Day 1

(For those who don't know Susanita and Mafalda here is an introduction of my two favorite girls in the whole wide world)

Ummm... So… yes… somehow I managed to get here, what I call the end of my childhood. This is my last week of life as I know it, next Monday I'm crossing over to be closer to 40 than to 30... Auch! It hurts to even write it. I don't remember feeling that way when I went from my 20s to my 30s. For some reason I was almost exited to finally be a "treintona," it sounded sophisticated, it sound it like "well, now I'm allow to have sex on the first date." Not that it never happened before, although I most say that very few times, more likely in the second date if it was going to be that fast. However, now somehow I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with my body and I could even tell my mother "what Mom? I'm not 15 you know!?."

But 35!!! That IS another story! 35 sounds more like... "Ok, where is your life going? Why are you still living life like you actually were 15? Why everything that you tried to do seems to fall apart?" 

I tried marriage... that didn't work... not once, but twice!!! I tried to succeed in what I though to be my life calling for 20 years, or to be more honest to my self, FULLY tried it for 13 years, and that didn't go that great either.  

Since I was a little girl there were only three passions in my life. The first one was having a family. As proof I have the story that until this day my mother loves to tell anyone that asks how I was as I child. To that question she would answer: "Do you know Susanita from Mafalda? Well, just like her. When Ile was a little girl she was quite and to herself, although very sociable. She was always thinking about things. Her step grandma and I always liked to asked her what had her so deep in thought, because we loved to hear her habitual answer: Well, mom you know, I'm just thinking who will be my husband? How many kids I will have? Where would I live?" The two ladies with great endearment could do nothing but laugh out loud, leaving me astonished to their reaction since to me it was just logical that a 5 year old girl would worry about her future. 

My second passion, to which I devoted many years of my life, was following my parents steps by trying to become not only an actress, but a "successful" actress, hoping to even shadow the unbeaten career my father was gifted with. My fight for this started very young, as young as my pursued for Prince Charm also started, and my mom stories are once more ready to attest it. In this matter two are my favorites. 

The first comes handy to reveal the tormented soul some of us come to this world with. In one of those silent days, sitting in a corner of my step grandma's house the two ladies once again were very curious of what this child could be now thinking. When they asked they realized that Mafalda had influenced Susanita for the first time. The story of Prince Charm changed to an even more challenging one. My response was now of a more philosophical level: "nothing mom, just thinking that I have done nothing with my life." Mom, after realizing the real challenge raising me was going to be, answered: "Ile, you are only 7 years old, you are not supposed to have done anything with your life yet." She simply got: "not true, Shirley Temple had done a lot with her life at my age." Wow, already suffering for the success of another actress, what a madness!!!!

The other story I really like to use in order depict the determination and clarity one can have since very early in life, happened in a TV channel in Caracas when I was only 5 or 6 years old. I was playing the daughter of my Mom in a Novela, and we were shooting a scene where the husband was very mean to her. I was just supposed to sit and say nothing, but my creative brain decided to improvise some dialogue and even movement when the time came. When we finished the scene, Ibrahim the director came to me and asked me what was that all about? That was not in the script, and was not what we rehearsed. To which I cleverly replied "Director, I'm not an extra." A moment of genius if I may observe. Come on, 5 and thinking on that??? Anyhow, those two were clear signs that life was not going to be that normal for my mother or I.

My third passion, and the one that seems to work out best, is traveling. Some how, with no money I have managed to travel more than many friends that their bank accounts I can only dream of. Going back to the roots once more, it is something that I had in me forever. Mom tells me that since little I dreamed with living in other countries, specially the USA. I wanted her to sent me to a boarding school outside the country, to which she would always complained with "do you think I don't love you that I would send my only daughter away from me?" And to me it was not about love, but about seeing the world. The first time I traveled outside I was 13 years old, and we when to Ecuador, since then I have taken every opportunity to see the old, the new, the beautiful and the ugly, the fantastic wonders and the greatest misery that this planet has to offer. And from my 3 passions, it is traveling the one that just happens to me with ease. Traveling is when I become me, the real one. I let lose, and I'm just the woman I would love to be every day of my life. I'm a good travel planner and a good travel companion... well, as long as we have similar interests. I LOVE traveling alone. Driving trips with the man I share my life with are my favorite thing because if you can stay with someone in a car for 8 hours and never run out of conversation and laughter, you know you are with a good match.

Well, traveling is where I'm now. I said goodbye to my last year of childhood traveling around... but, it doesn’t seem to be over yet, and I'll have some more planes to board before this year is over. Traveling seems to be my calling... if they would only pay me for what it comes so easy and natural to me.

At 35, I'm changing my life around, and for the first time since I was 19, I'm under in my Mom's wings. I'm leaving the career I pursued for so long, living a life time of dreams behind, a country I made mine, and a bag full of memories in the storage room of some building in Los Angeles, to figure out what is next, what my life as a grown up is going to be like, and the truth is… I'm terrified!

But now is time to go to the land where all is possible... and tomorrow I will tell you the reason why I'm writing this blog.

Goodnight!