I still cook, but lately I’ve been bad about writing updates about it since my dishes doesn’t have anything remarkable. I’ll go back to that soon, but first there’s something I need to get off my chest… actually, off my face actually.

Back in Ecuador, the place I usually refer as ‘the homeland’ I dealt very badly with the transition from the trusting child to a mostly loner teenager to a rather hostile adult. My approach to adult life, with its cruel and cold situations was to pretend to be angry all the time. This resulted in me actually being angry all the time. All I wanted was solace, all I wanted was to hook into the internet and lose myself into a chatroom. Real life didn’t appeal to me at all, nor did human interaction.

It resulted in basically this very ill tempered, stressed out and rather hostile personality that I’ve referred in the past as the mask. I always, always thought that the day that I moved away from home, away from Ecuador and away from everyone I had ever known, I could just throw it away and finally be me again.

But the mask didn’t come off easily… because I was becoming it more and more every waking moment. Some days, specially those lived during my years in Mexico and my time in the Alliance Française helped. There was a chance for me to be happy. I just needed to go away where I could start again.

And then Canada happened, and Montreal happened and finally I landed my first job. It was joyous. I took my first step in making friends. I took a lot of steps and made quite a few good ones. But then… as work’s busiests and most difficult days showed me, the mask was still there and I snapped at someone.

I almost lost it all then. I somehow had to pull myself together and make it back. My supervisor saved my hide and for that I am forever grateful, but it took a while to gain trust back. And I’ve realized that I had became this mask… and just like that Jim Carrey movie I had to rip it off and discard it – not to reveal the boring guy beneath it, but the happy one.

There’s more or less some aspects about myself that I will always have to work on. Stress. Loneliness. I don’t want to say depression, but perhaps that’s there too. Gladly, I have something of a life to look forward to and to smile about.

I actually confessed something to my sister in Boston. It wasn’t Ecuador that needed to change, it was me. I had to leave to become myself again. I don’t think I could’ve done that there. I think because of that, because of somehow having the life I enjoy was that I could really peel the mask off. There’s bits and pieces that come back once in a while, but now I know I can be happy and I know I can enjoy my life without being that person.

Thanks for listening, sis.

That will do for now.