Paths to Rock Bottom - The first years of the Hawai'i ride (Dos)
Five years that went by on a blink. Happy silly times? Waste of time? Being a responsible adult? All of them, just what I needed.
I graduated with my Bachelors in Sociology in Lima, Peru the first week of October 2010. By October 19th I was catching a plane with a quick stop in San Francisco and bound to Hawaii. Right before this trip started, I was having a grand time in Peru. After 5-6 years of college, I felt very loved and content with my family and my group of friends. Since my brother, my little cousin, and I went to the same school, our groups had mixed a lot and there were so many joyful gatherings with all of our friends' circles. I had been offered a random exciting job, not in the Sociology field, but at a beauty company. Hello! I went to the job interview without makeup and they had a mirror right by the entrance that said: "Looking good today". It was a job as a trainer and educator for women entrepreneurs that worked with this company all over Peru. I loved people and traveling, so it seemed very fitting at the time. Never mind all those college years and my Sociology degree. Many elements of my life were falling into place and still, I felt the need to do one last big trip. I go into more details about the Peru-Hawaii connection on the post Paths to Rock Bottom Uno.
I made it to Hawaii on October 26, 2010. My friend Chris picked me up with a huge smile, a welcome lei, and she gave me a roof to stay on. Here I was in Hawaii again, as free as a bird. No plans, no big timeline, besides the fact that I had to catch a plane a couple weeks later. No school anymore or any responsibility. I had a solid budget of $10 a day. That should be enough right? Especially when eating the value menu at Taco Bell for most of my meals.
I was in the space in between. Between my old life of being a full-time student working side jobs, and my prospective life of being a responsible adult in the workforce and all the new responsibilities that come with that. With the Peru life in the background, walking among palm trees, there was not a bit of doubt or worry in me about anything. Whether it was clever to take this trip and take a pause in my life. Whether things were going to work out in general. As far as I knew, I was going to enjoy every bit of my graduation trip that I had gifted to myself. This was a magical breathing space in the most delightful place in the world. In a way I was taking a leap of faith, life in Peru is different than in the U.S. People usually don’t take breaks, because everything is so uncertain and the job market is tough. You cannot make decent living waiting tables or a similar easy-to-get job, as you can in the U.S. If I lost the job I had lined up, I would be dealing with a very long unwanted pause. Yet I was moving with an underlying trust that would accompany me in all my travels. I walked with confidence in the land of aloha.
On day 5 of my arrival to Hawaii, walking down the sand in Waikiki beach, on a classic gorgeous sunny Hawaii day, I met this sweet beachboy. We exchanged some words, smiles, and our phone numbers that day. We went surfing and to a Halloween party a couple days later and we both fell deeply in love with each other in a matter of a few sunsets. I was completely unaware that a new chapter was starting from the second I met the Kind Love. Invitation to tune in the ♫ “WE ARE YOUNG…” ♫ chorus of Love is A Battlefield from Pat Benatar.
~Start at 3:58~
Fast forward the next 3 years in Hawaii. Love was in the air. My first big love, with lots of commitment and much passion. That relationship would become my longest one at that point in my life. I won’t go into much detail there, although many stories about the Kind Love could be shared. For now, you can imagine a fun love story that involves young loving, an island to adventure in, and much free time.
Moving to work-life and settling in. As you can probably imagine, Hawaii is not known for being an affordable place. I initially started making some money as a street artist on Kalakaua Avenue making and selling very simple (read basic) shell earrings, necklaces, and bracelets hand-picked by me. I learned a lot about the streets, about dedication and grit, and I met some cool characters. I was fortunate that the touristy streets of Waikiki were pretty safe, compared to my Latin American public spaces. The one thing I had to pay attention to was the undercover cops busting you for selling things, instead of getting “donations”. All sales were “donation” based and in my case, I kept it that way. When people would ask how much was my art, I would only sometimes suggest a donation range. I never knew what the afternoon would bring. Some days I would make nada or just about $50, and some other nights money would flow in from generous tourists.
Housing was tricky the first weeks/months. Not wanting to overextend the generosity of my friend Chris, I made a really questionable choice in my quest for a stable roof over my head. I rented someone’s living room, technically for a month. I only ended up staying there for half a night after waking up to that awkward guy staring at me (sorry parents, if you read this, I know I should have known better). I confronted him, took my backpack, and sleeping back and I wandered the Waikiki streets until I got to the cheapest shared-room hostel in the area. I didn’t get much rest that evening, partly because my body was still shocked and my mind was full of guilt for that stupid decision. After that, I stayed in some couches for a couple days, including the Kind Love one, until I scored a cheap rental on a shared basement with 2 other girls my age. At least they were students and were pretty nice. A month or two later, the Latino Work and Travel gang made it to Hawaii, and sometime in early 2011, I moved into a one-bedroom in Waikiki with 3 super fun Chilean peeps. Cheaper than the basement spot and way more amusing.
My housing situation was directly correlated with the jobs I had access to. I worked in several places in Waikiki. I started as a cashier at a burger place on the second floor of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. As my English and confidence grew, I slowly made it up the chain in the restaurant industry. I got to work in "better" restaurants as a hostess, busser, food runner, and even made it to be a server, which was a big challenge because of my English. Eventually, I made it into a union at the Sheraton Waikiki magic oceanfront locations. During that job I made really good friends and I felt so lucky, life was uncomplicated and bright. I would work a lot, either one or two jobs. My kind love and I spent lots of time together. I surfed every day, dawn patrol and sometimes sunsets too, and hiked and played in nature with my besties. Nature, especially the ocean, was my happy place, and I spent many hours there. I had the best hiking buddy, my mana wahine friend April. One time, to heal our broken hearts, April and I hiked every day for almost two weeks straight in what we called our Hiking Extravaganza Adventure.
These years also included a lot of drinking and partying. Not everything was roses, of course. If you worked in the service industry, you know there was drama there and too much drinking and therefore poor decisions. I had some fallings apart with friends and things were cooling down with my love. In addition, there was a big shift in me, that I have called "My Latin guilt of having had the privilege of getting an education”. Instead of working in something connected to my degree, I started to feel like I was throwing my life away. Yeah, I had a tendency to be quite introspective and very hard on myself.
Now I see those years as a huge break and breath of air that my soul needed and I didn't know it. ♪ Musical reference number two: You Can't Always Get What You - The Rolling Stones.
“You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need”
~Start at 5:25~
The space in between turned into a love life adventure. It was a gift of enormous freedom after so many years of non-stop responsibilities and schooling, about 18 years in education systems. Yikes. More important than that though, was being away from home and all my routines, my patterns, and triggers. The physical distance and the Aloha State gave me an opportunity of being a new me, without so much baggage and without the stories deeply connected to our home. Lastly, this might sound less relevant for some, but the sun was a huge gift to my body. When I learned about a condition known as Seasonal Depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) 1, so much about my Lima-life clicked and my hate for the “panza the burro” gloomy winters, started to make a lot of sense. All of these realizations came many years later, while on my healing journey.
Back to where I was feeling some sense of responsibility and the need to be productive. What can I do to redirect my path? More school of course. I half-ass applied to one master’s program in Hawaii and got the acceptance letter about the same time when my Kind Love and I decide to move into different paths. I was ready to give up the Hawaii life, because quite honestly without my Kind Love, my partner, and basically only family on the islands, it didn't make much sense. My loving parents had a different opinion. They grew up with the "Education is progress" narrative and evidently, they really wanted her daughter to excel in life, and probably also to get back on track. Mis papis strongly recommended to at least get one Semester in and then I could make a better assessment of the next steps. That was a tough one for me because going back to Peru after 3 years of "doing nothing" felt like a failure in society's eyes. On the other hand, I only had so much savings, and going to school for that one Semester meant spending it pretty much all. Society's pressure and the story of progress won, so I did the first Semester at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. And then the second semester, and so on. I meet a new love, the Musician Love, new friends, and two years of studying, working, and loving went by in a minute. Notice, not much nature and party time anymore. I was hustling.
In 2015, I graduated with a new super stable job as a public servant. Hello, splendid and challenging years at the City and County of Honolulu. At last, I felt fully economically sound and I was being a responsible adult. I worked really hard for that degree, both mentally and physically, and I felt accomplished and proud of myself. I remember also wondering if I was the first person in my family to get a Master’s degree. Certainly something.
There is something to be said about having a mid-term plan and goal that is unshakeable, where everything is set for a while. You don't have to reassess life or have any big changes. You get to be fully immersed in the tasks at hand. In my case, getting that shiny new paper. However, after I got it and the world and opportunities opened up again, then came the question: What do I really want to do now?
Third and last musical reference of this post: Any song from Buenavista Social Club ♬. You are welcome.
The cherry to that question or maybe the coating came to me after I attended my best friend's wedding. My yang and travel partner, Maria Soru had an epic destination wedding in Cuba with her sweet love. So many good friends from Peru came to the destination wedding. We basically spent a couple days doing everything together. We stayed in the same hotel, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We partied a lot, played volleyball, spent some quality family time con los tios, danced under the stars, and celebrated so much love! During that trip, something switched on me. I missed that. I missed my friends, the people that knew me for so long, and we had so many adventures together growing up. I missed my family, my parents, and my cousins. That familiarity and the deep knowing of each other. In a way, although I had developed many friendships in Hawaii, I was never really skilled at keeping them for a long time or they would leave Hawaii, as it happens often. I'm Latina, the meaning of familia/ohana is impossible to capture in few words. What have I chosen for so many years?
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Note: Those musical references came to my mind as I wrote, however, I don't really pay attention to every single lyric of English songs. Too much effort. If you feel the whole song doesn't have much to do with the context of my story, congrats for knowing the song so well ;)
Curious about some journal musings about those years? Check out the next post of the Story of Remembering.
Please read the definition from the National Institute for Mental Health with a grain of salt Instead of seeing it as label that might define you, take it as information that might apply to your lived experience. I confirmed years later, while I was working in offices and having that 8 to 5 work routine, that I had low vitamin D. Even living in the sunshine State.