Phrases that left a mark on me…

   “I love to live, but even more so, I love to die.

In this mourning for my dead, I cry for them...

In this melancholy I die with them…

Today, I enjoy the pleasure of loving and dying”

Zihuaozelotl

Recapitulating about the phrases that women close to me have given me and which have marked me has turned out to be a complex task due to all the fibers it is touching in me. Suddenly, again the crying button was pressed, and the tears flow from the bottom of my heart, where moisture was kept. Today, the moisture ran through my eyes. These eyes which can’t see well without glasses, but which see the others through other eyes searching for beauty in the darkest.

The contact with women hasn’t been easy for me, I have harsh memories of my first interactions with other girls, phrases of girls that remain in one’s heart and arise when one is a woman and are hard to remember clearly, but deep down, what they made us feel is brought back to life when we interact with other women-girls as grownups.

I remember, for instance, that all that period was full of emptiness as to the words the women around me told me. The ones that come to mind echoing are always my mom’s and my aunt-in-law’s about being a woman.

For example, my mom gave me the ten commandments of being a woman, a list of words to be kind but not easy, dignified but not proud, laugh but not crack up, look but demurely, to be tender, but not flexible, cheerful but not frivolous, talk but up to a certain point, be sweet but not excessively: love, but carefully, listen, but not believe, be a woman, but not a doll. God! It’s terrible, these are phrases that confused me at age 13; they made me feel faced with a great deal of myself. My mother, who has placed in me a lot of speaking pebbles, is a woman with the energy of a warrior, with a vision of life to go on and not to stop, to achieve what one wants through hard work.

When she shared this ten commandment-list of being a woman, it shook me up, it enticed me to make the first step forward and construct myself as a young lady. Now that I am a woman, I see everything differently, being a woman is magical, but not as linear as the speaking pebble that Susi, my mom, told me at 13.

The magical world of speaking pebbles has put a lot of other women, who, through their word, have shared their magic and have been a breakthrough in my development, in moments of transition when one stops being or ends a phase of life, in this case my adolescence, an adolescence somewhat lonely and pink with a touch of overprotection that made me vulnerable to many things in life, to situations that are “normal” in a person who’s alive, to falling in or out of love, to believing princes exist, to dreaming of pink lives of success and linearity on the way, admitting that things are not like that; life in pink is like the song by Edith Piaf, where the sweet meets the bitter, when one day you find yourself in waiting and melancholy arrives, it inebriates you, you lose yourself falling in the well of depression… one day I fell in that well and a mysterious, silent woman called Esperanza* (Spanish for hope), woke me up, shook me up and activated my being by saying “don’t expect anything of anyone, go on, live, and just be what you decide”, those plain words, at the time, brought me a lot of light, peace, and vitality to face my reality, to face loneliness, to face the change of responsibilities, to understand that a girl-woman can be strong, take care of, love, and respect herself… by the same token, those words spoken in a cold office in the winter were a turning point in my path.

I also remember well that those days were hard in my life, I was just finishing college, my mom was undergoing deep depression, which led her to destroy her body, to paralyze her face, to stop walking.  I didn’t know what to do, I cried out loud “keep being my mom, the one who one day told me to be a woman”. It was tough. I expected too much out of everyone, of her, I demanded protection. Now I think that back then we were both dependent on each other… The ten commandments of being a woman was just that: a ten commandments, flat, shallow, and that being a woman is taking for granted the magic of believing and not waiting for someone: a man, a job, family, a degree, to shape you.

These nights of memories, retelling, and tales that make up a chapter of my life, I discover that my path has had touches of perfect imperfection… that dark Wells, that a life in pink, that the fireflies I once saw as a child, have prepared me for being a moon-woman, that the wait is not a synonym of inactivity, that the wait of hope is not a synonym of creating illusion, that the illusion of constructing a path with magic is just to know and acknowledge me in light and darkness.

Because in the end, “success is reflected in the eyes”, like my spiritual guide, Ce Coatzin, said. She is a woman, grandma, moon, of tradition whose words have made me strong, have been my consolation, have confronted me to see me the way I am without any masks, and have shaken me and encouraged me to write, rescue my talents, and not be afraid to be.

Susana, Esperanza, Ce Coatzin, and the pebbles they have given me share the knowledge of being in my physical, psychic, and spiritual realms. The first, my biological mother, the second, my psychologist, and the third, my spiritual guide, are the sorceresses that innately have deciphered the secrets only princesses, girls, women, and grandmothers can have being three in one.

The three of them in me one… the tears and the moisture are now out of happiness, of knowing that I’m lucky to keep their pebbles, to have the capacity to love and die at the same time, to cry for my dead, to, in melancholy, to die with them, to be re-born and to re-enjoy the pleasure of loving and dying again with each phrase of women, girls, moons, grandmothers.

Gabriela Alarcón Ojeda Zihuaozelotl

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