Sunday, April 29, 2012

Sponsorship

   Dear friend,

      I am in search of a sponsorship for my husband, Ricardo. In order for him to live in the United States with our family, he will need to have a legal visa. The process for this visa requires that a person sign a contract that will sponsor him to come into the United States and live, work, and drive… everything that a United States citizen can do except for vote. This will enable us to be a family united. It is potentially saying that you will vouch for his need to be here.

     We did attempt to live in Mexico together as a family; however, the best we could do was to obtain tourist visas and travel to the border every 180 days to renew the visa. This made our life difficult because we have two kids in school and two babies. Ricardo could not assist me in this travel with the children so I traveled as the only adult. We tried this lifestyle for years. It became harmful to the education of the children, not to mention the cost of flights. We were unable to obtain permanent residency in Mexico due to our family size. Also, I have two teenage children that reside permanently in Pennsylvania that we were separated from while we attempted securing our family in Mexico.

     I am looking for a sponsor so that we can be together. The sponsor must make a certain amount of salary in order to qualify. This is not asking for money from the sponsor, it is to establish that they are able to qualify to vouch for Ricardo to live in the United States. The amount depends on the potential sponsor’s household size. My household size is six people; therefore the amount of yearly salary would be $38,713. That salary should be on the previous year’s income tax. I do not make that amount. I have initiated my education and am presently half way into obtaining my Bachelor’s degree so that I may have opportunity for better employment one day.

      In the meantime, our family is in need of someone to sponsor my husband so that he can help with our family. He is a wonderful parent and husband. He is a hard worker, a faithful Catholic, and he only asks to be with his family.

The following paragraphs are from my lawyer, Laura Fernandez:

    “The main purpose of the financial sponsorship is to prevent new immigrants from becoming a public charge. That means that once Ricardo enters the United States, he cannot accept means-tested public benefits as long as he is a permanent resident or for ten years. If he becomes a U.S. citizen in three years (which is possible as the spouse of a U.S. citizen) the I-864 contract dies entirely, as a USC does not need a financial sponsor. So that is one thing.”

        “In terms of the income, first of all, you are only sponsoring Ricardo, not a family of 3 or 4 or 5. You are not sponsoring Raquel or the kids. You are not signing off that Ricardo will support Raquel or the kids. You are only ensuring that Ricardo himself, only him, will not become a public charge. Even if Ricardo were not making any money, he is ineligible for any of the public benefits that you are sponsoring against getting, by nature of welfare and other entitlement reform. However, the immigration laws have not been updated to reflect these changes."

      If you feel that you can help, I would be forever indebted to you.
This means more to me than words can truly express. Thank you.



Kindest regards,
Raquel Magana




The amount of yearly salary to qualify for sponsorship for your household would be you, your household, plus Ricardo, equaling an amount of total household size.

For one person living single to sponsor Ricardo, the yearly salary should be $18,913.
For a two person household to sponsor Ricardo, the yearly salary should be $23,863.
Three person household plus Ricardo, $28,813.
Four person household plus Ricardo, $33,763.
Five person household plus Ricardo, $38,713.
Six person household plus Ricardo, $43,663.
"I'm American, and so is my little sister... and so is my mom, and my 4 older brothers and sisters. Please help my Mexican father come to the USA to watch me grow"...

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Default

It’s just as it should be.
I am in the United States of America.
      I am a fifth generation German/Irish descendant, at least by the standards of my father’s male bloodline, but what may apply when counting in my mother’s line, and all of the wives and mothers of each generation and where they came from, and for how long they have been in the United States, or from where they came, is only something that can be guessed. As far as I know I am, for the most part German. My maiden name means pastry maker in Germany. My mother’s maiden name is very Irish, as was her mother’s.
    My kids are part of me. Does this mean that they can then claim this same status as their own? Does this qualify them to claim the important sixth generation American of the United States? It may come in handy for them one day, as this subject of immigration when and how and who is now an act of martyrdom of our own importance – the death and suffering of who we are inside for our belief of America.
    Does bloodline matter? The answer is yes. Those who claim that this is theirs, do so because of their bloodline, therefore giving my children the right to claim America through my bloodline, because the blood running through my veins is the same blood of the people that helped to build America. I have some of the same genes.
     I have inherited these genes from my bloodline. That gives me too the rights to inherit this country through my bloodline. To take a spot of that blood and to trace it into Germany would not necessarily offer me a right to Germany though, even though my bloodline and my genes may be found there. I was born on American soil. I have a birth certificate. I have photos of my parents holding me when I was a baby in an American lifestyle. I went to school from Kindergarten to graduation day at the same high school that I watched my daughter graduate from. We sang the American Anthem and through out the years, I said the Pledge of Allegiance every year, clear back to when my hand was a little bigger than the doll’s that I played with, as I held it across my chest, saying words that I did not understand. Over the years I was taught the many patriotic loyalties, the reasons that I was to feel them, along with the blood that spilled as the genes and bloodlines of others ended so that mine could survive.
    The appreciation of others for the survival of my bloodline is what patriotism of living in the United States may be stated as then, put simply.
    It is just as it should be, then that my children and myself are in the United States, living protected, receiving an American education and the installation of the knowledge of patriotism is being given to my children, the sixth generation immigrants from Germany... that appreciation of others so that they simply can live in the United States, as a United States Citizen.
   It is just as it should be that my husband is not here because he is from Mexico. There is no way that he would be able to understand that appreciation of others that gave up their lives so that America could be a place for someone like him to live in the United States.
    How could he ever live in the United States like I do, without knowing his bloodline was formerly already here for five generations previously? How could he ever be confident in claiming that he would have the right to be breathing and eating from this place? How dare he not take his own bloodline into account and stay faithful to his own past, because that is important!
   What is important is where your bloodline is from, that is how it works here. We are petty. We want proof. We want to play house under the big apple tree in the fields of the New Republic and as children that play, we choose the rules that suit to please the moment, to accommodate our pleasures of instant near sightedness and selfish desires. It is our call because it is our story.
    Believe in your dreams because in America, we are destined to become anything that we strive for. We are able to overcome the hazards of life that in the other countries across the world have difficulty with, because we are given an endless supply of opportunity and guidance. ‘While the uncertainty can be stressful, we have endless possibility’…. all because of our bloodline.
   As a single mother of the next generation, the fatherless, the ‘we may have to live in exile’ children of tomorrow that will be with the right to play house too one day, I will teach them what I have been taught from my bloodline... to never give up.
   But I need to teach them to also accept when you are wrong, to admit when you are wrong… so they do not grow up as crooked crooks.
 I was wrong to marry someone that was not a United States Citizen.
   I was wrong to ruin his life, to make him miss us every day bringing him to the edge of depression. To keep his hopes high when the odds are not going in our favor, who exactly is at wrong here? It is I. It is my fault.
   It is my fault for believing that I should follow my dreams and to strive for a destiny that I would be able to overcome simply because of my accustomed American attitude and privilege. 
   It was wrong for me to birth children before stabilizing a citizenship in one of our countries. It was wrong for me to bring babies into this world that have to be without a parent and to suffer the heartaches that a child should never have to endure.
My guilt…
    Fine lines are being drawn in this child’s play about who should be allowed to play tomorrow. Did I dare to take initiative that was not a part of the rules and hope for mercy from my playmates? It depends on who the players are.
    On a given day the American life was of fair rules to those who played by the rules. Now I am marked, because I am married to a Mexican.
I have forfeited my bloodline…
in the name of love.
Default the child's game to that of a woman’s need – to love who she is meant to.
It is in my blood.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Immigration Reform, the Mass Atrocity

       President Obama gave a speech today, April 23, 2012, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It reflected on the honoring of “the presence of men and women whose lives are a testament to the endurance and the strength of the human spirit -- the inspiring survivors” of the Holocaust.
     “For the Holocaust may have reached its barbaric climax at Treblinka and Auschwitz and Belzec, but it started in the hearts of ordinary men and women.  And we have seen it again -- madness that can sweep through peoples, sweep through nations, embed itself.”

 He spoke of the incidences of genocide across the world,
     “…they shock our conscience, but they are the awful extreme of a spectrum of ignorance and intolerance that we see every day; the bigotry that says another person is less than my equal, less than human.  These are the seeds of hate that we cannot let take root in our heart.”

       President Obama speaks of unfair killings and death across the world… but his words touch the part of me that has read of families suffering through immigration reform and the lack there of…
       "Never again" is a challenge to societies.  We’re joined today by communities who’ve made it your mission to prevent mass atrocities in our time.  This museum’s Committee of Conscience, NGOs, faith groups, college students, you’ve harnessed the tools of the digital age -- online maps and satellites and a video and social media campaign seen by millions.  You understand that change comes from the bottom up, from the grassroots.  You understand -- to quote the task force convened by this museum -- "preventing genocide is an achievable goal."  It is an achievable goal.  It is one that does not start from the top; it starts from the bottom up.”

       President Obama talks about his newly formed, first-ever White House position that would be dedicated to the task of preventing and responding to mass atrocities with the creation of the new Atrocities Prevention Board…
        “We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities... The board will convene for the first time today, at the White House.  And I’m pleased that one of its first acts will be to meet with some of your organizations -- citizens and activists who are partners in this work, who have been carrying this torch.”

       Education on qualifications of mass atrocity: http://www.operationbrokensilence.org/?p=6205

        Obama goes on to end his speech with a few words that to me, felt like he could see us sitting in our living rooms, knowing what we are all faced with and it was if he was saying it to us personally “I did not forget you… I am formulating a plan…”
        There is absolutely nothing that can diminish our truths of extreme atrocities watching our childrens' fathers ripped away as we the mothers feel our way through the darkness of legalities, money, forms, while raising our children. Couples to be separated under an iron fist lacking compassion or tolerance. These laws are neither the future, nor the past, but are an unnoticed atrocity of today...

Obama:
        “Even with all the efforts I’ve described today, even with everything that hopefully we have learned, even with the incredible power of museums like this one, even with everything that we do to try to teach our children about our own responsibilities, we know that our work will never be done. There will be conflicts that are not easily resolved.  There will be senseless deaths that aren’t prevented.  There will be stories of pain and hardship that test our hopes and try our conscience.  And in such moments it can be hard to imagine a more just world.  

        It can be tempting to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to man’s endless capacity for cruelty.  It’s tempting sometimes to believe that there is nothing we can do.  And all of us have those doubts.  All of us have those moments -- perhaps especially those who work most ardently in these fields. 

        So in the end, I come back to something Elie said that day we visited Buchenwald together.  Reflecting on all that he had endured, he said, "We had the right to give up."  "We had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity, in a world that has no place for dignity."  They had that right.  Imagine what they went through.  They had the right to give up.  Nobody would begrudge them that.  Who’d question someone giving up in such circumstances?  

        But, Elie said, "We rejected that possibility, and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future."  To stare into the abyss, to face the darkness and insist there is a future -- to not give up, to say yes to life, to believe in the possibility of justice.   

         To Elie and to the survivors who are here today, thank you for not giving up.  You show us the way.  (Applause.)  You show us the way.  If you cannot give up, if you can believe, then we can believe.  If you can continue to strive and speak, then we can speak and strive for a future where there’s a place for dignity for every human being.  That has been the cause of your lives.  It must be the work of our nation and of all nations.”



 ...If we keep on believing in family unity, if we do not give up, we can show them how human we really are.



Sunday, April 22, 2012

No advantages for the wrong way!

 “They should not get an advantage over those who do it the right way…”
Politicians have the power to make the country what it is and we assume that they are intelligent humans that are educated and perhaps have served some type of humanity internships along with many legal degrees. We assume that during these years of potential presidency preparation that somewhere in that journey that they would have gotten their hands dirty, served food to the homeless in some soup kitchen for a day or prepared graph charts for a class on why it is important to be concerned with a particular group’s welfare – the end result being a developed responsibility level for compassion…

Who does it the right way?
A bit hypocritical really-
IS that how you got to run for president?... the commander of all?... because you know what is best?...

The right way is to not separate families that were initiated because two people met while living daily under the protection of our government in our land.

What escapes the mouth and thoughts are the fact that now there are security and crazy nuts walking up and down the border actually looking for something to shoot at.

If giving those who have made it in “the wrong way” an advantage so to speak, gives the impression that this wrong way might be easier and may cause others to follow and not do it “the right way” that is really not looking at the fact that who in the hell would want to sneak in here now anyway?

In the long run the wrong and right ways are in the past tense, because there is actually a “no” way to do it now. Families are destroyed and no one seems to care…

Right, Mitt?
Be real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_rr6-CcOJPw

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Split Self

Life in two worlds
           Daily moods can interpret the dual life into two extremes. You may find me telling myself how lucky I am, how exotic and different and cultural, and what an opportunity of adventure that has escaped the boredom of monotony. The other hand holds the darkness of the insecurities, the failures that lie within the instability, the loss of control in decision of my own… Regardless, I am Sybil, the multi-personality deemed multi-cultured woman that happened this way from abuse of my freedoms, in spite of my freedoms, to split my entire life into two separate facets, in order to preserve thy self.
            Explaining my life is the difficulty, unless the specific questions are asked. For example, when I am in American I eat American food and when I am in Mexico, almost everything is accompanied with a warm tortilla and salsa. In it this subject can be detailed to the exacts of how the food is gathered, cooked and served or enjoyed – how much time it takes to prepare and what time of the day do meals take place. There are remarkably many differences in all aspects of food and how it is consumed between the two countries, but they both provide the same basic results of sustaining life. You eat and then digest.
             How I feel when I am in the States presently cannot be compared with my life when I was the cultural virgin, for that cherry is gone, along with the entire orchard. Life in the States has now been somewhat reduced, vacuum packed and freezer dried to be given longevity for future use. On the future visa-awarded holiday planned, that life will be thawed, heated, and prepared appropriately, releasing its aroma just as fresh as the day that it was stored… in theory. For now I sit on the internet with internet nets, pretending that I am living in this suspended state of self preservation.
              A bird in a cage at the window, watching life happen without me, afraid to go outside because I am in the town of los gatos and they are ready. Would Picasso find the ability to capture this hell? Who lives like this? Surely I know no one but us, and yet we are expected to carry on our normative societal standards of the community without interruption or alarm, because it hurts their ears to hear it… our fears. Few can understand what it is like to be stalked like prey, to have to run and hide and occasionally stand and fight... while raising children. As imagination can muster, the bravest warrior too becomes tired eventually from the constant flow of adrenalin and one day will expect an end to the battle. That end for me is resolution with immigration and is what webs the entirety of all the time warps into one drink of mixed poisons. When Ricardo is able to live in the USA, we can move away from my stalker ex husband, how much more clearly can that be stated.
               When I am in the States I dream fondly of Mexico… wanting to smell the sweet smells and the cry of sales and blows and whistles outside. I wish to hear the music and the people talking that I barely understand and find it easy to not try to. I find my mind living in Mexico in certain memories often, while in waiting deployment from the States. Maybe it was a drive up the mountain on our way to the park and I can replay it over and over in my head watching my husband’s confident smile from the passenger seat as he drives the children and I on our way to one of the greatest family adventures for the day, the kids laughing in the back of the van, the music on the radio, the windows down and the culture blowing in from the streets… I relive scenes of our life, of our time together, over and over and sometimes I feel as though I am actually there and not here. My mind can dwell for days in my home in Mexico, organizing my home décor, washing my clothes and folding Ricardo’s shirts and pants. I remember the broom, the mop, and the sink, and the smell of the soap and chloro in the buckets as I remove the polvo from our home, while preparing the meal that we will share that evening. Ricardo goes to work early and I kiss him with an I love you as I lock the door behind him and open that door when he knocks in the early afternoon. He bursts in like sunshine with a huge smile and arms out for the kids to jump in, every day. He hands me something, if it be roses or sunflowers, or a bag of sugar-cane, or warm tortillas… I am there with him in my mind, living in those memories. Every day that I am in the USA, I am in Mexico with my husband in my surroundings of my decorated home, living as it should be as a couple in love, equipped with the Snow-White song, and blue birds flying and squirrels jumping to partake in the fantasy.
          The door to the bird cage is left open next to the window, and instead of being devoured by the cats; I book a flight to Mexico. Naturally my whole self is engulfed with hormones of excitement to be soon reunited with him, my love, my prince of charmings, my husband and mate for the remaining days of our lives… the right arm returned, the parent to share in the accomplished growth in the shared perception of pride of the children. Off to Mexico we go as we pack our suitcases full of hopes of the best memory investments yet to come and all of the sudden I feel right again. The flow of blood returns to the corpse and would be the best time to ask me if I will organize your garage, basement and attic in just a couple days time as if I could harness the energy I could give electricity to a city. I am living again! I will soon be retuned to beautiful and undress from the costume that I wear while in the USA posing as the tired beat down woman in the robe with sunken eyes and greying hair in a bun – and metamorphism replaces her with the real me, the energetic, sexy, life loving me, the me that is supposed to be.
           AND then I have to say good-bye to my kids when I straddle the border and guilt finds itself another wrinkle to reside in. Although the anticipation does not fade, the responsibility and pressures grow, not overshadowing my need to be with my husband, but flexing my maternal instincts to repair the split life, condition and trim the ends – strive for a visa and hope for a home and a new beginning with a strong direction into contentment… in other words, to be normal.
           Mexico life is something that I have mastered, assimilated, culturally adjusted to... I cross the border and I exhale. Expectations have become normative standards; it becomes life and not a concept or postcard… with appreciation for more than the image. Never assuming that I am a Mexican, but holding my own self and where I come from with pride, I am the American in a strange land, with rosy colored shades. That comfort did not come without scars, without bumps and bruises, without a question to my ability to accept diversity in human existence. Left in the past like the innocence of youth are the emotional closures of loosing my own perfected customs of lifestyle. I am no longer a star status American in our town, but just another face that people recognize and are able to greet with questions about my personal life updates, and not to bother charging me more than they should at the stores and street vendors.
            Every minute is magnified in its appreciation when you know that there is not much time, and that is how we live now when we are in Mexico as opposed to before when it was assimilation. We are timed like mice in a maze, an experiment by the mad, to how well our hearts can uphold our sanity and our endurance for our marriage and parenthood. It is a sick experiment that surely the results go unrecognized. Conditioner is applied and the split becomes bearable… Ricardo grabs up my hand while we are walking down the sidewalk and in comparison, my own strong hand is dominated by yet a stronger hand, that of my husband…
            I love my days, my minutes, and my moments when I am with him in his country. I am beautiful in the mirror and in my being. Smiles and laughter and excitement rein the children and the television is suddenly not a staple in the day. We pile into the minivan and go – wherever, it never matters, because we are together, laughing and feeling life in our bodies. There is happiness in our marital bliss and our romantic passionate quarrels, we talk without talking, and we feel without touching, we know that we are a combined pair at those moments… not the solo sock that looks great but is useless without the other.
          Of course though, without a doubt, my children who are waiting in America for our return are in my mind all day, bumping off of my other thoughts that are circling around in my head, causing contradiction with the happiness because we are so far apart. Never has there been an ease in that, never a day that goes by without it, always the broken chain that could be really awesome if repaired.
          And then we have to say good-bye to Mexico and go back to the USA. Our residential timeline is a rollercoaster… we are living the life of split cultures, two residences, two homes, two places that are completely different in nature and attributes that are within the same life – Sybil, the dual-multi-split and then only to repress what is normal.
http://youtu.be/-Ko9nGrGtAY

Thank you government bodies for the opportunity to be a phenomenon, it’s hot.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

t i m e

           Today’s mail consisted of two letters.

    The kitchen was cleaned and dishes washed from this evening’s dinner of split-pea and ham soup that I made from the ham bone from our Easter ham two days ago, and I swiped up the letters off the table while my hands were still damp.

    My eyes focused on the addressee of the first letter from the Church:
                          “Mr. & Mrs. Ricardo Magana”
…and I let out a little whimper, a bitter-sweet emotional release…

     This was a new one for me, to see our marriage in official title name form like that.
It was a hope of a future as a family in the United States.
I smiled with a tear…
Stupid and silly, but nonetheless, it was precious at least, in this worn out life.

     Second letter was addressed from the hospital; I figured an unpaid bill from my recent visit…
Out fell a single ultra-sound photo of our late pregnancy, nothing more…
With no explanation or paper of description as to why it was mailed to me.

Appreciation of the little things  

Getting ready to call my husband as I do every night about this time – maybe I will tell him about it.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Painted photographs

     I noticed 13-year old Julian, my son, was with facial expressions that were new to his demeanor… not emotional differences or attitude, no… it was simple expressions, like the way that he held his chin with his thumb and forefinger or a certain way that he smiled – it was his father’s traits.
    Last night we were talking and I noticed it again, something hit me and I asked “Is there something secret that I should know about? Have you spent time with him?”
Mind you it has been like eight years…
     He stared right dead on at me and stuck his arm out with his cell phone in his hand. I said, “What is this about?” He told me to read it… so we sat together on the couch from to and read through all of the text messages and discussed them…
     What was there to discuss really, I mean it is a text… things like “I spent all afternoon fixing up your room” caught my eye of course. Like is that room for when you go live with him after he kills me or what exactly is the plan here?
     I have had to relive and repeat this story so many times today on the phone to the cops and abuse hotlines and God how many times in the past… to make it simple lets go over highlighted areas only:
    First thing comes to mind, I really could kick myself now for not taking up the offer when the shelter wanted to move the three of us and change our identity. They gave me a week to decide. I chose to stay and fight… noble but really not the best plan in the long run, obviously, because here I am again, 8 years later.
    Vengeance does not die until someone is dead, and yep I am still alive, the winner, the hated, the faulted, the walking investment of threats and thoughts of evil projections of strangling my neck or holding me against a moving tire or whatever form of torture suits him… perhaps that reoccurring dream that I have had for years would please him most… the one that I am in a parking lot and he comes walking over and shoots me. I have felt the bullets while sleeping through that dream many, many times… so I guess it is just a matter of time until it happens, till it becomes reality.
    Drama you say? Wish. It could not be that simple of course. He has stalked me for years. I guess I should have had a red flag when we were kids of 10 years and he pushed me down and jumped on me kissing me with me screaming underneath and a crowd of his friends and my friends standing around us. What was thought to be the boy next door crush turned out to be a sleeping with the enemy lifetime saga.
Owned.
Property.
    Living in Mexico was a blessing in that I was for the first time, not looking in my rear-view mirror to see if he was following me. I knew I was safe there, ironically… He would never go there or never find us, the ‘stupid bitch’ that he is.
    That is exactly what Ricardo called him once over the phone which promoted a chain reaction of death threats, car stealing, apartment stake out, police reports, overnight moving, and pulling the kids out of the school without saying goodbye – a suggestion from the abuse shelter to protect the other children and teachers – and being thrown into a new school under such precarious conditions as the “new children” with the secret issues… drama, sick of it.
    Our “case” was nothing short of a spotlight from a helicopter on a brawl in a crowd. There were at least half a dozen organizations with their hands rubbing all over the kids’ and my emotional break down, our fear, our panic.
     I can still remember every second of every luxurious moment. While living in the shelter I actually pushed a dresser in front of the door because I felt he would surely come busting in the door and kill us eventually. Our lives were on cameras at the ends of every hall, every parking lot, and meeting room… there were always 24 hour guards and gates, and questions and concerns and counseling a few times a week – all for over a year.
    I will never forget the little room I sat in across from the toughest personality of the 5 or so ladies that worked at the shelter. She was not tender and loving and comforting like the others. She was not trying to make friendly connections like a few of them did. She did not give out ego boosts or encouragement as I had received from all of the other ladies but her… then it was her and I who were to fill out the restraint order petition. I was a mess as I had to relive and describe at least a few abusive incidences that we could use to put on this paper for proof. So I used the time he threw me across the room in the chair that I was sitting in with Julian watching. I was calmly telling him that it was probably best that the kids and I leave to Pennsylvania because of his drug issues were causing us to be in an unsafe environment. He had recently locked the kids outside while I was visiting my grandfather in the hospital which incidentally died that day, because he was smoking crack with one of his hoochy mamas in the bathroom.
   This woman, this tough lady counselor, looked at me with all of my teary faced slobber going on, all broken and deranged, and she said “Do you have any idea what is normal anymore? Do you realize that you have no identity of your own? Do you know that the different things that you tell us are not how life is supposed to be?” I understood, but I was also feeling as though she did not know that I survived. Then she said, “You know what? The other girls and I were talking about you today and we see girls come in here all beat up with broken bones and all kinds of situations every day. You are the worst case we have seen in three years, we all agreed. You are a true blue abuse case.” I cried. I cried hard. Her words ring in my ears often.
   Three years prior to my stay at the shelter there was a story that was told of a woman who had children that the father killed on Christmas even because of court ordered visitation rights. He wrote her a letter from jail afterwards that told her that every time she would look in the mirror that she was to know that it was her fault that the babies were dead. It happened in the same city. I processed this as the case we were compared to.
    We didn’t take the change in identities because I was reluctant to give up WHO I WAS…Raquel, ‘the me’ side of me…
   There is a bit of irony in that in hindsight as I sit among my suitcase-dressers while my kids sleep on the floor next to me and my husband is in another country. What did I trade for our freedom and that possible new start? This?
    Yes, that is what I did because I wanted to be near my kids one day. And here we are tangled up in an immigration comedy skit with the brunt of the joke aimed directly at the kids and I – hardy har-har, how fucking hilarious!
     It was very important for the half a dozen government organizations to jump in and rescue us from dog breath and secure our safety at all costs, even offering to relocate us, wow. But now that I am married to my loving non abusive good parent Mexican, well fuck us right? Basically that is what it amounts to.
    All of the sudden the kids’ safety is not so important. So their education, health and whatever else the imagination can tack on there have been sacrificed – who the fuck cares.
    The government apparently only protects from psychotic American assholes when it comes to the American children… once the line has been crossed and their step father is not allowed to come to the beloved USA to protect them from the American asshole, lets just say it is “better for everyone if we just go live in Mexico” Right? Is this not the basic intention for our lives and for our safety?
    I am getting off track glory be, back to the present day and focus. I find out then that while I was on one of my “husband visits” with the babies for a month in Mexico, Julian established an ongoing “secret love affair” with this long lost turd of a man. Now I have to put my immigration issues aside and save my son, and the rest of us, from futher ruin.
   I told Ricardo last night on the phone about this new extra problem that we now face. Instantly he asked to speak to Julian. They talked for thrity minutes with Julian's tear streaming down his cheeks and many one word answers as Ricardo was speaking very fast on the other end. When the phone was handed back to me, Ricardo said a few things to me about how he felt. He is Julian's father. Ricardo has been Julian's father for most of his life and has done so with the best of parenting skills as a father. Now he is there and we are here and Julian is confused and we have a stalker and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that I can do about it all but "WAIT" some more, pretty LAME of my government with it's many "jump in to fix things up" organizations. WHERE are you all now?
   He has actually been picking him up and taking him places while he is out on his paper route... messaging him, and disregarding the restrait order or loss of parental rights. I do believe this constitutes a mini-kidnapping. Would I want a stranger taking my child places without me knowing about it? Certainly not. But what about a man who has threatened our lives and who has blood given influence over curiousity of my children who are stuck in this shitty immigration world of loss with the silver tongue of false promises.
All in the name of winning his loss back - the man he used to be... the God.
   I tell him, do you realize how much I would welcome some help in parenting? I mean do a reality check here. I would benefit greatly if I had more help. Buy the kids some things, take them on vacations and get them out of the house, great! As a matter of fact, this summer I would like to go see my husband in Mexico, but the kids don’t want to go and quite frankly I don’t have all that money for 5 tickets. If they had another parent to stay with would not that be the perfect set up for me?
   I do not take that “option” because it is not an option.
I will not sacrifice my children. He is a psychotic on paper, a soul owner and an identity thief. They will cease to exist as themselves once he gets to weasel in because they will become his puppets and they will be lost. No way
   The room he is building for my son apparently is for after he kills me, which has been promised on several occasions.
   This threat coming from a man who has been involved in 3 murders that he has told me about in drug or alcohol induced moments… a man who had to have his tendons sewn back together up his forearm which is scared like a cat-post. This is a man who has between three to ten arrest records in 6 or 7 different states each on the eastern coast…
   He is going to figure it out soon. I am either going to die, or be in for a huge ride, or another overnight move or something… I am so numb that I cannot even find the energy to imagine it, I don’t want to tonight.
    I just want my life back and my husband here and enough is enough already. I may consider moving back to Florida while we wait out the next however many YEARS till the waiver shit is finished. So fed up with all of this STUPIDITY you cannot even imagine!
Well if he kills me, it’s been real. Please make sure Ricardo gets his kids back.