lucila soto

“It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

-Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

I am a runner. Before everything else I’m a runner and I am grateful for it. I am not a really fast one but you can usually find me struggling against myself in the middle of the pack. Still the running says much about myself. Running, to me, has always been an intricate juggle of pleasure and pain. This means to say that achievement without hard work or splendor without an effort to see it, without the patience to reach it, just seems like cheating to me. This kind of thinking, I’ve noted, is difficult to share with non-runners.

So a soft rain, wind, cold, even some snow will make a beautiful day for a run. Once my body is rhythmically moving alongside my breathing and thoughts, the meters starting to pass one by one, then I get this feeling that everything will be fine, that each thing has a right place in this universe. I write this because I know that weren’t I a runner, most possible I wouldn’t had been able to get over all the loss I’ve encounter, contained over the past year with my sanity intact.

I have to admit I was looking for a change. I felt trapped in the intricate and tangled web which my life had become, and liking it less and less each day. Much can be said both in favor and against about my home country, both points of view would be valid, but in my case the truth is that I felt like I just didn’t belong anymore. So I searched the world for a better place to be. One which would allow me to be myself happy, to develop and grow intellectually and to provide opportunity because that was all that I needed. I believe in hard work and in to fighting to create the reality you want to be in and where I come from, no matter how well intentioned you wanted to be, that was not a real option anymore. Actually it wasn’t specially if you were a well intentioned person. Let’s just say that society had lost its innocence and not go into more detail.

In general terms that was the direction -or lack of it- my life was in when it happened: Change. Change came and not in the prettiest of colors. It was dark and hard and it spoke of loss and sadness. Within an 9 month period I lost 5 loved ones, the most close of them, my darling Father, the foundation in my life, the piece that held me straight, firm and real. I will miss him always, I will love him forever but there are times in which what I wish for is to hold him, to spend an evening talking with him while we take the sun in his porch. He was a magnificent man and from him I learnt what grandeur means. If all I’m thankful for the marvelous life he got to lead and for the merciful death he had. In the end he faded away without even knowing it and that was a special grace granted for him. As a friend said to me: One is always to young to lose a parent. Yes, I was. I am.

Of course it was a schism in my family. We always were a traditional one. Well, as much as my father being a divorcée and my mother a widow from their first marriages and bringing a son each into their second marriage. I think this only showed me that whichever the circumstances you can make it work as long as your heart and will is set on it, relationship wise. Life wise. Another thing more to thank my Father for.

Very soon after all that loss, the change I was looking for became a reality. A new country was waiting for me, the door was opened. So more loss was in order. This time it came from getting rid of stuff. There was so much stuff accumulated from years and years. Some was to be kept but stored in boxes for I-don’t-know-how-long and some to be donated, given, thrown away. I have to admit it was hard on me. So many things still held an emotional value, a memory, a significance. This was followed by saying so long to strong important relationships, the kind that mold and shape you. Family, friends, dear ones. It is true I plan on meeting them again but it is also true that I had to let go.

Just let go.

Sounds so simple but I can frankly say it ain’t so. Letting go is so simple a gesture that even the average two year old does it once he starts to walk in his own, so it might seem that we are built to do it on a daily basis, to be independent, comfortably alone with one self. But the truth is that even a two year old needs a lot of prep time to get ready to successfully do so.

I know we all suffer loss, that we all at some point are confronted with death or change. I also know I’ve had it easy in life, always getting what I want, even this new change. But if anything, this last year has really tested my ability of letting go. I’m still no sure if there is a lesson to be learnt in all of this, if it is just to be assumed in a “such is life” kinda attitude. I will sure let you know if I ever found out and have one of my famous epiphanies where everything seems to come together and explain its intricacies to let me know why is it that the universe works.

For the time being I can only tell you that after six months of having lost my father, one year of continuous change and loss and a 180° turn into my life what I’ve learnt is to cherish is my past, the places, faces, moments and people who had made me who I am. I know that I am but a mixture of everyone that has crossed paths with me, had they not been in there, I would not be myself. I am grateful for each one of you: good, bad, helpful, malevolent, critical, friend, foe, past, present but always meaningful.

And so, I keep on running, in a new place, always finding myself at the end of a good challenging run, which is to say, encountering all my love ones also. So I will be seeing you soon, once I finish lacing up my running shoes.

Daddy dear, thank you for everything.