I am very conflicted about how to approach this section of my story in Belize. Between the Super Bowl party and Valentine’s Day earlier this year I chose to end my marriage with Will. I don’t want to go in to any detail about the events that week and I’m not sure that I want to write about any part of it at all. Even though the decision was made by me, the months that have followed have been a period of my life full of pain and learning. I have realized a lot about myself in the last nine months. The pain comes from grasping the reality that my life as I knew it for the last 10 years dramatically shifted in a new country where I hardly knew anyone to draw emotional support from. Suddenly my family – especially my mom who was the only one here with me at the time – became immensely important, more important than ever before in my adult life. It was also extremely hard to feel sad about the transition without feeling guilty that I was the one who broke off the relationship and therefore shouldn’t have the right to feel sad. I had to come to grips with the fact that I needed to be able to feel distressed about the situation or I wouldn’t be able to move past it. Immediately I felt numb from being responsible for hurting someone so much, it wasn’t something I was used to doing and in fact was part of the whole problem. I was so worried about causing pain that I let a relationship continue on that I wasn’t happy with and instead of confronting the situation I hid behind a fabricated sense that I was doing the right thing by not making waves. So instead, I became bitter about the issues within our relationship by letting them simmer below the surface. My first lesson after all this was that I had to force myself to confront any issues that I have head on despite being uncomfortable doing so. My own happiness was dependent upon that – just because something is comfortable does not mean it’s the best situation for your life.
Being in Belize made me see clearly how different I had become from the person I was ten years ago. The biggest realization was that I had lost my individual self over the past years, or maybe I had just stopped looking. Somehow placing myself in completely new surroundings, far away from any comfort zone I knew back in Oregon, forced me to realize how unhappy I actually was. It became so abundantly clear that I was not able to fool myself any longer. So I made a dramatic decision and after the initial shock I promised myself that I would push my limits as much as opportunity would allow. If I was going to make such a dramatic choice then it seemed to be horribly irresponsible to continue to live in a comfort zone. I was excited to be in Belize for this new chapter of my life because I was going to be completely stripped of any familiarity which seemed to make it a bit easier.
It was slightly ironic to me that Valentine’s Day was coming up in a week and of course, since we owned a restaurant, we would be throwing a Valentine’s Day party. I was not in the mood to say the least. Valentine’s Day had never been a particularly important day to me so this year I really wasn’t in the mood but we set up a table for just our friends and then other romantic-type tables for the couples who would come in. We put a special pasta dinner on the menu and played love songs in the background all night. A few bottles of wine later the party at Scotty’s was over and my mom and I, along with a couple friends went to a local night club to check out the scene there. Overall we did really well at the restaurant that night but I was very happy when the day was over.
So a new chapter of my life started up February of this year and I had no idea what the future would hold or what emotions would come up as a result.
It’s been a crazy few days for me here in Belize for multiple reasons. It’s been a very telling week as far as the state of my divorce – I recently received a very nasty email from Will and I know his intention was to hurt me with his words but instead it gave me reassurance that our relationship was not right. I was so tempted to post his email on my blog as some weird therapeutic thing but I have decided against it because I’m not so sure what that would actually accomplish. That being said it is a sad thing to realize how much hate he has for me right now considering our history together. All I can do at this point is to live my life so that’s what I’ll continue to do – and there has been a lot to do in the last few days.
Corozal Carnival
There is a carnival happening in Corozal this week – well, it started last week and is continuing through this week. It’s a big deal that there is a huge Ferris wheel in the back drop of the town so despite my absolute fear of Ferris wheels I knew I had to ride this one. In the spirit of stepping outside my comfort zone I convinced my mother to walk over there with me after we closed the bar on Sunday night. I couldn’t think about it too much otherwise I would have chickened out so we got over there and I wanted to get on right away before my brain convinced me otherwise. My mom wasn’t feeling it though so she tried to persuade me to watch it first and then go on – I knew if I did this I would lose my riding partner and possibly my own nerve so I drug her in line. We got our seats in bucket number 6 and they locked the bar over our laps – now there was no going back. My heart was racing a bit – I know how ridiculous it sounds to be afraid of such a silly thing and I really can’t explain it because I love all other amusement park rides, there’s just something about this one. We slowly moved up as the attendants let people out and replaced them along the wheel – soon enough we were at the top and still at a snail’s pace waiting for the ride to reload. I have to say the view of Corozal was pretty – there are not many places to get that kind of view around town so I was trying to appreciate it. Then it happened – the wheel started to move faster and faster and my whole body involuntarily turned cold.
It had been years since I had been on one of these things and I don’t know if I just couldn’t remember how fast they go or if they actually go faster in Belize but, wow, we were moving. My hands were drenched and my stomach was doing little flips. I was trying really hard to have fun though because my mom was freaking out next to me. She was looking over at me with absolute dread in her eyes as we accelerated – I had to keep telling her that we were already on and it would all be over soon. Suddenly she felt a drop of something on the top of her head – she looked over at me again in horror told me something wet had hit her head. Then it happened – a stream of pink vomit plopped right in the middle of her lap and I’m pretty sure she almost cried in disgust. I absolutely cannot blame her, my stomach was already turning and I’m sure if I had been puked on it would have been a chain reaction that you only see in those really stupid, potty humor movies. To make matters so much worse, the Ferris wheel started to slow and move backwards – I honestly thought mom was going to jump out of the thing – she looked at me again with daggers shooting from her eyes, and told me that I needed to stop the ride. I kept repeating to her how sorry I was for dragging her on the ride but that they were not going to stop it until they were finished. So every time we went passed the attendant she tried to yell at him to stop the ride but it was no use – they weren’t listening to her. Eventually, thankfully, she started to see the absolute humor in the whole situation and we both spent the rest of the ride cracking up laughing. At last the ride ended and we were on solid ground once again. We moved over to the closest food booth to try and get some napkins to clean up mom’s lap and as I had expected, a teenage boy was also at the booth cleaning up the vomit that had landed on his shoulder. It was a case of riding the Ferris wheel too soon after too much cotton candy but it sure does make a great story. We laughed all the way back to the house and once we got home she couldn’t get to the shower fast enough. I doubt we will ever forget our first, and possibly last, carnival in Corozal.
The next day we had a two day fishing excursion planned off the coast of San Pedro, outside of the reef. So we woke up early to get to San Pedro via boat. It was a beautiful day with beautiful turquoise waters all along the way and we arrived in town about 10am. We got settled in and it was back on the boat to try to catch dinner for that night. We were only out about 8 miles off the reef outside of San Pedro and we started to see loads of birds – as you know from my last fishing trip that is our signal that fish are below. So Capt. J got the lines in the water and guessed that we were going for tuna. I drove the boat most of that day – just chasing around birds while the Capt. tried to get the fish in the boat. The tuna weren’t really biting too much but we sure could see them jumping around in the water and at one point we had a fantastic example of the food chain at its best. Our lines were in the water and a black fin tuna was caught on one of our hooks but just as the Capt. was reeling it in a shark came up and snatched the tuna off the line and got caught itself. We could see as the shark’s fins crested the top of the ocean – we were living shark week. We ended up with about four black fin tuna for dinner so we were happy. The Capt. cleaned up the fish when we got back to the dock while my mom and I cleaned up the boat. That night we all enjoyed seared tuna at Elvie’s Kitchen.
The second day of fishing didn’t actually result in any fish – we went out late morning but there were no birds in sight so instead of just putting the lines in and trolling we went out to Turneffe to do some snorkeling while Capt. J tried to do some spear fishing. We hadn’t been out there more than 30 minutes when the Belize Port Authority boat pulled up alongside his to do some checking. They simply wanted to see the registration and captain’s license which Capt. J gladly handed over. Everything checked out so we waved to them and they sped off while we went back to looking at coral. After a bit mom and I decided to relax on the boat, in the sun, while Capt. J went out with his spear gun to see what he could find for dinner. He came back with lobster – so we would feast that night. It turned out that we wouldn’t catch any fish that day despite trying. So we headed back in to San Pedro and ate a lobster dinner at Elvie’s Kitchen.
The ride back to Corozal this morning was magnificent. The water was calm and blue and the sun was shining. We had to open up the bar for business today and start a new workweek, but I will say that it was the best work commute I’ve ever experienced.
August - real time | admin | August 26, 2009 | 
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belize, Boat, Carnival, Corozal, divorce, Elvie's Kitchen, Ferris Wheel, fishing, Lobster, San Pedro, Sharks, Snorkeling, Tuna, Turneffe
It’s a rainy day in Corozal today, grey and gloomy. It sort of matches my mood today. I am trying to decide how to move forward in this blog. As most of you know I am telling my story of moving to Belize from the beginning which makes the events I write about close to 7 months old. I would also like to concurrently write about my experiences as they happen in the present. Does anyone have feedback on the subject? This way I can keep the story going – because a lot has happened between then and now, and I can also have an outlet to write about what’s going on in my life now.
If it’s not too confusing I’ll start this entry as my first “real time” post. So I continue to go through my divorce from Will. It’s not pleasant of course but last weekend and this week it’s been even more unpleasant. I finally got my paperwork taken care of over last weekend and had them signed by a justice of the peace/photographer – I love how things work here – and they got sent certified to Will. Of course I was expecting a phone call from the states whenever he happened to receive the paperwork. Ours won’t be a difficult divorce, there weren’t a lot of assets to split – actually mostly debt – but there area few sticking points so I expected the call. In the meantime there have been some other emotional roller coaster type events lately. I really thought that Corozal would be the best location for me to go through the ending of a long relationship, for one main reason; this is a small town and there really aren’t a lot of single people here my age so I assumed that there wouldn’t be the distraction of meeting someone new while I’m still healing. On the other hand I hadn’t been in love with Will for awhile in our relationship so part of me was already moving on long before we actually split. Well, as it happened I did meet someone else and for the sake of his privacy I won’t go in to too many details – I’ll call him February since that is the month relationships changed for me – but we immediately and unexpectedly connected. It took me very much by surprise and I am sure he felt the same way. There was a nagging voice in my head to ignore all the emotions and everything irrational that was going on in my head – just simply do not fall for this guy – my head lost. I fell for him hard and fast. Recently, for reasons completely out of my control I lost him and it’s hit me hard. Maybe he was the cliché “rebound” relationship but I have a hard time describing him as such. I felt passion with him that I knew was there for the years it was being suppressed by being in the wrong relationship that was so intense I can hardly put it in the rebound category. So that made two emotional slugs to me over the holiday weekend, and the third came in the form of my Dad’s trip here coming to an end. My mom and I drove him to the airport on Friday and saw him off after he had been visiting for about three weeks. Even though I love it in Belize, it is always hard to see family or friends go home after visiting – especially my dad. I have a very close relationship with him which I feel so incredibly lucky for. So there it was the third hit, it was like a one – two punch and being finished off with a hard left hook. I am down for the count.
Right now that is the hardest part about living away from my friends and family, there are limited shoulders to cry on here so because of that my mom and I are building a much closer relationship since we are each other’s sounding board. We have also met some outstanding and supportive people here and I hope that I will have some friends for life from Corozal Belize. The week has continued to be gloomy because of these circumstances. I finally got the call from Will last night and he was not happy. I also have a lot of pent up anger towards him which almost always comes out when I talk to him on the phone. It’s not fair to him and I try to control it but between the two of us we weren’t able to have a rational conversation last night so he hung up on me and I sent him an email trying to resolve what we had attempted to talk about. I also continue to be very sad about losing February and think about him constantly. Today I made phone calls trying to talk to him even though I agreed I wouldn’t – it was totally out of my control when I picked up the phone and rang him. Drunk dialing without the excuse of being drunk – sad.
I am determined that my day will not end in a funk though – I am in the Caribbean and have a totally fresh start to my life. Yes, there are issues I’m dealing with but nothing too hard to handle. We have had a positive couple weeks at the bar (after a major summer slow down). It’s just one of those days where the “blues” are getting the best of me but the battle is not over yet and I am determined to prevail. I have a friend coming to visit next week which will help things tremendously. Mom and I also have a trip back to Oregon planned in early August so it will be a breath of fresh air to see the people I have been missing – funny enough my 10 year high school reunion will fall during the time I am visiting home so that should be interesting.
I would very much appreciate any feedback about inserting these real time entries in along side of the continuing story I have been telling. Here’s hoping for sunshine tomorrow!
