Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

give it to this quack.
    I left his office in stunned silence, and $130 lighter. At that point, I had lost all hope. There seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel, unless, of course, it was just a bunch of glowworms.
    I N THE MEANTIME, I WAS becoming increasingly disturbed over my inability to appreciate the life I had. I may have been living a lot of people’s dreams out in sunny California, but it didn’t seem to be mine. I was that square peg hopelessly hoping to suddenly fit into that round hole. But it wasn’t happening, and I hated myself for that.
    It was doubly tough, because despite my reputation as the life of the party, there is a part of me, deep down inside, that’s really a homebody. There is nothing I love more than snuggling up in my own space, surrounded by my own stuff. But this wasn’t my own space, and this wasn’t my own stuff.
    I’m a treasure keeper, just like my mom. We both need to have familiar things around us. She kept everything—all my teeth, my drawings, my crummy report cards. She would have kept my fingernail clippings if my dad had let her. Me, I’m more of the souvenir type, filling home after home with memories of the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. So when an electrical fire destroyed her house in Michigan during my stay in Afghanistan, my mother and I were both devastated. Thank goodness she and Noah, who was living with her at the time, got out unharmed. But she had everything in that house—my first rocking chair, my dad’s pipe, my old prom dresses, our family photos, my kids’ baby books—most of it gone. And my stuff ? My home was going to be in Kabul, so being who I was, I had found a way to have a bunch of my things thrown into a shipping container, and nine months later it arrived at my door. Every trip to Michiganinvolved lugging back at least one extra suitcase crammed with more of my little treasures. I can only guess where all that stuff is now. I’m sure Sam has given away or sold most of it. I did see a photo on Facebook of the wife of one of his friends, a woman in Kabul, wearing my pashmina scarf and the blue dress made from fabric I bought in Turkey. I remember that woman complimenting me on that outfit once. In the photo, I could see she was even wearing the gold filigree earrings Sam had once given me.
    Now, after having everything ripped out from under me in Kabul, an obsession with homelessness was beginning to gnaw at me. The nightmare of my mom’s fire, memories of not being able to get my hands on the last photos ever taken of my dad, it seemed to be all crashing down on me. But it was clear that it was about more than just losing my possessions; it was about losing control of my life. I was no longer in charge of my own fate. My home had become a symbol of that. And trying too hard to make somebody else’s home my own was turning into a disaster.
    On top of that, as strange as it sounds, even though I still longed for the craziness of Kabul, here in peaceful, safe Napa my fears just kept getting worse. A beautiful display of fireworks at a family graduation ceremony left me shaking uncontrollably. A trip across the Bay Bridge became a nightmare when I found myself driving the off-ramps in circles, unable to find my way out. So when I was invited to tag along with Mike on a trip to Oregon to pay a visit to a sick relative, I jumped at the chance for a diversion. Maybe a change of scenery after a couple of months on top of that hill would be just what I needed to yank me out of my dark place.
    The entire family was aware of my situation and treated me gingerly, doing their best to include me in conversations with the folks coming in and out to share what would probably be their final good-byes with Aunt Joan. But I found myself petrified that someone would talk to me, ask me what I did for a living or about what I had been doing in Afghanistan. And as much as Afghanistan was all I really wanted totalk about, inevitably it would