The Unexpected

It has been some difficult couple of days. On Thursday morning I received a phone call from my brother (and for the record: Thursday, June 24th, 2021). He usually doesn’t call, but when he does it is usually to talk about work or some other personal matter at (7:00am). I thought he was calling for the same reasons. Since I had just woke up, I didn’t answer. I thought to myself: “Oh no! Not now brother. I am just waking up!” A minute later he sends me a text saying: “Check the news!”. I grabbed the phone and sat on my bed to text him and ask him what was he talking about, but then I realized that I also had a missed call from my cousin, who never calls! Then I got worried! I tried calling them both back but they didn’t answer and since I don’t have cable TV to check the news I had no idea what was I supposed to look for! I had to wait. He finally called and said: “Our Aunt’s building collapsed last night”. I went straight into shock, then in denial, and then I saw the news… IT IS TRUE!

My aunt Mercedes “Mercy” Urgelles and my Uncle Raymond “Ray” Urgelles are among the unaccounted people from the #surfsidebuildingcollapse of the Champlain Towers North in the Miami Beach Area. As I am writing this Blog today, they haven’t been found yet. I am saddened, anxious, shocked, and as more time passes, the more I am fearing the worse. I am also concerned for the emotional well-being of my cousins Jenny and Danny Urgelles. I cannot imagine what they are feeling right now. It is an overwhelming avalanche of feelings that are difficult to put into words for me, I cannot even imagine being inside their minds. It honestly breaks my heart.

Life has these “surprises” that aren’t at all pleasant. Life changes in seconds. We are never prepared for news like these. EVER!

I want to dedicate today’s Blog to my aunt, uncle, and my cousins. I carry you very close to my heart. I also want to dedicate it to all the other victims of this terrible tragedy. Even if it sounds like a cliché, we need to hug our loved ones tighter every day from now on. We need to tell them how much we love them every time we have the chance to. We need SHOW our love. We need to be more forgiving. We need to accept each other more and be less judgmental. We need to just love and let love be. Because we never know when the last time is going to be.

Awful and unexpected things happen in life. Things that we never think would happen to us. We think we are exempt, but we are NOT… They CAN happen.

I pray for the victims of this tragedy for them to find peace inside this painful moment.

I pray for emotional healing during this difficult time.

I pray for my family and for yours.

LOVE

This is a subject with which I have struggled all my life. Last week I wrote about learning to love ourselves in order to love another person properly. Today I want to talk about how my experience with love has been and how I’ve learned to see and understand love. Hopefully, my growth and perception can give you light and hope in this subject.

I have fallen in love many times, or at least that’s what I thought. Understanding that I actually was not in love with the people I thought I was, was crucial for me in this matter and in my growing process with regards to love and self-love. When you meet someone, everything is perfect. We want to present to others a version of ourselves that might not be real. We usually want to portray ourselves like the “perfect candidate” in order to conquer the other person’s heart; and they do the same. That’s when the problem starts. We pretend to be someone we are not and that is not sustainable. Perhaps we do it unconsciously, we do it out fear of rejection, we do it because we are in search of companionship, we do it because we need to feel loved. Perhaps what has happened to me, that I realized I was in love with a false image of a person, also happened to other people with regards to me…because they thought I was the “perfect person” and then realized that I was not. Why do we do that?

The real answer behind it is that FEAR makes us take that route. We fear loneliness, we fear that we won’t fit in, we fear that we might not be “good enough”, we fear that our reality won’t be a good fit to the person we are interested in, and that this reality will scare him/her away. Yes! We fear! But love cannot be built out of fear. Love cannot be forced. Love cannot be based on lies or be built by pretending to be “perfect” (because nobody is perfect). When you pretend to be someone you are not, you will end up hurting and you will hurt yourself as well. If you want someone to truly love you, for who you really are, just BE YOURSELF! Don’t pretend to be perfect. Don’t intend to be always happy or positive or funny. Just be yourself. Show your reality. Show your flaws. The correct person will stay in your life regardless of any of that.

I have done so many things “out of love” that I now regret! Things that I should’ve never done because love shouldn’t force you to things you are not comfortable with. So, if you ever feel pressured to do something you don’t want or that clashes with your values, then you should think again and evaluate the situation; evaluate the relationship and make yourself a priority over the request. When you love yourself, you will be able to identify and establish your boundaries and the other person, if he/she truly loves you, will respect those boundaries. That is the key to knowing that you are loved properly.

When you truly love someone, you can be your true self around that person and the other person will love that about you. I believe that love has no secrets and no judgements of the past. That you can be completely truthful with the person you love and in return be accepted even though you’ve made a whole bunch of mistakes in your life. But guess what? There is no one person in the world who has no mistakes under their sleeves. So don’t be so judgmental of your own self and allow others to love you for who you truly are.

Now this is the complicated part…what if you love someone and the other person is not ready even though he/she loves you? We have grown to believe that if someone truly loves you, then he/she should do ANYTHING to be with you…but that is not always the case. We all have lives and responsibilities and even traumas. We might have people that depend on us that we cannot turn our backs on to go after that loved one. Also, like I said before, we need to heal to be ready to give our best version of ourselves. Nobody can heal us; it is an internal job. Perhaps the other person needs healing and then you are there pushing and rushing, and as a result you push him/her and rush him/her out of your life! Loving another is a matter of understanding, it is a matter of respect, it is a matter of patience. Why rush things? Why push someone to be with you when they are not ready? Why judge? Well, because of that idea that “if he loves you, he’ll do anything for you”. That is NOT TRUE! Love is not forced, it flows. Love is magical precisely because you feel it regardless of the situation, of the distance, of the complications. But you cannot force the other person to be ready. Like the saying goes: “If you love somebody, set them free. If they come back, they are yours, if they don't, they never were". Many have argued that if someone loves you, they’ll never leave. I don’t think that is true. Sometimes we carry things within us that makes us doubt or we fear that will damage the person we love, and the best thing is to stay away for a while. Love will remain. True love never dies.

Love requires time and patience. Love requires understanding that the other person is not perfect. Understanding that the other person WILL make mistakes and might even hurt you either unintentionally, or out of fear, or due to insecurities, or out of frustration. That doesn’t mean the person is toxic or that the person doesn’t love you…it means the person is human! Therefore, this is the reason why communication and understanding are so critical and important in relationships, because we sometimes assume things and we are not even close to understanding what the reality from the other person’s perspective is. We sometimes judge others without trying to understand their view in things.

Always remember that to be able to love freely you need to heal yourself and that also applies to the person you love. Let love flow. If it’s meant to be, love will find its way to you. There’s no rushing, there’s no judgement, and there shouldn’t be any fears. There’s no possession or control. If any of that is present, then the relationship will become toxic because it will turn into a control war, and love is not about that. Love is the ability to be free without the fear of being betrayed. If you are ever betrayed, it is because the other person didn’t truly love you or because the other person is not at your same level. You cannot posses someone, neither control them. You can just love. So, let love be.

Love Will Save You

We have grown to believe that love is like in fairy tales; like in the movies. That love is magical and that the man of your dreams will come into your life to save you. But guess what? Love can be magical, because I believe it is, however, no man or human being is meant to save YOU! If you are waiting for the “man of your dreams” or your “soul mate” to come and save you, you’ll end up like me! Still waiting.

I always envisioned my life to be with that “man of my dreams” …and guess what? That “Prince Charming”, that “Hero” that will come to my rescue, that “Soulmate” that is meant to be connected with me has NEVER arrived. I have come to realize that this man WILL NEVER COME! The idea that a man or that another human being is responsible for our happiness is the real fairy tale. It is a lie! NOBODY should be given that type of responsibility. It is not fair. It is not real. It is not sustainable. You will be disappointed EVERY TIME!

And some of you might be thinking… “Jessica, you are wrong! I have found my “Soulmate” and I have his full support and he truly loves me.” Well, I’m still going to insist on telling you that he is not your savior. He didn’t come to rescue you. Love is just Love, but it is not the other person’s responsibility to heal you. It is not the other person’s responsibility to cure all of your traumas. It is not the other person’s responsibility to make you happy! I once heard Will Smith say, that he is “not responsible for my wife’s happiness”. He also said that he “had failed at making her happy”. My first reaction was to open my eyes and think to myself… “Wow! How could he say that?” I thought to myself “why wouldn’t he feel responsible if he sees her feeling miserable and unhappy?” Well, Will Smith is right! We cannot make anyone happy. The only ones responsible of our own happiness is ourselves.

How can we make ourselves happy then? The first thing we need is to learn to love ourselves. How is it that we can pour out love like a flowing river to others and be so unloving to ourselves? And how are we NOT loving ourselves? By accepting abuse. Abuse inside a relationship, not only physical, but verbal and psychological. We allow the person we “love” to play with our hearts and our emotions because “one day he’ll realize how much I love him” or “he’ll miss me” or “nobody is going to love him like I do”. First of, you’re having an ego battle there…that is not love, that is a winning competition in which you put yourself in a vulnerable state and you wish for your ego to win…But you won’t win! The only one that will take advantage of the situation is the man you are giving too many chances to. And I’m not here to tell you I know how to do it better, because I have also been there.

We allow others to disrespect ourselves at work, when we remain silent after it is evident that there is discrimination, sexism, favoritism, unfairness, unbalanced decisions, or even hierarchical status involved in our wrong treatment. We fear that if we speak up; we’ll lose our jobs and then we accept the abuse. But know that this is a lack of self-respect and therefore lack of love to ourselves. We have rights and staying quiet won’t resolve the problems, they will only grow bigger.

We allow our family to also disrespect us by allowing them to talk down to us, when we are grown and independent adults. And why don’t we speak up? Oh! Because we owe them respect… but why can’t they show respect for us as well? Loving ourselves requires us to speak up and to stop or reject other people’s abuse and disrespect, even when it is painful for us or when it is uncomfortable. Even when we love our parents, friends, or family members, we are also allowed to stay away from them out of self-love and self-respect; for our peace and mental health. Toxicity should never be tolerated from anyone.

We also show no self-love with that destructive self-talk that is always there to insult us, to diminish our capacities and our worth: “You are so stupid!”, “Nobody cares for you”, “Nobody will love you, you’re such a problematic person”, “Maybe your kids will be better off without you”, “You are fat”, You are ugly”, “You are just a mom without a Degree”, “Nobody will hire you”, “You’re not worth a raise”, and so we go onto endless diminishing self-talk. We say things to ourselves that are sometimes so destructive that we won’t even dare say similar things to our worse enemy. Why is that? Why do we do that? How can we expect to put the responsibility onto someone else to SAVE US and rescue us from those moments in which we disrespect our own selves? That is such a high responsibility! Nobody would want that kind of love requirement.

We need to learn to love ourselves above anyone else. This has been my journey. Because I have been my worst enemy (like Lady Gaga says in her song 911). I have allowed others to disrespect me one too many times, to mistreat me, to insult me, to abuse me and all because I love them and I need to show them love and respect…. WHAAAAT?!!! The time has come for me (and also for many of you) to realize that in order to love others we truly need to love ourselves and loving ourselves is a process. We tend to focus on all of our flaws and guess what…EVERYONE has flaws (even Beyonce! She must have at least 1 flaw! Come on!), so why not focus on the good things? Why not focus on our strengths? We are all blessed with wonderful characteristics that make us unique. We should LOVE those characteristics and focus less on the flaws.

One of the Commandments that Jesus left was to “Love others as we love ourselves”. The way I see it is that we tend to love others more than we love ourselves and that is not right! No wonder why there are so many broken hearts out there! Because by loving others over ourselves we ignore the red flags and therefore we allow the disrespect, and we accept it; we let it slide. It becomes a norm. But it should not be like that. You can love someone and if that person is hurting you in any way, you should be capable of identifying it and walk away; not because you stopped loving the person, but because you love yourself more and know that you deserve better. You take your feelings with you, love won’t die, but loving yourself is being able to do that, to understand your worth, and accept nothing less than the love and respect that you deserve.

Love will indeed save you, but it is not the love from someone else. It is solely your responsibility to love yourself so deeply that you won’t allow others to hurt you. You will see that loving yourself won’t be as easy as we all think. It is a process. You need to heal yourself, forgive yourself, accept yourself, and be happy with the great and awesome person that you are… You need to BELIEVE in yourself! Trust me, it is the best thing you can do in order to be completely happy, to feel completely loved, and to be able to love others the correct way. You won’t need anybody’s love to save you because your self-love will. You will EMPOWER yourself with SELF-LOVE.