Immoral Matriarch: Catechizer

Prologue

My name is María. I’m twenty four years old which I realized long ago is old as dirt. I have two daughters that my sweetly monotonous life revolves around. Bella is my oldest, she’s four soon to be five. Goobie is my baby, she’s three.

I was born in Compton, California to a 19 year old black girl from South Central Los Angeles and an undocumented Mexican immigrant father. I was raised by my maternal grandparents in between North Carolina and New York. I left home at 17 years old and decided to try my hand at self sufficiency, which I did nicely by means legal* but unmentionable according to my grandmother.

I’m a high school drop out that fell back in after years those years of ignorant independence. I enjoy writing, and would love to do it for a living, but I’m petrified of that. Doing it for free is the only way it’s enjoyable for me. When someone is paying you, there’s pressure, and I don’t handle pressure very well. I know from the few articles I’ve written. What I’m going to get my degree in, I’m not sure. Creative Writing or English sounds good to me, but I don’t think it’s the path I should take. I have too many responsibilities to attempt to live my life as a broke writer. I’m afraid of the real world, and since career student isn’t really a feasible option, I’ll have to remedy all of that soon.

I’m separated, and I believe my marriage has come to an end. I was with J. for over six years, off and on. It was rocky before it started. When I started this blog I stayed at home with the girls and reveled in monotonous domesticity while he worked managing a grocery store close by. We had a comfortable life, built upon a dangerously unstable relationship, and had the potential to be so much more and so much better than we were, but it was never realized. I’m not going to play the blame game. The fault lies where it falls. I really don’t give a fuck enough to dwell on it.

Now I’m single. It’s echoing off of the walls, can you hear it?

I smile so much that no one ever suspects that I’m a perpetually unhappy person. I laugh freely but rarely genuinely and I have to consciously ensure that pessimism doesn’t consume me. Maybe because of that, my goal in life is to make sure my children are as happy and carefree as they can be for as long as they are able. I have been told that I think too much and that I think too quickly. I’m unwittingly humorous and easily trusting. I’m compassionate and generous. I’m a realist and a daydreamer. I hope that you learn to at least appreciate what it is I’m best at, and that’s ruminating ingenuously, without fail and to a fault.

11 months ago, I was in a very different place than I am now as far as my ‘real life’. Well, not that different, but pretty different.  I don’t know what path this blog will take now because of these changes, but I know I don’t want it to be a negative, whiny, woe-is-me one. Hopefully, I’m able to maintain the nonchalant, bitchy, few holds barred type of thing that it was before. We shall see…

-María [updated December 2008]

*in some countries

Since starting this blog in January 2008 I’ve ‘created my own niche‘, spoken at BlogHer ‘08: San Francisco, been fucking loved,   quoted in the BBC & by Women’s eNews, pictured in The New York Times [stop laughing!], featured on Five Star Friday & Good Mom/Bad Mom, listed as one of the Top 50 Mom Blogs, and that’s just the beginning. It’s business time.