Shortly after moving in with Vina, for the first time in five years, I deleted instagram. Nowadays social media is flooded with flashy graphics and quick one-liners advertising the ease with which we can change our lives, the ways we can become the protagonists of our own stories. But, there are just as many ways to get stuck as there are to change.
Being here with Vina now, after all these years, I feel lost in a new way, a flavor of unease that I’ve never felt before. When I’ve felt unsettled in the past, I thought it was Lolo, his ghost haunting the edge spaces. Now I think it’s the shadow of a life unlived, the one I chose to cast aside when I left that place, left Lani. But there’s no need to romanticize any longer – what I’ve come to realize is this feeling I have, it’s nothing more than shame. Shame with a side of regret. I’m learning that Vina is a truthteller in the same way that Mama was a storyteller. For all the frustration, anger, and blame that I placed on her, on Vina, she lays everything bare, picks you clean, no matter how painful the process.
“You let yourself drown in that story” she tells me one night over pancakes – she’s craving diner food in her pregnancy. “What about you and Lolo?” I shoot back, deflecting. “Yeah” she says, unruffled “I took that on… and they fucked us up for sure” she winces, holding her belly “all of them.” she leans back in her chair. “Mama, Dad, Lala, shit even Mami and Papi … but in the end, I chose a different path.” she looks at me, unblinking “a different story.”
This shame I feel, is the pervasive kind. It’s the kind that makes me want to burn every single word I’ve written, to scour my memories of the self pity, the lack of accountability that I’ve carried with me. It makes me wish I was nothing more than a thief, as Dad used to say, that the stories I’ve told, the memories I’ve shared, were simply stolen from the lives of others. I wish I was no more than a bruha, a weaver of words. But to do so would be to continue on the same path, the one I’ve clung to for so many years. And I want to be different, I don’t want to carry Alunsina with me anymore.
Lani used to tell me that people never change, at least not in any significant way. For him, for you, my love, it will be different.
Home Sweet Home 