22 Years: A Collection of Hamstrung Decisions and Consequences

On one particular blustery, summer morning, I raised a tiny fist and knocked against my mother’s bloated stomach. “Hey, Mom,” is what I’d have said if I could speak, “You’ve had me holed up in here 9 months now. You can let me out now.” Unfortunately, parents don’t understand non-speak, so I knocked harder. When that didn’t work, I kicked. That’d get her moving.

To my disappointment, they responded with loud shouting and some strange high-pitched howling noise. Downright terrifying. Somehow through the noise and the buzz and the very dangerous driving, I’d been brought to a birth center.

“What kind of injustice is this? From one prison to the next. I’m not a convict, Mom, I’m your son!”

In indignation, I refused to come out. If I had to come out, they’d have to yank me out with Dad’s crowbar or something. I’d show them. Dad was no handyman. Maybe he helped me enter this womb, but he sure wasn’t gonna get me out.

So it was, that I was born just before midnight, kicking at a midwife’s face with a permanent frown etched onto my face. From the day I was born, I displayed my disapproval with this thing they called Life.

“Can’t have that,” my old man said, and he took his finger and pushed my bottom lip right back into my mouth. Soon as his finger was gone, I pouted at him again. “Miguel, you look like an old man.” (Wouldn’t be the last time he said that.)

Naming me before we meet. Very bold of you, mon Parents.

Later I learned how to lisp out my full name, Miguel Santiago Flores. They named me for two things that  would define the rest of my life: Miguel was Spanish for Michael, which is really more of a question than a proper name. The question, “who is like God?” The easy answer, “no one.” But I don’t do easy.

Santiago was also Spanish, stood for “Saint” James. It was the only inheritance I took from my Filipino great-grandfather, but I like to think it’s because I had something in common with one of the Bible’s first amateur wrestlers. My middle name would be the first of many dislocated shoulders.

Flores was another for “flowers,” but I was determined to be the cannibalistic sort with the teeth that bit at any fingers daring enough to poke me (Sorry, Dad).

Essentially, I was born stubborn. Today I’m not much different.

This morning (meaning 2AM when I should have been sleeping), I did a fair bit of looking back at my Life. As is the general compulsion of your average human mess-up, my first instinct was to notice all the mistakes I’ve made in my life. If I’m honest about it, it’s a long trail that covers the entirety of my 22 years walking it. From this blog alone, I can count 48 drafts of blog posts I never shared–some because they were unfinished, some because I wanted more citations but never worked hard enough to get any, most because I never wrote them to begin with. I’m good at that: coming up with titles minus any working substance. And that’s not exclusive to my writing.

At 7 years old, I thought I’d become the first professional NBA Filipino basketball player. Actually, I thought my cousin would be the first, but I was still convinced I could get taller than him. Little did I know that a gallon of milk a week cannot beat out the monster they call Genetics. Filipinos are not designed to dunk 10ft baskets. Well that was fine. I’d become the short coach who bossed all the tall guys around.

Genetics was a jerk though. He liked to crawl out from under my bed and remind me of all the other minor things: being deaf to specific decibels of sound, having an extra bit of tongue which made it hard for me to say words right, and having almond eyes that couldn’t really see things well if they were near or far.

At 9 and 1/2, I’d been uprooted and moved to this weird swampland called Florida. Knew no one and didn’t want to know anyone. I packed my belongings into a red backpack; grabbed all my entire $50 in raw, hard cash; and studied an old map of the bus routes in Orange county. This was my moment.

I stayed up till the early morning hours, snuck out of my room, and stared at that formidable bronze lock of our town house. It laughed at me. The very sudden realization of what I was doing hit me in the face. I walked back into my room, stuffed my bag underneath my bed, and went back to sleep. “I can always run away next week.” It was a comforting lie I told myself for many years.

At 15, I temporarily moved back to Maryland. Dado (grandpa) was dying, the one guy I pointedly Didn’t Get Along With more than anyone else in my family. But he was dying, and my mom needed to be there, and my mom and sister needed me to be there. “You should spend time with him while you still have the chance.” Okay, I rescinded, but I won’t like it.

I was right. I didn’t like it. I loved him, Death was an asshole, and now I was an addict of writing angry poetry to a loveless god.

At 18, I graduated high school. At that point, it was the best day of my life. I didn’t know what it was I wanted to do next, but that was okay because I had the ability to do anything. Besides, after 6+ years of being deeply involved in local and state politics, I at least knew what I definitively didn’t want to do. Up until that point, the various occupations that had run in and out of my mind included: Basketball Coach, Missionary, Marine Chaplain, Pirate (very, very briefly), Firefighter, Crab Fisherman, Travel Journalist, Gastronomic Chef, Dietitian and Nutritionist.

I decided I’d become a Nutritionist after I finished my A.A. The crude irony of it so happened that I became very sick the same semester I took my first class, “Principles of Nutrition.” How sick? Four months sick. Goodbye, Normality.

At 22, I’m not sure what to do next.

It’s generally not a good day to hold off making plans until you get to “that age” because, when you do get to “that age,” you find that “that age” is too late for any plans to have any momentum.

There are lots of relationships I’ve been broken over, lots of decisions with disastrous (often deserved) consequences, lots of obstacles and challenges I’ve had to climb over or out of. Mostly, I see hanging in this room of my mind, all the apologies I’ve had to make and some I still have collecting dust, sitting on a wooden tongue. Maybe if I get agitated enough, I’ll finally manage to cough them out.

When you do this sort of thing enough times, it gets easier to not notice the same places over and over again. Even when they become increasingly obvious, you get good at ignoring things. But I decided not to this time. I picked up a couple memories, blew the dust off, and tried to figure out where in my life they happened.

I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be in life. I doubt very few people are and, if they are, I suspect them of either stubborn delusion or compulsive lying.

Here are some of the newly dusted memories, a mess of unhewn stones lying scattered in heaps waiting to be built up into altars:

• I fell in love. I fell out of love.
• I overcame the monster of my high school years. I called this parasite Depression.
• I took a break from school and got a new job. I quit my job and went back to school. I kept my promise to actually finish school and will graduate in four months.
• I was forced to stop writing. I participated in life more than I wrote about it.
• I learned how to write again.
• I made amazing new friends. I had adventures with the old ones.
• I traveled, by both plane and by story. I met people, I saw their hurt, and I cried with them.
• I gained compassion for those I don’t know and was given grace for those I do.
• I learned more about Jesus than I’ve ever known, and realized I know less about him than I ever thought.

Most of all, I took risks and a very small handful of them paid off. And it’s the ones that didn’t that I’m proud of.

That’s not to say Life isn’t still hard and confusing, and I still think baby me was an idiot for not fighting harder and longer before being extradited. I was not prepared for having to deal with taxes, for instance. I didn’t know getting your heart broken could break the rest of you. No one told me that once the parasite of depression was gone, you’d have to spend so many long years figuring out who you were without it.

There are so many others things I want to finish, but haven’t even started yet. So many other things people have told me I can’t do, whether because of my situation, or my background, or even my ethnicity, that I am looking forward to proving wrong. The old man face is no longer a permanent fixture. I’ve found things to enjoy now; I’ve found people who aren’t such terrible people; I’ve found that not all monsters are ones I have to be scared of.

And, on no longer rare occasions, I even smile.