What a week it’s been. What a while since I’ve last blogged it’s been, actually. As our planet continues to spin holding course in relation to the sun, life here keeps on keeping on and we all grow one day closer to the end of our time here. Not that I’m thinking morbidly or anything, but that’s the way it is. Each day is a gift from God and I’m trying each day to make mine matter more and more.
As per usual, things have been ever changing in my world. Same old same old, I suppose. I’m really back on the straight and narrow, but I think this time it’s for good. I’ve had quite a few “come to Jesus” moments in the past two months and it’s really put things into prospective for me. My priorities had once again gone askew and our Lord allowed me to live the kind of wild life that I thought that I wanted. Of course I fell on my face just like Ric Flair (Wooooo!!!) so beautifully does, except my face flop wasn’t so pretty. Even though the way it happened sucked, I’m ultimately glad it did. As I’ve heard so many times now (and I’ll paraphrase), “God allows for hardships so that it will bring us closer to Him.” Man is that true! I had taken the opportunity to attend daily Mass and said “Nah. Going Sunday morning is cool. I’ll just mess up the entire week, get myself in order, confess, and be back to good come Sunday morning! Boom!” AKA, just like a lot of so called “Catholic” people do. Hence the despise from protestants and non-believers alike. I was a prototypical one and it’s not what I really wanted to be, to be honest, but that’s what I had become. Well, our Lord Jesus Christ put that to an end pretty well and good and honestly I’m very happy He has. That “Come to Jesus” moment couldn’t have shown up at a better time. As y’all are aware, I’m just now climbing out of the deep abyss that was my debt thanks to my stupidity from age 18-28ish, and these months were supposed to be my “let’s start to get it together” months. Granted, they are, but I should have taken the opportunity to help all the wrongs in my life. Like my health, for example. Mental health, physical health, spiritual health. All were bad. Did I care? Not really. I just kept on going, figuring things as I went along. Not a wise decision for me, to be honest, but I did it anyway. Anyway, this kick in the pants happens and man, have I changed. I’ve gotten quite a devotion to going to daily Mass and really leaning on St. Joseph to holler in good words to his step-son for me now and I couldn’t be happier. Really devoting myself to doing that has really changed my life for the better. I’m way more disciplined with everything now, I act quite differently than I used to, and now I’ve gotten more focused as to what I need to do with my life. Can’t beat that, right?
With that being said, I had another “Come to Jesus” moment in relation to my physical health. A few months ago I was suffering from the black lung and I got our family doctor to call in a script for me. He hooked me up with an inhaler of Ventolin, but told me that he wanted to see me as well, so I made an appointment. Well, the other thing about that was I needed to get blood taken from me to see just how messed up I was. I’ll say that a couple of levels are in the red and I actually had a scare that I might have had Lupus, the disease that took my mom from us 7 years ago. She got diagnosed with it around 35, which is what I’m going to turn in 3 months, so naturally I started to worry that I was up the creek too. Oddly, I didn’t really get scared, anxious, sad, or anything. I was just annoyed with the fact that I was going to have to take some cocktail of pills to ward off the evils, you know? Well, I get in to see the doc, we talk a bit, I tell him that I have been suffering from anxiety and panic attacks that have really been messing with my sleep lately, and some other general nonsense since he hadn’t legitimately seen me in his office in a formal doctor’s visit in over 10 years or so. Well, homeboy looks at my lab results, casually blasts out things like “you don’t have (whatever) cancer, your levels there are good, this is good. Ooooh… that’s not a good level for that. Lets see your blood pressure. Perfect. Cool. Anything else?” After kinda freaking out about the whole cancer bit wondering why he would even mention any cancer related thing to me, I tell him “yeah, dude. My ANA screen came back positive…” “ah. Let me take a look.” Homeboy looks at it really quick… “Nah, you’re fine. That’s a good level for males. Nothing to worry about.” Well, my positive ANA screening was what told me there was a chance for an autoimmune disease. WHEW! What a relief! So, there I dodged a bullet. No problem. No cancers, no disease, just unhealthy with my cholesterol levels. I could have told anybody that. LOL. The good thing is that he didn’t want to put me on drugs for that, but instead wanted me to take red yeast rice, go on a low cholesterol, high protein diet, and exercise. Fair enough, right? On top of that, he did give me drugs for my anxiety.
Well, thanks to me getting my prayer life really ramped up, and getting a daily regimen of sleepytime tea, the drugs he prescribed me have really been the last bit of help I’ve needed to not stroke out from stress and anxiety. There is one thing that I’ve noticed to go along with that though. I’ve become a bit more sensitive with things lately. I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot, to be honest. I’ve been really missing her more than usual and the thing about it is that when I have thought about her, my brain takes me back to that afternoon in June of 2008 when we surrounded her hospital bed and gave her spirit to Christ. I never have really dealt with that moment. It’s a scab that stays there that I try to avoid as much as possible, but once I accidentally touch it I can’t help but to pick at it and of course I go off crying about the pain associated with it. Sure, people can say all the standard things to be said in times such as these like “She’s in a better place.” “You’ll see her again.” blah blah blah. Yes, I know all of that and that’s not the issue or the point. The issue is that it bothers me that my mom will never get to see the person I’ve become and continue to grow into being. Man, she would have dug it the most. I’ve done so much in my life since she got called to our Lord. I won’t mention the bad, but the good things have been so rewarding, personally. Anyway, with that said, the times that my brain has gone back to that hospital room in Lubbock have been more frequent as of late and of course each time it happens I have to make an effort to keep it together and once it passes, I’m always left to wonder just why it is that I keep thinking about it. I’m sure it has to do with the changes I’ve been making and my brain getting the assistance it’s so desperately needed, but it sucks. I’ve noticed today that it’s not just my mom that has me all nearly weepy either. Take today, for example. Today is Eddie Guerrero’s birthday. Sadly, Eddie is not here to celebrate his birthday as the Lord called him up as well, but in the process of me paying tribute to him on my social media pages I got to actually watching the video I posted. It was of him entering the arena for the first time as WWE Champion. There he was, some dude who made it from the lower valley here in El Paso, who fought his way through Juarez, then deeper into Mexico, to Japan, then ECW and WCW making a name for himself here in the states, losing it all, gaining it back and finally making his way into WWE and it all coming to a head at Wrestlemania 20. This guy, from here, made it. We all cheered for him here when it happened, and we all, as a city, mourned deeply when he passed away. Watching that video, seeing him come down one of the arena stairs going through the crowd as his and Chavito’s theme song played and red, green, and white balloons and ticker tape rained down on everything with that look of gratitude, accomplishment, praise, and love that he felt brought me to tears. Stupidly, I was watching this while at my desk at work and I had to compose myself there too because as Jim Rome says, nobody wants to see somebody else cry at work. Heh. But it really did affect me. Eddie’s now gone and we’re left with nothing but special moments like those. It broke my heart today to see that, and also think of my mom, her mom, her sister, and my other tia who have also passed away. I’ve thought about them all lately and I think i’ve been mourning again in my own little way. Praying more and more has helped, but the wounds are there again. It’s not a bad thing though. Actually, it’s a blessing. I don’t want to shove their memories away to where I won’t feel them. It’s just strange how my brain has brought these feelings back up again.
So now, here I am. I’m dealing with my sad emotions, changing up my eating habits and diet and going back to the gym to get myself back into a decent level of health, working on my relationship with God, trying to save my cash money to get La Bestia fixed and find a new place to rest my dome, all while trying not to seem like some kinda jerk because I’m even more of a recluse than I was before.
We all have to properly align our priorities, my friends. Sometimes it takes repeated kicks to the backside, but eventually we all get it. I just happened to get the last boot to butt quite well enough to wake me the heck up from this deep sleep.
Mmmmm. Sleep.
Hahaha.
Until next time! I love you ALL!
Forever a Clone 