun. or maybe it's to remind myself that i will never be good enough for anyone. 


baggage: that's the price i paid for my mistakes. 

good time for a change.

"I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be."
-Douglas Adams


my first year in college has come to a close and with it many new lessons have been learned. 


i began the year (once again) in a relationship with V, thinking how perfect life was. we were so alike, enjoying the same music, style of clothing, and heck even tv shows. yet, there was always something there, something i couldn't quite put my finger on that had been missing all along.
i grew restless and uncomfortable at where i was, i wanted to get out and transfer to a four year university. when R told me it was possible, i jumped the gun and did the paperwork. i tried talking to V about how i felt and the situation we would find ourselves in, only to be met by a cold, indifferent reply of "well that's good."


how could he not have any interest? or at the very least how could he not even pretend to care?!


struggling with how i should feel over V, i find out that F has broken up with his girlfriend. he has been in and out of my life for four years now and although i have treated him wrongfully (safe to say i've been a bitch) he has always been there for me. i tried telling him that things would be ok and not to feel so sad about the circumstances. i even suggested we hang out (although i hadn't seen him in about a year). 
being in long beach all the god damn time with R, i texted F asking if he was free that night. he said yes and we ended up in venice. pandora's box had been up and all these feelings that i had kept under lock and key had been removed without a fight. 


what was wrong with me? more importantly, what happened to my defenses?!


things got hot and heavy pretty fast and let's just say...oh use your imagination. what had i done? i had no regrets, on the contrary, i wanted to do what i did. still, the past is an ugly monster that creeps up and fucks with you (quite literally). I applied to ASU for the fall and had never had the intention of doing this whole "long distance" relationship crap. i knew things with V had to end. i couldn't handle the situations, i couldn't handle leaving everyone i've ever known behind, i couldn't handle starting over. I ended things with V and began focusing on myself. but was i really focusing on myself? or was it simply a lie to open old wounds?


4 years later i'm in the place where i began: afraid, naive, vulnerable. i had jumped from relationship to relationship never thinking of the consequences. i had hurt so many people and never thought of how they felt. i never let anyone in and at the same time let someone in too deep. i never knew what it was like to be heartbroken, and as i sit here looking at my heart on my desk...all i can say is life is one funny motherfucker. J has been going through a rough patch in his life and i called him to see if he was alright. 3 years of avoiding each other and whenever we hang out it's as if we've known each other for ever. J put my life into perspective and though his opinion may be a tad bias, it still revealed F's personality. i never forgave myself for hurting him, i never forgave myself for being impatient, i never forgave myself for being 15 and cold hearted. F never forgave me either, and broke my defenses. he said he would always be there and i can't help but feel it's all been a lie. 


will i ever learn? will i ever stop tripping over the same rock?


classes are coming to an end and with it great change approaches. i'm cutting my hair and with it i cut all ties to the past. i will forgive myself for the pain i caused and i will not let guilt run my life. i will forgive those who have wronged me and move on. i will pick my friends wisely and cherish those who have always come back into my world. 


4 years changes everything, 4 years changed me, 4 years still doesn't seem like more than a blink.