In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, I’ve decided to share with everyone this little gem that I found on my computer.
This webisode was shot back in 2012 in collaboration with my great friends Jenni Ruiza, Maribeth White and William Carabano.
Go on and check it out and have a laugh on me.
Monday.
Difficult for many; but a brand new beginning for others. For me however, it just feels like my life is in slow motion. As if my thoughts were still buffering.
And then I realize that there is just not enough coffee in the world to make me function correctly.
On the other hand, I’m just grateful to be alive so I really shouldn’t complain.
But truthfully, I just want to take Bruno Mars’ advice and not do a damn thing.
Here’s to coffee, buffering and surviving Mondays!
-Ori
Last night I had a dream. Honestly, it felt more like a nightmare.
I was somewhere having a great time; drinking, laughing, sharing with my friends. And then I looked up.
There they were; every single man I’ve ever given my heart to. All of them, just staring at me.
And it was at that very second that I wondered whose arms I would run and fall into, in this room filled with all of the men I ever loved?
-Ori
Make me fall in love.
Tell me how close to God you are when you speak about your children.
Make me fall in love.
Allow me to tell you about the stars we’ve seen together in this life and the last.
Make me fall in love.
Remind me of the time we basked passionately in each other’s presence.
Make me fall in love.
I want to make you feel like I did the first time I stared deeply into your eyes and saw eternity.
Make me fall in love.
Make me remember the time we went to the moon and stared at the Universe from the highest point imaginable.
Make me fall in love.
Tell me about the time you loved me so deeply that the ocean felt jealous of our enormity.
Make me fall in love.
Sit here with me and embrace me as if this were the last time.
This way I’ll never stop falling in love.
-Ori
“I Lived” by OneRepublic came blaring through my headphones as I was sitting on the “A” train on my way to work this morning. I’ve heard this song a million times before, but today it was different. This morning I actually listened to what the song was saying, instead of just bopping my head to the music. Today, I remembered just how much I lived this past year.
2014 was very good to me. I remember going into it not knowing what to expect, just feeling real nonchalant about my life. That should have been my very first clue that last year was about to surprise the heck out of me; that 2014 was about to change me for the better.
I fell in love last year. Unconditional, unrestricted, over-the-moon-type love. The kind of love that makes you question what your perception of love was before. The type of love that makes you feel full, even when you haven’t eaten all day. I think I lost count of how many nights I didn’t sleep because I couldn’t get my heart to slow down or keep my brain from thinking about my beloved. Unfortunately, like a lot of love stories, mine was short-lived. Some loves just aren’t built to stand the test of time (or a very demanding Dominican woman.) Alas, I’m not sad it ended, if anything I’m happy it happened. I’m glad that for the very first time in years I remembered what it felt like to love someone other than myself. For a moment in time, I felt that consuming, bittersweet tango between lovers that I never thought I’d ever feel again.
2014 also taught me that it was ok to outgrow people. People you loved (or you may still love), people you counted on, people who were once an intricate part of your life; it’s perfectly fine to let them go. We are meant to evolve, to grow and sometimes people in our lives keep us from being who we’re meant to be. This isn’t to say that they do it on purpose; a lot of people can’t see they’re holding you back from greatness. The problem is that these people already love you so much; that they could never imagine you being anything different than what you already are. I’ve learned to keep these people in my heart, but not in my life.
So I vowed to myself that 2015 would be different. I promised myself I would travel because no one has ever discovered the world just through the world-wide web. I’m making a conscious decision to take risks because I’m worth it. And I’m going to start loving again, because I’ve realized that it IS better to love and lose, than to not love at all.
This year, again, I will live.
-Ori
I reminisce.
I reminisce about that night.
You came crashing down on my Earth like a meteor and touched my core
Hands moving like rivers across my body
The suffocating scent of lust filling the room like a warm Summer breeze.
I reminisce.
Kisses on my neck touching down like Spring rain
The taste of your honey still lingering on my lips
Passion so deep that oceans would be jealous
The thoughts of you caressing my mountains still makes my waterfall flow.
I reminisce.
Legs spreading like the Red Sea so you could make your way past them
Hands on the arch of my back as if it were the bridge connecting your soul to mine
My eyes only opening so I could stare at forever in yours
All while you roamed every square inch of my countryside.
I reminisce.
Thunder running down my spine as I felt the thrust of your waves hitting my shores
The earthquake you caused beneath me led me to exhaustion
As I collapsed onto the ever expanding continent on your chest
For a single second, we were one.
But now as quickly as you’ve arrived, you have left
And all I can do is effortlessly reminisce.
-Ori
Yesterday I broke a mirror at work. I went to go put a dirty menu away in our coat check room and without noticing, I slid the mirror off the table it was on. The lights were off but as soon as I heard the shattering noise, I knew it sounded like something I was going to be picking up shortly.
As I bent down to start cleaning the mess I had just created, I started remembering of that old “breaking mirrors” superstition. As I gently picked up the bigger pieces first, I wondered if I could possibly be staring into 7 years of bad luck to come. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve been going through a bad luck streak lately because things have been pretty great, but for the last few weeks, I have been in a slump that I’ve been trying ever so desperately to get myself out of.
Before I was done picking up all of the bigger pieces, I heard someone say “Excuse me Miss…” It was one of our customers. I didn’t know his name but he was tall, impeccably dressed and had hair that reminded me of John Stamos circa “Full House”. For a moment I forgot all about the mirror on the floor and floated off to fantasy land. As I was halfway to a Caribbean destination with him in my daydream, he said: “My coat is right behind you. Would you mind passing it to me?” Sigh. That sobered me up real quick. So I passed him the coat and he left, but not before tipping me $3. I suppose that if none of my goals come true, I have a promising future in coat checking.
So I went back to picking up my mirror. I picked up every last piece, swept the floor and put the debris in a plastic bag and threw it in the garbage. I think what happened next is what therapists like to call “The Breakthrough”. I realized that some relationships are like broken glass, it’s better to leave them broken than to harm yourself putting them back together. Maybe that’s why I’ve been in this slump recently, I’m trying to mend what I can’t.
I went back to the hostess desk and quickly replayed what’s been going on in my life the last few weeks. Then and only then, was that I noticed that the worst moments in my slump were triggered by the same group of people. Now I realize that it’s time to cut ties. The last time I had an energy sucking vampire in my life, I cut her off and life has never been better. So why am I allowing others to merely substitute this person as the bane of my existence?
Enough.
My mother always says that when something around you breaks, it’s because it absorbed a negative energy that could’ve caused a greater harm later on. So maybe my broken mirror isn’t a sign of bad luck at all, maybe it’s a sign that I need to pick up the pieces to the relationships in my life and just do away with the rest. When you’re done trying to fix things, it’s best to just let go, regardless of how strong the bond was once upon a time. After all, even if you did succeed in putting the mirror back together again, you wouldn’t be able to see yourself as clearly as before, would you?
-Ori
If you know me, you know how much I love my shoes. They are a staple in my life and quite frankly, I think my friends should jump out of bushes and sit me down for an intervention every time I walk into a shoe store. However, As much as I love my ever growing shoe collection, this weekend as I was rearranging my closet, I stumbled onto a problem that I’ve never had before.
Have you ever loved something so much that reminded you of someone you hated? Ok, hate is a strong word; more like disliked, abhorred, despised…I’m sure you get my point by now. Well, it’s not so much that I hate anyone in my life, but many of the shoes that I came across in my closet this weekend did remind me of relationships that have gone south and people who have since been removed from my life. The worst part is, that the shoes that remind me of those people are actually some of my favorites.
I know that to many of you this problem seems trivial, but we all have certain things in our lives that we love and cherish, although they may not remind us of the best people or of the best times, but maybe just of the best memories we had at the time. For you, it may be a photograph that you hide, or a movie stub of a film you saw, which you might’ve hated but loved the person you went to go see the movie with. Or it could simply be a cologne or perfume, which you no longer like because it reminds you of a person who was once in your life, someone who’s not there now and you can no longer tolerate the scent, regardless of how delicious it may smell.
As often as I think of sex (and we know that’s way too often), this situation with my shoes gets even worse as many of the pairs I have were given to me by a few of my ex’s. I assure you that the last thing I need is to go on a hot date with an even hotter man and when he compliments my sexy pumps, I say: “Oh yeah, my ex and I had hot, sweaty, monkey sex in these” (Ok, I wouldn’t say that to begin with….at least not without four or five drinks in my system, but you know what I mean). The same thing applies when I’m sharing wonderful moments with my friends and the people I love and then I look down and see that the pair of stilettos on my feet were gifted by someone whom I can barely stand anymore. As much as I hate to admit it, I do become overwhelmingly melancholic when that realization happens.
It’s wonderful to hold onto a retentive memory. As humans, we feed off of that energy in order to cope and survive. But what happens when the memory you have isn’t necessarily a good one? And worse, what do you do when the thing that’s causing you to remember that hurtful memory is something you love? It’s hard to disassociate from a memory regardless of how hard we try. In some cases, it’s impossible and we never triumph in actually forgetting. But I’m slowly learning that maybe I can’t and shouldn’t be trying to forget those memories at all. Think about it: memories come from experience and experience is what makes us stronger, wiser and less likely to commit the same mistakes again.
So the next time I jump in my pumps, strap on my stilettos or parade in my peep-toes, I’ll remember that my shoes can only help me move into the future and not step back into my past and that’s where my memories, good or bad, should always remain.
-Ori
I’m broken. Truth is that I’ve been broken for a very long time now.
Many of my friends and my readers have asked me why I haven’t posted any new blogs and I have a list of excuses that I constantly give people as to why:
“I have two jobs now”
“I’m the Queen of Procastinationville”
“Adulthood sucks and has taken over my life”
While most of these aren’t really excuses because Lord knows that I really am the reigning monarch of Procrastinationville, the honest truth is that most of the posts I have drafted are very personal and raw. Now, I know that the blog is called “Ori With A Story”, so you’re probably saying to yourself “duh! it HAS to be personal. It’s your damn story” but the truth is that as a writer, as honest as I’d like to be with my audience, I also don’t want to have to sell my soul to my readers. Some things you just want to keep to yourself.
In the last few months I have been battling my own set of demons and the fight is far from over. I am a work in progress (probably will be until the day I die) and as much as I’d like to hide them by always having a smile on my face and a good attitude to boot, there are days where I fall into a self-induced depression and I let the demons win. I get tired of fighting them, it’s draining.
While I won’t go into detail about what my demons are in this post, I have made the conscious decision to start documenting them from now on right here, in front of the world. I figure that if I’m going through many of these issues, then many of you out there are going through similar experiences and at the very least if I can’t help myself, then maybe I can help someone else through their struggle.
I repeat: I’m NOT perfect. It’s actually pretty frightening how imperfect I am, but I’m working on making life a little better for myself every day. I’m scared, I’m insecure sometimes, I’m stubborn, I’m vindictive and I feel like the older I get, the more jaded I become. But at least I’m honest with myself about it and that’s the first step.
Not to worry, all of my posts will not be this dark and twisty, but just know that if you’re going through something difficult in your life right now, you’re not alone in your struggle. Just remember to be kind to others, as we’re all fighting a pretty tough battle.
-Ori
About 3 weeks ago I was in the elevator with my little neighbor (about 8 or 9 years old) and his grandfather. When we reached the lobby, my little neighbor was about to run out of the elevator and his grandfather stopped him and said in Spanish “Wait a minute, ladies go first”. This morning, once again I shared the elevator with my little neighbor but this time he was there with his mom and little brother. When we got to the lobby, his little brother (around 4 or 5 years of age) was going to get out of the elevator first when my neighbor holds him back and says “no Carlitos, the girls always get off first” =D
Gentlemen aren’t born, they are raised. Teach your kids the right things, and the rest will hopefully fall into place. Fads come and go, but good manners are never out of style.
– Orisel
OriWithAStory 