We Thrive

As  I listen to Julio Iglesias on my little UE boom box I realize how freed up I am now and how lovely life can be with this kind of freedom to be the beautiful Latino man that I am with a culture and a language that is wonderful and meaningful.  The music is impeccale and the voice is Julio Iglesias likely one of the most well known Spanish singers in the world.  As he sings a song from his CD called Tango, "A Meidia Luz" I pieture my sister dancing across the room in that magical manner with which she expresses dance.  I feel so gratetul to know Spanish and to undersand these gorgeous lyrics to songs that will never be sung in English thanks to my Spanish grandmother and my incredibly loving grandfather.  I can picture the times when we danced so our music in the living room before leaving to church and after mass.  It was those magical moments I will always hold dear to my heart.  Lesson learned.  The lesson that I am who I am and that there is nothing wrong with me.  In fact I am a unique and grand person with a regal Spaniard inside of me that loves music of all kinds, especially my own.

There is no more shaming and censoring.  I get to be Elliott Collazo Gonzalez.  I get to be the incredible person that I am who has a beat inside of his soul.  I get to dance as long as I want and sing as many songs as I like.  I get to show my inner beauty and walk the walk I have always wanted to walk.  My heart gets to feel the words in the latino music and my soul gets to feel it and cry if I like.  I place as much importance as I want to on something that I care deeply about, like Julio Iglesias and Juan Luis Guerra.  I get to listen to Frankie Ruiz with people that love him as much as I do and can feel the beat inside their souls as well.  I get to be myself, Elliott Collazo.  I get to be me!  It is the most freeing experience ever.  It feels like I have been let out of a cage where I was trapped for years upon years and now I get to sing like a bird as loudly as I like.  I am so fortunate to feel this feeling today and now.  To get to be who I have been and more of who I am.  What a wonderful, incredibly awsome time this is for me.

Over the physical pain.  Over the times when I bump into things or forget what I went to a room for.  Over the times when the swelling of my parts of my body slowed me down.  Over the pain of radiation and chemo.  Over the ignorance of people who could not forgive me.  Over the ghost like individuals who appear, frighten me and then disappeared.  Over the emotional pain there is this person who is me.  A beautiful sixty year old man who still takes pride in how he looks and how he walks and how he keeps his home.  Julio in one of his songs expresses: "after you I don't know how to live without you lady".  What enters my heart is that I know that I can and I do live without what was before whether it was a part of my body that got cut out or a person or  persons.  Nothing matters more than the passion I can feel alone, with myself as company.

There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about what is going to happen to me but then there is not a day that I don't feel mostly joyful and grateful as well.  That is the magic of life.  We think we won't be able to live without someone or something and then we figure out that beyond the emotional and physical pain of abandonnment we can make it, we do make it.  We not only make it we thrive.