"I think it's time we meet"

Sunday afternoons have been sung about because of how amazing they are. I know, I know the rest of the world has to prepare to go back to work and school, but us hairstylist's get a day off. I can remember that Sunday so vividly. I had the old flip phone, the one that was an off navy blue with a tight ((click)) when you snapped it closed. Oh my how I loved that thing!!!!(I hate phones now a days) I had a routine, still do. Each Sunday afternoon I would go to the gym after church and lunch. So I remember feeling more on fire than ever because the guy "I" wanted to call me did and I was going to call him back. I called on the way to my gym, I always packed my clothes before I left the house in the morning so I didn't have to go home and waste time. Brilliant I know. I was of course driving and on the phone when it used to be not so hated and scrutinized. I agree people are killing each other left and right from being on phones and texting so I am not complaining, just making a statement that it was uber cool 14 years ago to hold on a convo while driving. Sooooooo, when he picked up that call and talked to me while I was driving I was on cloud 9. You know the feeling I'm talking about. The pins and needles that everything he says is right and cool and totally right and cool. It's every girl's dream for a guy to talk to her, no matter what! In the beginning he's awesome whatever he says.(Don't worry I've learned from then) I was so proud to tell him that I went to the gym. I thought he was going to think I was so in charge for taking care of my body. If I had listened carefully I would have picked up on his hesitation, he said "gym"?? I think if you've studied the spicy Puerto Rican boys they think working out is only for men. Um NO. I told him that I workout to lose weight since I was born into a family where we "live to eat" not "eat to live". I explained to him that I was trying to be a better version of myself and he had met me in the midst of that. He was adamant that I not talk to guys and to be careful. Boys. They crack me up. I had been living on my own, but he was giving me pointers to survive. Hmmmmm.....where were ya a few months ago when I was kicked to the curb?! Ha! I managed. It never took me long to get to the gym because I had a fly car. Yes, my cool car was able to cruise right along to the gym. I told him I had to get going, when he asked me if we could get together soon. I figured sure, why not. I told him I didn't work on Monday's but that I needed to get things done around the house and I would go to the gym and be home before dark. I would just wait for his call. He said ok, he'd call me tomorrow in the afternoon. OH my word, I wouldn't sleep. I just knew I would lay awake and think about what would happen if he changed his mind since that night at the dance club. What if he wasn't into me anymore when he saw me. Maybe I was too chubby and needed more time to lose more weight. Or my hair wasn't right. Geesh. I would drive myself nuts going through every last detail of what if's. You can't imagine how insecure I was to have this young man not like me. I seemed to face adversity everyday in my career. I have to meet new people on the half hour, look them in the face, help them pick out a style and then cut their hair. This boy on the other hand was just able to push me right over the edge. I just had to make him like me. I just had to land the position of girlfriend. I had to get him to pick me out of all the perfect pretty girls in the world. How the Heck was I going to do that????????? I would paint my nails. You laugh, but I used to be the Queen of Nails round these parts back in the day. I still do my own painting or manicuring. I love it. I felt better after getting ready to see this guy. I thought I had it all planned out. I would make sure I looked great and I would clean my house preparing to have a cute guest and we would take it from there. I loved the anticipation of that moment when my phone went off and it was him. I could feel the chills go down my spine when I knew he was choosing to call me out of anything else in the world to do. It really is a cool thing when you think about it. Remember the weeks where I was trying to find him and now he's calling me. AAAHHHHHH! Life is good. He wanted me to know that he would be driving up from Lancaster where he lived and it would take him a good 45 min. It was already 7pm. LOOOONNNGGEEESSST day ever. I had been fidgeting for hours waiting for his call. Not like I was desperate and waiting for his call. I just thought since we decided on hanging out he would have called sooner. I thought well there isn't much time left to hangout before it gets dark. Oh well, I was a grown up now so I could decide when it was time for bed and when it wasn't. It just might be a tough day tomorrow at work standing all day while I'm tired. WHO CARES! HOT BOY CALLED ME AND IS ON HIS WAY! Was I nervous? Sure. I think any girl in my situation would be nervous. I had picked a Spanish lover who didn't speak the best English and looked to be older than me while being a dedicated drinker and I was a sober saint to my current Faith status twice removed if ya know what I mean.(oh gosh how was I ever going to get into Heaven) So yes, to answer your question I was terrified. Didn't stop me. I was going to give this a try. If it killed me, well then I got what I deserved. Not the best attitude but it was the one I had chosen. You have to be totally committed to being bad azz or it just doesn't feel the same. I got a call about 55 min later. He was lost. It figures. I had been falling asleep on the couch when he called me and I answered in an irritated tone. "Where are you"? He tried to tell me but it wasn't computing in my spanglish brain so I asked him what he was near. He said this Hotel parking lot that was near by. I told him to wait there I would be right there and help him get to my apartment. Gee wiz, now I have to get shoes on and go down in the car lot to get my car. Okay here goes. I got there in 5 min, it was literally right down the road. I pulled in and pushed my window down so he could see me and I could see him. I was so afraid that when he looked at me he would drive off. We met eyes and he took his cool sunglasses off to see me. He said "oh wow" You are so beautiful Laura(said in Spanish accent). I remember my reaction to seeing him for the first time in over a week, I was silent. He said "what"? I have a flair for the honest approach so I told him HE WAS SO BEAUTIFUL I COULDN'T STAND IT. He just laughed and said thanks. He followed me back to my place. I let him in the building and when he saw my apartment and how perfect it was he was blown away. He said this is all yours??? yep! It had cathedral ceilings which to this day I still remember coming home to was one of the best things in my life. He just loved the place. He saw my couches and television and thought we would watch TV. I said I don't have TV or cable rather. He almost passed out on the floor. I told him I didn't have time in my life for it so I don't watch any. He motioned for me to come sit by him on the couch. I couldn't......I was too nervous. I didn't want to make the wrong move or say the wrong thing. I just wanted to stand back and watch him. I was immediately taken with him. I wanted nothing more than to put him on a shelf and keep him for myself. Sickening I know. I know now how dangerous young love (which is really infatuation) is. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had to get some help. I was staring at this guy like I had never seen a man before. I knew he could tell. He asked me again to come sit next to him. I reluctantly moved over towards him. I was staring directly at his face. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life (I hadn't seen the Dwayne the Rock Johnson yet). I had nothing to compare the feeling to. It had happened in the dance club and it happened again when I saw him the second time at the club. Seriously, I was twitterpated. I sat there speechless. He slowly reached for my face. He held me in his hands and asked me what was wrong? I said almost in disbelief how he was sitting in front of me and I had been waiting for so long to find him. He began to laugh, he said his friend was sick of hearing about me. He had been in contact with his buddy from the club and was telling him that we were going to finally meet up. He said good, maybe you'll stop talking about her! I just sat there smelling his cologne and watched his every move like I was being paid to watch him breath. I think he could tell I was nervous, so he just had me lay my head on a pillow while he stroked my hair. We talked about our lives, our families and our jobs. The time flew by and it was waaaayyy past the time I should have been in bed. I said I had to get to bed so I could do a great job on my client's hair. He was so polite and gentle with me. He moved ever so slightly up on the couch and helped me sit up. He looked in my face and said that I was so nice and special. He had never met any girl like me before. I was a goner. He took my head so swiftly that I never had time to react. He kissed me so passionately I had no idea my body could react that way. Every inch of my body was tingling and I never wanted that feeling to go away.....

It's like getting your Learner's Permit and driving a Ferrari

Car analogies are the best when it comes to love. You have no idea how hard it is to be so human and such a sexual being the moment we arrive on the planet. As we grow up in our childhood homes, it's very difficult to be something 100% and never talk about it or slowly understand it one day at a time. Like driving a car. We sit in cars our whole life and whether it's in the back seat or in the front, we're not driving it. We can even know the entire route by heart and still have no clue the responsibility behind actually turning the wheel. We give our young adults more rules and regulations on driving a vehicle than we do understanding their bodies and their brains. How convenient that the person who begins to drive that vehicle doesn't get as much time on the body driving the car. Ever ponder why the world overlooks such a huge issue? It's how the enemy divides the world while no one is the wiser. We are so ashamed of sex and what it does to our bodies and how it makes us feel. Satan uses what God made to be so amazing and special in order to manipulate us into situations that can tear away at our value. It isn't always used for bad, it isn't always a subject of contention, but often times it isn't a subject many people want to get into due to its many confusing and challenging issues. I knew about my body. I knew I'd eventually be in a sexual relationship, but how did I end up starting a new relationship with this young man who I didn't know very well. I was no longer a virgin and that was dangerous territory. I had already put myself in 2 situations that ended up burning me good. I was so afraid, let's get it straight. I didn't think any man would ever love me or find me attractive or valuable. For so long, I was fat and so un-liked even by my own self that when the wrong guy came along (and they usually do), I made a stupid mistake. Ha! Not all mistakes are stupid, some are just necessary for understanding how things work and how to make the best of a situation. I did not need to lose my virginity against my will, and chalk it up to that I had made a mistake. I had. That guy took something from me due to his own mistakes in his life and where it lead him. He was thinking he could take anything from anyone he wanted to. That's on him, but where I'm concerned is where I hear a lot of young people today not taking ownership for what lead them right into making "stupid mistakes". The ones that we don't need to make. The ones that account for so many of the addictions, depressions and anxieties of today. I'm not sugar coating or making too big of a deal out of this. It's a serious subject that many do not have an opportunity to talk or be open to asking questions about. Do you think that because I believe in God, his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit that lives within me that I would not have had any temptations or mistakes to be upset or ashamed about???? I hope you answered No...that has nothing to do with it. THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT. Does it mean that people who go to church or grow up in church-going or spiritual homes will not have anything to be upset or ashamed about????? NOPE! You couldn't be more wrong. WE ALL HAVE STRUGGLES. WE ALL WILL HAVE SOME FORM OF STRUGGLE. There's no getting around that. It's not the end of the world. It can be tough to forgive yourself, but it's not impossible. You and I can dream all we want about driving a car when we are 16, but the reality is there is soooo much responsibility behind it. There's even scary times, when we make the wrong turn or take a corner too fast. It doesn't have to be stressful if both the teacher and the student work together to accomplish this task! The same goes for when we are dealing with relationships. We need good teachers, and young people need to be mindful that they are growing up and couldn't possibly know EVERYTHING just yet! It's not wrong to be young and growing and not know absolutely everything. It seems young teens feel like it's wrong to not know. Because we as adults haven't always treated teaching as an honor. For adults, it's an honor to show young people what's going to happen as they enter adulthood and how their feelings change. For children, it's a wonderful adventure to find your true self on the journey of growing up. It's not handled like that often. I can picture some of you shaking your heads like I fell off the turnip truck and it rolled over my head. I didn't say that all parents, teachers, friends, family and surrounding neighbors always act like it's an honor. In reality it is because they didn't have that kind of attention either. How can we emulate something we haven't seen or been taught????? It's completely illogical to think we just grow up to be something better without understanding what anything is or how to out do the last set of people who came before us. We all deserve to know that the purpose of being born into a family or born at all is to have people see us for what we are: Human. Totally human, which means needing someone to tell us what we are about to experience, how to adjust to the changes in our bodies and what we will be facing as Evil progresses in our society. We are so amazing when we work together and we stand up for what is right. We change the world when we Pray to the Lord and have the Holy Spirit enter in on our behalf and fight the battles for us. We all need to have time spent talking with us to develop an understanding of our bodies, what to do when sexual feelings come over us and how to make good choices when spending time with people we are interested in whether we decided prior to have sex or not. The idea that we are going to be prepared for this type of situation is CRAZY! Try jumping behind the steering wheel when you turn 16 and drive that car right out of the driveway just because you've been sitting in the backseat for 16 years. Lol. Not going to be a good outcome. We've learned that as a society already. We all need to be mentored. Sex is such a touchy subject once again because it has ties to being cast from the Garden of Eden. I don't want to go all preachy for those of you trying to figure out what the Bible is all about. This is my take on the situation. I adore the beginning and thinking about what would have gone through the minds of the only 2 people on the planet. I am fascinated by what must have completely changed psychologically the moment that Adam and Eve realized that they were naked. In that moment when Eve chose to sin and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she learned that her death would not be a physical one but rather a spiritual one. Just another learning moment for those precious people going ahead of us on this tough journey. They decided to clothe themselves because their sexual organs and naked skin was something of sexual stimulation and because they had never experienced that before they didn't know how to address it (no pun intended;). They had stimulation overload within seconds of sinning. Nakedness and sexual arousal were going to be things the Devil used to manipulate other people who don't have an opportunity to learn about the enemy and how he tears down. I hope that you're following my line of thinking here. This means that every person on the planet has to have someone (or a group of people) explain all the minute details of how to develop your own walk with the Lord and how to be involved with your own body so that you too have a chance to grow and help another. This means that parents are given the first right of teaching the necessary skills to deal with changes and difficulties that will come your way. It sounds easy enough but it's so much harder because of what can happen with anxiety and poor family relationships due to each individual's self esteem. We need to have a high regard for our own body before we can learn to hold up boundaries on our self. I learned to love myself along the way and often now have people tell me that my self esteem is incredible. So much of what people factor as self esteem is: liking the way you look, the way you make money, what family you come from or even if you went to college. Maybe it's predicated on if you're married with children or live in a fancy house. I've come to learn the complete opposite. I've come to learn self esteem is what makes you strong enough to stand up against the social norms for good reason. I've come to learn that it is in liking yourself completely, absolutely 100%, without anything else. Just you. That "YOU" that you take everywhere to brighten everyone's day as you come upon them. The man or woman that God has designed you to be. To share your light wherever you go and to tell of his love for them by showing them love. To be fully interested in the life that is all around you. To be interested in yourself as you are a creation of God and he has interest in you worshiping him. I believe we worship him all day long when we realize how amazing we are. When we get that human life isn't so crappy and it is worth the uphill battles. I let the wrong kind of love in when I was struggling with my self worth. I let "sex" be the main factor as I was purging out the food issue my parents had brought to the table. I could have made it a lot worse by adding in other addictions. I was spared from the desire to indulge them. To this day I have never used or been offered any kind of drug, alcohol or cigarette. For that, I am grateful. I know that there are going to be some of you out there that will not be able to say that. Drugs, pills, alcohol and other self deprecating forms of habits are seeming to be around every corner. You may find yourself being asked if you want to go to parties and join in just to be noticed or feel apart of the crowd. I am not unaware of how special everyone wants to feel and when someone starts to pay attention to you where no one else seems to be doing just that, it can lead to reeeaaallly bad decisions. I wanted to get down to the real basics here before we move on. I wanted to pour out my heart and let you know I've been down this tough road where you need to make decisions for your body and your sexuality and it's going to be tough. I want you to know you need to work on loving everything about yourself by accepting you're human and work on the areas that you can. NEVER NEVER NEVER give up on yourself. We are in this together and it's a process to understand your brain and it's functions. I will continue to pour out what I've learned so we can go this road together. I'll be your driving instructor for this ride!!!!

If I only had a brain..........

I have a brain but at the time I wasn't using it. No....I was using emotion. I've shared with you what happens when we make decisions out of anger, fear, sadness or loneliness. It doesn't allow us to factor all the consequences about to come out of the decision we've made or will make. As for me, at the age where I thought I'd neveeeeeerrrrr have a boyfriend (especially the one I wanted), this wonderful Spanish amazing-ness came along and started to change the way I felt about how boys looked at me. It was a feeling that is inexplicable until you're in the moment and you feel you have no rational thought left.....just what you want. You will do anything to get what you want, especially when you feel like there isn't much left for you to have control over. You remember I told you I was still on the journey to lose weight and to feel good about myself. I was still trying to get over what I looked like in the bathroom mirror let alone what I felt like in clothing. It wasn't this young man's fault that I didn't have a team mindset in the home I was born into. I know others of you out there understand what I am talking about. It isn't that all parents just don't care. It is they don't know where to begin and feel overwhelmed that they have to do it alone. They don't put their trust in the Lord and ask for his gift of peace. It is hard to lay it at the foot of Jesus when he isn't something we see everyday or in the kitchen. I know just how crazy it sounds, but there is so much in crying out to him to give you what you can't achieve as a human on your own. He set it up that way to begin with so we would do everything with this help. I should have asked for that help several weeks before I met Luis in the dance club. Maybe things would have been different. I hadn't learned much in the "sex" category when I was with my first real boyfriend, because we didn't have sex and we barely did anything besides just kiss. I was older now and starting to feel good about myself one day at a time since I did have my own apartment and I was working. I also had this fantastic gym I was a member of and I loved going there after work and just letting the stress of my day go. I met so many people there. I still see so many familiar faces once in a while when I am out all over town. I shouldn't have put so much emphasis on what I looked like, but for so long I didn't feel like myself. I felt trapped in someone else's body. I let it go too far trying to grasp some self awareness by seeing how many guys would give me the time of day. I know everyone is going to be so sad for me at this point but the reality is I see this kind of behavior all day long from all generations of girls and guys. It's a reality folks. We are so lacking in self awareness and self love that we try and fill those voids with other human's thoughts or opinions. It wouldn't be so dangerous if it didn't lead to trouble. I was one of the lucky one's but I know there are many more women out there who haven't been so lucky. I was trying so hard to find that girl inside of me, the one I could identify with and the one I could love that I became so consumed in having men find me attractive that I had made a bad choice that led to losing my virginity against my will. Rape. Red and I had been out at the club with a lot of her friends and we all drove in one car. So when one of the guys at the gym saw me out and about in town instead of my gym clothes he started to pay attention to me. I got giddy and STUPID ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Believe me when I tell you I know what goes on out there in this world and it isn't getting better with all these young adults relying on drugs, pills, or alcohol. I decided to follow him home in my car all by myself at this point and I was feeling pretty confident since I recognized his cousin from our local swimming club. Things would be just fine. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was quickly left at his house to play strip poker by myself and things turned for the worse. His cousin had left the house thinking his older cousin had things he was going to tend to. Well I was in over my head. Virgins are a little slow on the sex part since we haven't gotten past "making out" (totally embarrassing) But it's the truth. He had way too much to drink that night and he was pushing me and pulling at my clothing. I was slowly dying inside as I knew what was going to come next. He managed to show me the house as we walked back to the bedroom he was going to show me the bathroom. I walked out to find him laying on his bed. I told him I had to get going and as I walked back into the hall way he said we could just talk. I WAS AN IDIOT. I SHOULD HAVE LEFT RIGHT THEN AND THERE. I believed him and ultimately wanted this guy to be a nice guy and just respect my wishes. Like all stupid girls do, we put our emotions out there and we want to be talked to. He said the magic words. Telling me he wanted to talk was the point of no return. Once I laid on the bed he decided I had asked for it and began to take my clothing off. I kept telling him I didn't want to have sex and that I should have thought of that before I teased him and had him pick me up for the night. I laid there thinking over and over how things were so innocent at first, but became scary. I didn't fight back. I didn't scream. I didn't try to get away. I didn't cry. I didn't enjoy it. I lost my virginity to a total loser that I had thought was nice just because we went to the same gym. I hadn't even slept with my boyfriend of 2 years. What would have made me have sex with this guy. For one, it is overwhelming when you don't know a damn thing about sex and you are being pushed and undressed against your will. It isn't something you can prepare for without really having a team at home to go over how this can affect you. It isn't easy when it is someone you have romanticized for months and then get an opportunity to be shown attention by them. It is a very dangerous situation when your brain isn't set up to protect you against this kind of decision making. Chances are he doesn't even remember that night. I wouldn't give him satisfaction that it was the night he took my virginity from me. I didn't have the guts to admit to myself that I had put myself in that situation that was dangerous. I didn't die, I didn't get cuts or bruises, I didn't get beaten, an STD, a pregnancy or even talked about. It was like it never happened as far as the world was concerned. I left shortly after he was finished and felt like the biggest piece of crap that ever did live. WHY DIDN'T I FIGHT BACK???? WHY DIDN'T I SCREAM????? WHY DIDN'T I CRY???? I have asked myself that a hundred times over the last 14 years. In one lonely night just by myself I lost the one thing I had to hold onto until it was my decision to lose it. Once you lose it, it's much harder to rationalize why not to continue on that path. I guess since I never told anyone until many many years later that it happened. I just wanted it to go away. I never wanted anyone to know that I had messed up so badly and that person that I knew from the gym just disappeared. I made sure of it. I never put myself near him again. I wanted him to think I didn't approve.....You understand? I wanted him to think he was just foul and I wasn't interested. Plus I was scared shitless I would be hurt again. I wanted to toughen up, really I did. If I could go back and change what happen, I would. I made a mistake and I was sure I wasn't going to do it again. Not all guys operate under the same pretenses. It wasn't long before I was making another mistake. It had been just a few weeks, maybe 2 months, and I was making mistake number 2. I had acquired more male interests than I knew at my gym. It seemed the more my body changed the more came out of the wood work. I had always had a lot of friends I would text with but nothing serious. Just friend stuff, or so I thought. One night I was at home and I got a text that a friend from Hbg was down my way to see a friend and he knew I lived near by. He wanted to stop in and give me a visit. No harm in that right??? I mean we know each other, we hang out with groups of friends down town and we workout together. Not a big deal. I mean I did have my own place and this is the type of things friends do, right??? Maybe it would have been different if he wasn't drunk. Once again your youth has a way of creeping up on you when you don't factor in alcohol and what it does to you. He came in all weird like to my living room. He started kissing on me and I tried to push him off of me. He was feeling the drinks and my neighbors were gonna start hearing me telling him no. I didn't want anything to happen, we were friends. He was nice to me, there was no reason for this to happen. He didn't seem to want to listen at all to me. He kept telling me I was so nice and pretty and funny and he really liked me. I told him that was fine, but he needed to leave. He wasn't having it. He was a very tall, very big man. He decided to take things into his own hands and pick me up. He carried me back to the bedroom and tried to have sex with me. I kept fighting him. He actually broke my bed because he kept trying to pin me down. It was scary thinking how this man keeps pushing himself on me. TWICE IN 2 MONTHS. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?????? I had had my virginity my whole life up until this saga of men just doing what they want. Or was I letting them get too close??? It's a combination of both. No matter who you're with, if they can't respect no....then there is going to be a problem. I can honestly say he left and I didn't see him again like that one on one from there on out. I don't think he would remember that night like that anyway because alcohol has a way of clouding your judgement. These could very well be decent enough guys, but what I experienced with them will forever stain my memories with bad blood. Two very similar encounters and one virginity lost. When along comes this man that I'm finally interested in and like. I wanted this guy to like me so badly that I was afraid if I told him that someone raped me and tried to rape me, he would leave. I hadn't even told my parents. If I had shared something so intimate like that with the whole family (at the time) I would have been so damaged by what they thought I did to get into a situation like that. I couldn't handle any more scrutiny from them. I lived through it and began to share it with my girlfriends. Things were looking up. I forgave myself which is the most important part of this whole thing. I then forgave the men for being idiots and hurting me emotionally and physically. I didn't hold a grudge on either one of them. I understand what I did in the situation to lead to that outcome. I was a long time ago now and it still hurts to remember the girl who felt so low about herself that she would keep a secret about how she lost her virginity. I've never kept it from my husband now. He's a gem and cried for me because of the way those men treated me. It lead me to the moment where I was falling for Luis and wanted this young boy to be attracted to me. That phone call I took in the restaurant was the beginning. Once I left the place I got in my car and called him back. We talked for hours and had a blast laughing at how he spoke vs. the way I did. He loved that I always laugh and carry on. He used to say...."crazy girl". He seemed to like the way I saw life and that was refreshing to me. Maybe he wouldn't care about the sex thing.........

What was going on inside my head???

I'd like to think the same thing that goes on inside any 21 year old's head that had never been shown attention before in that way. Let's recap before everyone gets the wrong idea that this was solely an issue concerning sex. It wasn't! Although in some higher thinking whenever you date someone for the purpose that you like them, kiss them, talk to them, hang out with them.....it always leads to sex in the mind and in the future for any length of time sex. It wasn't that I wanted sex, as much as I was struggling for "Relationship". I keep going back to that word because it is lacking in our culture here in America due to how the "family" system has changed dramatically. People are genuinely concerned that if you share what is going on inside your head that somehow something is wrong with you. UMMM, NO! IT'S THE OPPOSITE! If you begin to share what is going on inside your head that is when you begin to HAVE relationship. First with yourself(who is the most important) then with others. You can not build something from nothing which means that you need to have a relationship that starts from your very beginning. It's a lot like sonar. When we are born into a family structure we don't get to choose which one we are born into. We have no idea how to do things unless we watch and are taught from the people who are taking care of us. So how do we then know how to have a relationship with a guy unless we had learned it from our fathers or our mothers? Folks get a clue!!! YOU CAN'T JUST LOOK AT YOUR PARENT'S RELATIONSHIP AND KNOW HOW TO GET TO THAT POINT WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT LEAD THEM TO THAT EMOTIONAL CONNECTION. I don't think we are stupid, not at all. I think we don't have a snow ball's chance in Hell of surviving this culture without asking questions. I couldn't have been more alone inside because I hadn't related much of what God wrote in the Bible to myself. I didn't know how. It hadn't been taught to me to look at something in the scripture as metaphorically instead of the literal sentence. Layman's terms....It was used to point out sin and not to sin or you're going to Hell. Period. Don't pass go, don't collect $200 dollars, just Hell. You think that's harsh. It didn't keep me from doing any wrong. So go figure. It was because not only did the words not connect but cause more rebellion, I was sick of not understanding where this beautiful life was. Maybe it was waiting for me around the next corner. I was going to find it no matter what and I wasn't going to let this Latin Love Fest stop me. Or would it? You'll learn at some point in your life a lot of parents don't have that classic "Chip & Joanna Gaines"(Fixer Upper) passion for life. They seem to barely plug into one another and have the sad but true reality of just sharing a mail box and church tithe envelope. Is that wrong? Not the actions themselves but the lack of communication behind it; yes. We need to be able to talk things out from the very beginning of our lives. We can't be lead down a road of no decisions or obstacles to then be lead out the door to college or higher education to have our lives handed to us on a platter. It's a little like being given Proofs in Math once you've carried a Math text book around for a year. Pointless Brainless Irrational behavior. So why is it happening to so many of us, starting with the youth. You'll notice how quickly you go to school to learn a process of many things, then not use 98% of it when you leave high school. We have become education junkies with no need for such information to plague our brains. While learning very little about how to communicate to another human being with ease and total intimacy. So how does this correlate to what was going on in my life at the time I met Luis? Well....everything. It's why it felt so strong and overwhelming to me to be sought after. It hit a location in my brain where no one else had ever chosen to go. I was so starved of real depth of conversation that when I needed to learn about myself through trial and error I didn't have it. Does this mean I'm blaming my parents???!!! No. Listen carefully here. I'm explaining the undertones of our brains and how it works. People are created for community and we are lacking in such things from birth that the devil is easily wedged into our lives one charismatic slimy bastard at a time. We need a bunch of interactions long before we date. If we don't get that sonar like relationship where we say and do things that bounce back to the brain. We can't learn. We don't really grasp what it is like to be loved. We come from a Creator who is the entire source and definition of "Love" yet we starve so much in our homes, whether they be Christian or not. We do not know how to relate such human behavioral needs in the simplest of terms because we don't know how to separate the two. What I'm saying made it easier to jump into this toxic relationship is the VOID of understanding anything that goes on between a man and a woman. The uncensored raw unedited version of what the thoughts and temptations were going to be like without the shame or scripture reading making everyone want to gouge their own eye out. From childhood to grade school to high school we are continually throwing out bits of information to receive feedback from whoever we can to get a good grasp on who we are and what we are good at. We have receptors in the brain that connect to that feedback and we learn subconsciously who's paying attention and who's not. It's a life long process to learn what we can about ourselves. It will never end until your last breath. In the mean time the biggest chunk of your life, where you will devour that information the quickest, is in your childhood til young adult life. You need that feedback from your parents because it is where the unconditional love is supposed to come from. The most vulnerable of locations to spill your guts and begin to learn how the Devil will try to break you down from the inside out. It's the parents job to invest time in your brain to detect things that put you at risk for low self esteem or low value. You then will become more likely to put yourself down and put others down by making poor decisions. It will happen as you are growing quickly into a young adult. It will make it harder to listen to reason because you'll feel very independent from others and their thoughts because the time has passed where you value their wisdom and input to lead you to better decision making. Nowadays people call it rebellion, but it's really the time you've been pushed out of the nest to see if you can make it on your own around the age of 18-20 in young adults. I had been starved for soooooo much information that my decision making was going to be a little messy at times, to gain the information my brain needed. Not everyone is going to make bad decisions all the time or go in the same direction as their peers or siblings. You will see how easily and how quickly your mind can be made up on a decision when you're the one getting the end result you think you want. It's harder to protect everyone involved like family members and friends. Its always a learning process til you understand the only way you're not going to get hurt so badly you feel like you can't go on is if you make decisions that protect your value first then the ones you love around you. I was beginning the second journey of dating someone who would change all the relationships around me and I would begin to fully understand what is going to happen and how it was going to affect me. I pray that as you get into your young adult years you will have a mentor in your life who will fully divulge any and all information that they can to allow you to learn how relationships start to shape your future. Most importantly you need to pay attention to what decisions you make and how many times things go awry from those choices. Then you can begin to take full responsibility for those events and learn to forgive yourself first when bad things happen. It's so essential for personal growth. You can't forgive the other person until you forgive yourself. Hardest lesson to learn is that no matter what kind of beginning you had as a child, once you've hurt other people and made bad decisions that landed you in a mess.....You have to say sorry to yourself and forgive the girl or boy on the inside that didn't have a clue what was going to happen next.

Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble .....

Deep trouble. I had never been so moved before in such a way that the first encounter would reveal a desire to find one another. I should have figured on that very thing making it harder to really see what would happen in my future with Luis. How could a young man be so bad to be around when it felt like you couldn't leave his side? That night as we left the dance club "Red" (my friend) saw first hand we were struggling to hold in the excitement that this person we had been searching for was in our arms. She knew it was hard for me since I hadn't had any connection with men my own age and this felt so good to have someone pay attention to me. Especially in public where everybody could see I was the person of interest for once. The shoe was on the other foot and it fit perfectly! We headed to my hot car alone while leaving the guys on the sidewalk. Looking back now you would have thought they would have walked us to the cars, but I have a feeling Red and I put off the vibes that we could take care of ourselves, not to mention the beers were probably still flowing in the pizza shop right outside the club. I know for a fact her and I were feeling it.....that lightning that flows through your veins when you think everything is FINALLY going your way. We're good girls(the straight edge kind). We needed a break in the bad luck or no luck that had been our lives. I wanted so badly to matter. She wanted so badly to be taken seriously. We both loved life, still do. We just wanted that sizzle that everyone looks for. Had you told us "sizzle" isn't a feeling you can keep, it comes and goes like the ebbs and flows of life, We would have told you to stick it! We're going to try it our way. We got to the car and got in like usual, except this time with big grins like we had just won the lottery! This time we pulled around the front of the building looking for our "partners in dance". I had my window down so I could see straight to the sidewalk, and to cool off! You're so hot after hours of shaking your tail feathers! There he was! I had no idea where her guy was. I don't remember if I could see anything other than him. I had to slow down because the traffic up ahead didn't make it through the red light. I was stopped right along side of the main walk out front of the club. He began to walk over to me saying whatever things Latin boys say in Spanish.....I didn't ask I just assumed it was some loving things like "there is my super cool chic in her hot car". Whatever. So he got to the side of the car and he put his hand around the back of my neck and kissed me in front of everybody on the street. I remember the hooting and hollering.....and Red ready to kill me for acting like some floozie out of a bad novel. Try to imagine my gut in that moment, the feeling that I knew this was a feeling I liked and at the same time it was a feeling that was going to take me down a road most would have died on. It was like any other Saturday night, it was followed up with a Sunday morning. I was in a habit for years of not missing church on a Sunday morning. I looked forward to going to see everyone I hadn't seen in years because of High School or because they didn't come into the salon that I worked at at that time. It was a big family on Sunday mornings and it was just as routine as dancing on Saturday nights was. This was relatively new to be so tired on a Sunday morning since I had borrowed energy from the following week to do so much dancing in soooo little time. The family had this weird unspoken tradition that we met at a local restaurant to eat afterwards. I would be the only one who hadn't been at the house all week long or at work with them all week long, so really I was like a guest every Sunday. I would get the 20 questions riot act about what was up with my week and this Sunday was going to be just the same. I thought. I began to eat my food like I had never seen any before, since I had worked up an appetite from the night before. Then my phone rang. Everyone's eyes on me, while I picked it up. 14 years ago it wasn't so crazy to use your cell phone to pick up a call....it hadn't taken over everyone's lives just yet. Texting wasn't even popular just yet either. I picked up the unknown caller and heard the creamy Spanish tone on the other end...."Lauuuurra"(said in your best Spanish voice) My heart sank knowing I couldn't talk to him while I was at dinner so I just said yes.(this guy called me just hours after kissing me not days like I thought it was going to be!!!!! I was speechless)..and could you call back later?????? I hung up and 2 seconds go by all eyes burrowing a whole through my forehead asked "who was that"? ugh just writing out the words hurt. It is such a different ball game now that I'm older and have a family of my own. I don't want the type of relationship where everything's a navy intelligence operation. I begrudgingly answered this boy I gave my number to. We hadn't been taught how to date considering that my parents didn't know how to either. They were so focused on not losing their virginity to an unclean heathen who wasn't their spouse that it messed with the intensity they gave dating. They feared that dating anyone too long or at all always leads to sex and sex only. (that's a different day a different blog) Sex isn't the problem here but it poised a problem because dating was so foreign to them they were unable to be rational about anyone else dating, let alone their daughter. I think on some level, as sickening as it might sound, they liked it better when I was uber-chubby and chafing. I had pulled myself up by setting my goals higher than they had set their own and now we were on uncharted territory. Who am I kidding every territory with them was uncharted. It was a bumpy ride daily. It was getting on my last nerve. Really all I was needing was real relationship with any human that would plug into my brain and get to know me and see the best in me to develop a plan to achieve. I was in a time of my life where I wanted so much and so much of it...all of it...I couldn't share with them.

It's time for a "Reality" check

Some of you could be asking yourself "what is the big deal? I mean everyone's family has junk." Ummmm....How is it we all "know" something is off or we have become familiar with family dysfunction, yet nothing is done about it or has been suggested to change it???? If everyone has junk then how is it we haven't become more tolerant when people disregard us or treat us like dog shat? Here's what I know to be a fact. You can call it what you will....dysfunction, issues, just the way it is......ALL WORDS TO LET HUMANS OFF THE HOOK. PERIOD. We don't want our families to be messed up in reality, but it also requires us to DO something about it. I have come to learn the most tolerated forms of abuse are the ones cloaked in everyone's homes as normal. The everyday family issues, we all go through those kind of terms that really only fester into more serious disease as to tear at the family structure so no one has to be accountable as to how everyone is treated including themselves. This, in turn, is a more serious disease or dysfunction because it is viewed differently than say drugs and alcohol and sexual abuse. When in all reality the poor treatment and lack of interest in how each child is developing is what will lead to the very use of drugs and alcohol, or food and will lead the individuals to sexual issues as well. The Devil is smart and knew so many people including Adam and Eve would not like communicating how they really felt because they would deal with "anxiety". The one feeling almost everyone hates unless it involves winning the lottery. It is difficult to get many people to continually talk to each person about pushing past that feeling and learning to get all that anxiety used to accomplish something good. It isn't impossible to deal with insecurities, it can just feel like that. Why? Think about it, when God created the Heavens and the Earth he had intentions for the Garden of Eden to be a special place to spend time among things that He created to make joyful connections to the first 2 people ever created. When Eve chose to sin, as much as people love to focus on how they lost paradise and sinned, I focus on what the great divide realllllly includes. Which means we need to study the Bible and it's people to include feelings and desires and relational issues we would have because our feelings were connected to God through a different spiritual connection or presence. I think if we would empower ourselves to realize how anxiety is used in a human body and our Heavenly Father allows it and has created all good and all evil, than how much more do WE NEED HIM TO ACCOMPLISH ALL THINGS. See it is really about bringing Glory to God. He has everything working together for a purpose. He initiated a connection to Adam and Eve through his creation. Once they had chosen to sin through the use of their own freewill, they had cut the connection off from God for their own use. Okay, don't get tripped up there. The big picture is no human being is capable of living a perfect sin free life, so it is what truly separates us from being able to live in Heaven with him. He CANNOT LIVE AMONG SIN. So once again that special bypass of sending his very own Son to die for all the sin of the world covered us from having to be banished to hell once our time on Earth had come to an end. People make it all about dollars and cents or rather sin and purity. It's so much simpler, and much more plain that what we have come to make it in church. We study to condemn and to discern poor thought or bad behavior. We haven't learned much from our Heavenly Father. We live in such vast communities and we continue to grow today. We've lost touch with "thought". I haven't been shown many families that make it a habit to consider all sides of their humanity including dark thoughts and to verbally communicate what would happen if they didn't deal with the reality of those very thoughts. It's not so morbid to have terrible thoughts whatever they may be from wanting to cuss someone out or to slap someone in the pie hole, I have come to learn at least once in everyone's life feelings like that come and go. We choose to hide them and not deal with them in an aloud verbal processing that helps our mind take responsibility for everything from acting on it or not. How do we think that we will live out our lives among the people who will not choose to believe in Christ, and his Father our sovereign God. There has to be consequences for not fully serving out our purpose of telling all the world that He is God. This is not a Bible beat down for the locals. This is just what I have come to learn tears down the average Joe, the brother, or sister down the road. Families left and right suffer because the treatment as a child did not give them a chance to see the vibrancy God has given each individual. Sure, every now and then, we are going to come across a person who chooses to remain Evil and do evil things. For the most of us around here we are dealing with just getting through holidays and family barbecues. The tolerance mind set is festering into total family tree cancers that kill everything in it's path one person at a time. It slowly allows for doubt and insecurities to increase as the smile leaves their face. We don't need to let this happen. It will require us to get out of our comfort zones and start speaking honestly about the lies, secrets, issues, problems, confusions, & doubts that we have in the relationships we have with ourselves and then with others. It isn't an easy task to take on, but if you're alive and breathing air for any length of time, you already know if it's worth it then it takes some work. I've done this in my own life and continue to peel back the onion layers to reveal the more intensely vibrant Laura that God has intended me to be. It wasn't an easy journey and I'm forever grateful for what I've gone through to make me as strong as I can possibly be. I'll leave you with this thought I often share with my clients. In battle everyone has swords, they all look relatively the same, it's the weapon of choice and is used to slay the enemy. What if there was a sword that was different and wouldn't break under battle. The Excalibur. Created under intense heat and pressure became unbreakable. I'd like to think that is what my personality is undergoing. A continual journey of heat and pressure to reveal a person that would go into battle for others knowing she could withstand the hits because she wouldn't break. It requires that I walk with the Lord and push back. You've been warned. lol