So, here I am. I am THE voice. I majored in communication in college, I taught communication 101. I have a voice. And now? I am speaking. So, let’s catch up a bit on the last, oh, 10 years.
I’ve had jobs. I’ve had friends. A few friends have died in the last year which was an awakening and heart-breaking at the same time. I left Seattle in 2011 or 2010 I can’t even remember, to move to Albuquerque (ABQ), New Mexico, to be with a man I was dating long-distance. He couldn’t move to Seattle due to having a child, so I said it’s now or never, and I moved to ABQ. The relationship didn’t work out but I stayed in ABQ for about 6-months longer, to make it MY experience; to leave still with some amount of love (no, it was just OK) for ABQ. Of course, that meant I had to create my own life here, even for just 6-monhts. The fun part about this (this is a big factor in what’s going on inside me now, you’ll get it, keep reading) was the apartment I was living in was leaking water from the roof. They pretended it wasn’t but with a giant patch of green on my bedroom ceiling, and ruined electronics in the living room, AFTER being “fixed”, that was not a good look. I had to move to a different place just for the 6 months. Good times. But in all of that, I found a woman who taught me reiki, which had been on my “list” for years. She’s a shaman and an incredible soul. She asked me what I was doing next and I told her I was going to leave ABQ and somehow get to Europe. That I wanted to be an English teacher. Turned out her daughter was going to Prague to get her teaching certificate, to do the same thing. WHAT?! So, I moved back to Seattle, and decided that 4 months later, I would head to Prague. To get my TEFL (teach English as a foreign language) Certificate, and then of course I was going to manifest a job in Thailand. I packed literally for Thailand. Didn’t happen. I couldn’t go back to the states and then go to Thailand so I had to figure it out. I opened up to my second option which I didn’t even know it was an option then: Turkey. I had a couple of contacts in the states from there and 5 minutes after reaching out to one in Turkey, I got an email that pretty much said, “When will you be here?” Ohhhhhh wow. Ok. So. I went to Istanbul a few weeks later. ISTANBUL. Turkey. Right.
I ended up staying in Istanbul for almost 5 years. I’m not even sure what to say about that time in this post; quite frankly, it was THE time of my life. Other than college, this was my life. I loved it. I hated it. It was so difficult. A lot of people couldn’t handle it for even 6 months. But for me? It was the biggest challenge of my life. And I LOVED it. And hated it. Did I mention that? It was hot. It was 20-million-people-in-my-face-every-day crowded. Syria is its neighbor. Imagine how many people made it to Istanbul from the far east border. Gezi Park and the conflicts that erupted there, and happened every year. The political situation and their prime minister who changed everything just to make himself president. The paperwork. The armed police literally everywhere, with machine guns. The food. The smells. The friends I met there. The lovers. The passion. The heat. The islands. Being surrounded by water. I can go on and on. And I can also make a huge list of the atrocities and absurdities of the everyday life there. Istanbul will be for mentioned in so many upcoming post; it’s hard NOT to talk about it, so more later.
I was an awesome English teacher; I started at a private course and worked there for about a year and a half. Then moved on to one-on-one courses where I would travel to peoples’ homes or offices; this was big money and a lot of work but was pretty great. I ended up teaching English at Istanbul university, the oldest, most respected school in the country. A bunch of 18-year olds trying to learn English. Imagine that!!! Holy lord, that was not always easy. But I still have friends from there, and friends all over Turkey; I would still be there had I not chosen to come back to the states.
So, fast forward to the end of my time there, July 2016. I woke up with a killer headache, resting just over my left eye. It was weird. I knew it was. It was hot out; July in Istanbul, good grief. It was humid as well. I was on my way to a private lesson, that’s what I did in the summers to supplement my income, and this was my favorite girl, Yaprak. She was 10 and we loved each other. I was on the bus, thinking about the next few weeks: ‘go to Croatia in a couple of days, move apartments when I get back, and then mom is coming and she will be here for 6 weeks. Ok, if I’m still feeling this headache after Croatia, I’ll go to the hospital.’ At that very moment, something kicked in: my INTUITION. I guess I just knew that I couldn’t do that. I called Yaprak’s mom and told her I needed to go to the hospital. Immediately. And I did. During that time, I was also feeling a little strange on the right side of my body: my arm was going numb. And a couple of times I felt that I actually couldn’t speak English; that I would try to say something and it did NOT come out as I planned. So, I ended up at the public hospital. In Istanbul. You can’t even imagine what this was like. I called 2 of my girlfriends and they met me there.
We were there for hours. I spoke Turkish. Well, I spoke SOME Turkish. But I’m not a doctor, I don’t know medical terminology, and in turkey, when people are stressed, they are LOUD. Well, they’re always loud. But in this hospital, I looked normal and people were pushing me out of the way. It was crazy. We were there for hours, like 10-12 hours. They sent me outside to walk here and there with an IV IN MY ARM. At the end of the night, 12:00am, they called us into the room.
The man looked at me very clearly and just said, “you have a brain tumor.”
I just sat there. I looked at my friends, and I said nothing. What the fuck is a brain tumor, I’m wondering. The girlfriends started asking questions, and I just stayed silent. The doctor was very clear and very worried, acting like I needed to have it operated on RIGHT NOW. I asked him to take out the IV, he asked if I was sure, I said YES.
2 days later, my mother arrived, just after the biggest international airport had an enormous shooting inside of it. She had to pay a fortune. But she had to get there.
2 weeks later, I was in the hospital after choosing a surgeon that said he would need to do the surgery while I was awake. I didn’t know what that meant, but that was the reason I chose HIM.
They cut my head open from the top of my ear (temple area) in a giant curved C-shape, to the top of my forehead. They removed the tumor but didn’t do any of it while I was awake because it was too risky; they took out 95% but said the remaining 5% was on my speech area (Boca’s center) and that it is a slow-growing tumor that I’ve probably had for 10-15 years. If it comes back, they will just cut it out again! It was NOT cancer, they did NOT recommend chemo or radiation, they just said get it checked out in 3 months, you’re good to go! I was in the hospital for a week and the night after the surgery, there was an attempted coup at the LITERAL foot of my bed; on the end of the Bosphorous Bridge, which I could see from my room. We thought we were either getting bombed (because YES, again, the neighboring country was Syria and YES, there was a bomb that landed just near the building I taught in) or there was an earthquake but all I knew was I had NO idea what was going on and nobody told us. Again, good times. 5 days later the English-speaking crew appeared in my room telling me that oooooohhhh no, that was NOT a coup! Uh-huh, you’re insane. But whatever.
The 2nd day after my surgery, I had decided what I was going to do: go to visit my friend in Cape Town, South Africa, and then go back to the states. Go back to the states to HEAL, I said, even though I figured this shit had been taken OUT of my head so it’s never coming back (!) but more importantly, to go back to school. I had been working with a practitioner in ABQ before and in the time, I had been gone, she and her sister started a program for exactly what I wanted and have wanted to study for YEARS: NATURAL MEDICINE and all the things that go with it: energy work, exercise, whole foods, supplements, essential oils and chakras and the list went on. Yep. Sign me up.
So, I did. And 3-months later, I returned to the states. 9 suitcases full to the brim. I made it to Seattle, where I’m from, stayed there for 6 weeks, and then started down the west coast driving to Bend, Oregon to see some old and VERY dear friends. Then, I made it to California where my parents were, staying with them and meeting some of their new friends. Just after Christmas, I started to drive BACK to ABQ (which, mind you, I did not like at all the first time I was there but I was determined to make it MINE this time and I was ok with it!). Headed to Denver, Colorado for New Year’s Eve with another very dear, old friend, and then, back to ABQ for school to start the first weekend in January, 2017.
Now, I’m sorry, but I still HATE ABQ, but I made it here for a reason: school. All that went well until about April, when I started having these seizures again. So much to say about all of this as this is where I’m at right NOW – being an advocate for myself when the allopathic (Western) doctors just want me to have chemotherapy AND radiation when I don’t even have CANCER. To this I say: WHAT THE FUCK are you talking about?! I haven’t finished school yet but I will, but I have a firm principle of NO chemicals in ANY form in my body!!! So right now, I am hunting, asking, praying for guidance, and it might not be found in New Mexico. This blog is now, my forum – not just for my health situation, but for so many other things! But I will write more about this whole process, just not right now.
For now, I just wanted to re-introduce myself! I know you and some of you I’m sure I don’t! So, welcome to my land! My life! My stories, journeys, adventures, hard times and the best times! Please SUBSCRIBE to this! Share it with your friends! There might be a morsel of goodness in here that will stick with you or someone else. I’m happy to have you here but more than that, I’m happy to be “back”.
I’m the voice. The voice with a CHOICE. And here is where we talk about that. Blessings and love to you today, and to me too!
