Читать книгу Still Standing - Anaité Alvarado - Страница 8

The Beginning of the End

As I tried to sleep on the carceleta’s cold concrete bench, I could not help thinking of the journey that had somehow brought me there. My world collapsed on July 29, 2014. It had actually begun collapsing quite a while before that fateful day, but I was none the wiser.

How could I have not seen the storm that was heading my way?

—

On the morning of July 29, 2014, I woke up on the forty-sixth floor in our apartment overlooking Biscayne Bay, the Port of Miami, and South Beach, as I’d done on so many other mornings. I loved sleeping with the blinds open, falling asleep with a billion lights shining in the night, and opening my eyes the next day as the sun rose over the ocean on the horizon.

Miami was a familiar place to me; it was where I was born, and after being raised in Guatemala City, it is where I returned as a young woman to attend the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and it is the city I called home during the following seventeen years after graduation, where I became an adult. When I finally moved back to Guatemala in 2003, within weeks of my arrival, I found love. I was thirty-five years old, had been engaged twice before, but had never gotten married. Marriage had not been a goal in my life, but that suddenly changed.

My husband and I got married in 2008 and a year later, God blessed us with twins: a girl, Nina, and a boy, Fabián. I could not have been happier or felt more fortunate. My husband had been doing very well with his business endeavors, and every year seemed to bring more projects and more possibilities. He had managed to bring a forestry investment firm to Guatemala and began creating one of the largest teak plantations in the world. Every year, more trees were planted and his management revenues grew. He also had other plans; he seemed to never stand still.

That year, my husband had decided to run the IRONMAN race in Nice, France. As with his other interests in life, he prepared, training hard, and was ready to tackle what he’d set his mind to do. Since it was scheduled for the middle of the summer, we decided to bring the children along. We rented a small apartment in the center of Nice, packed our bags, and enjoyed a wonderful month-long vacation in the south of France. When we returned, my husband flew to Guatemala, while the kids and I made one last stop in Miami before continuing home. The children were to start school at the American School of Guatemala, the same school my husband and I had attended as children. Life seemed to be smiling in our direction, and there was no reason for me to think otherwise. Until that one day, when I woke up and realized that soon my life would never be the same again.

It must have been around 9 p.m. The children were already sleeping in their room, exhausted after another fun-filled summer day in Miami. As I sat on my bed watching TV, the phone rang. It was my husband calling me from Guatemala.

“I have something very important I need to tell you. Are you sitting down?” he asked. “I have gotten myself in deep financial troubles. I have been trying to get it all sorted out for a while now, and I was hoping to fix things before you ever found out, but it has become impossible. I needed you to hear it from me.”

I remember hearing something about his taking something he should not have, and in my ingenuity, I simply said, “Well, give it back.”

“It’s not possible,” he said, “I can’t say anything else about this over the phone. I’ll be back in Miami tomorrow.”

My entire life changed with those words. They were simple, but I knew my world would never be the same again. I hung up, still sitting on my bed, overlooking the magnificent bay, and suddenly felt as if my life were not mine, as if I was now in a movie and my life was happening to someone else—these things didn’t happen to people like me. And even though at that moment nothing had changed, everything was suddenly different. I was paralyzed, yet my brain was going a million miles an hour. My life was still intact, I was seemingly safe, but those words had changed everything. I did not understand what had just happened, or how I felt, and I did not have enough information to devise a plan or figure out a course of action. All I knew for sure was that I had to focus on the important things, what was left: Nina and Fabián. Yes, Nina and Fabián, and all that I could not see at that moment but would surely be there when the storm passed . . . because this too shall pass . . . or so I had been told.

For the next two days I was in a fog. I thought I would go crazy. I was exhausted, I could not sleep, I could not eat, I knew a devastating tornado was about to make landfall in our lives, and yet I was going through the day doing things that changed nothing. And my husband, whom I loved for so many wonderful reasons, was suddenly a stranger to me. He needed my support and I had no idea how to help him. We were both drowning in the ocean, unable to save each other. And despite my indescribable fear and my anger at realizing that my own husband had destroyed my young family, I still felt the need to protect him. If someone had asked me just a few days prior to receiving this news, what I would have done if I had found myself in this very predicament, I would most likely have said that I would not tolerate such deceit and would never be able to stand by someone capable of so many lies. And yet there I stood, crying and overwhelmed by fear, bombarded by news that grew worse by the hour.

Upon his return to Miami, I tried helplessly to understand everything my husband was attempting to explain to me. I needed to know what had happened, what was going on, and yet my brain could not make sense out of any of it. At some point during those first days after his return, I found myself taking his hands in mine and telling him, “Listen, we all make mistakes and we are all so much more than our worst missteps.” It was at that moment that he finally broke down and cried.

Everything about my life had suddenly become uncertain. I assumed he would have to face the consequences of his actions, and I would have to build a new life. My husband insisted I did not deserve any of this. I could not say what it was I deserved, but the fact of the matter was that my life had changed forever. If these changes were for better or for worse, only time would tell.

While we navigated through the following week, my husband suddenly claimed he could not go on. He talked about how months had passed while he desperately tried to plan a way out of this mess. He said that the only reason he had not taken his life was to protect his children and me. Every day came with new pieces of information regarding his predicament and what he had been trying to do these past years, all while I had obliviously been enjoying my so-called perfect life. It was all very complicated, but I kept holding on to one truth: he had not killed anyone. Yes, he would have to pay the consequences for his actions, but I truly believed that eventually we’d be able to figure it all out.

As I tried to understand everything that was happening, as I tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and figure out how to continue living my life, I was overwhelmed by deep sadness when I slowly realized that my husband and I had not been partners for a while, and that my family would never be whole again.

At first, I thought it would be best for my husband to move out of the house as soon as we returned to Guatemala, because the tension between us was making the children uneasy, and because if I was to remain separate from his actions to avoid becoming an accomplice, we could not live under the same roof.

But then my feelings shifted. I decided that precisely because our time as a family unit might come to an end sooner rather than later, it would be best if we tried to remain together as long as possible. The rupture might be inevitable, but I was still not ready to be the one to cause it. I wasn’t ready to let go. Up until that moment, I truly believed that I had my life under control, that my husband and I were a team, and that we had our life as figured out as possible. As it turned out, NOTHING was in my control.

I called my father, seeking comfort and advice.

“Papá, I have nothing, I have no idea what’s to come. I don’t know what to do.”

And, just as he’d done at other times in my life when my own thoughts had made me feel helpless, he cleared my mind with his wisdom.

“This too shall pass,” he said calmly. “There is a solution to every problem, there are inevitable consequences, but there’s no need to fret and worry so much beforehand. We do not know what is to come. Don’t let your mind be your worst enemy. There is no point in letting negative and destructive thoughts control us.”

My father continued to call me from Guatemala every twelve hours to ask how I was, to tell me that I was not alone, and that I had all his support; I felt blessed.

On August 5, 2014, my children, the nanny, and I returned to Guatemala as originally planned. Back home, I spent weeks suffering panic attacks, falling prey to my worst thoughts, going over every detail that was available to me to see if it could all finally make sense in my mind. But nothing made sense. I was inside a whirlwind of change, and I would’ve been sucked into its vacuum had it not been for the one thing that remained constant in my life: the continuous and determined support of my family and friends. They say you learn how few friends you can truly count on when you are in the hospital, in prison, or in financial trouble. I now know how many wonderful people surround my life’s journey, a ray of light during dark and stormy times.

And when I asked myself how I could remain by my husband’s side after the devastating news, the answers were simple: because I loved him for so many other reasons, because he was my partner, because he made a mistake, and because my family without him still made no sense to me.

—

Exactly a month after the devastating news, I decided to go on my first job interview in over twenty years. I had no idea whether I would get the job, but I knew I had to do something. Given the circumstances, it was likely I would have to sell everything, learn to live a simpler life, and work for a living. I really had no idea what was in store for me, but I knew I needed to keep moving forward. So, I interviewed at AYUVI, Fundación Ayúdame a Vivir, which raises funds to benefit children with cancer in Guatemala. Drowning in my personal and financial worries, I had been blind to truly unimaginable sadness until that day.

When I arrived, I was given a tour of the hospital, and met very sick children from extremely low-income families who were battling for their lives. And yet they were the lucky ones, benefitting from the amazing work AYUVI does on their behalf to get them the treatment they deserve. I was so inspired that I left the interview praying I would get the job, hoping to be part of that team dedicated to saving lives. I threw my wish out into the universe and thought, God knows best.

I have never considered myself a religious person, but I do believe in God and feel that the best way to honor Him is to trust that He knows best. So, even as my life was being turned upside down, as fear and anxiety invaded every cell of my body, I stood by that statement. I felt comfort in believing that even though I may not understand God’s will at any given time, there is a divine purpose to everything.

A few days later, the phone rang: I got the job! On September 16, 2014, I began working as Fundraising and Public Relations Coordinator for the USA at AYUVI. Visiting that hospital changed my life forever. Witnessing firsthand how those children fought for their lives gave me the courage I needed to continue moving forward with mine. They will continue to be an inspiration to me for the rest of my life.

—

As 2014 came to a close, I found that once again I had purpose in my life. I had devised a wonderful art project and was looking forward to implementing it, sure that it would raise much-needed funds to benefit the children’s cancer hospital. I was meeting new people, enjoying the Guatemalan art scene, and working comfortably from home, near my children. I felt useful and productive, and truly believed I was beginning to rebuild my life.

Meanwhile, my relationship with my husband was nonexistent. We lived in the same house but led separate lives. I was doing all I could to mitigate any other drastic changes in my children’s lives, but my marriage had crumbled and could not be put back together again. My husband claimed that he had no money and no place to go, and I was at a loss. After all, he was the father of our two wonderful children. How could I possibly explain to them one day that I had thrown him out on the street when he was destitute? So, he remained at home.

Months passed, living in this surreal world where nothing made much sense, yet it existed and seemed to move along somehow. My art project was making amazing headway, my children were adapting to their new school, and life continued.

Then, in early 2015, my husband informed me that he would be moving out of the house, which meant newfound peace for me, but I knew it would be a blow for Nina and Fabián. As much as we both tried to make it all seem OK to our children, such feeling is usually not possible when families break up. I know this to be true since I was Nina and Fabi’s age when my family fell apart.

So suddenly there I was, a forty-six-year-old woman, a single mother to five-year-old twins, starting a new life after a devastating heartbreak. But I was now free to choose my new path, I was free to reinvent myself, free to start over, free from so many lies. Or so I thought . . .