Paradox.

A paradox is when two truths meet in the same moment—
and neither one cancels the other out.

That’s where life lives.
In the in-between.
In the tension of opposites that somehow make sense together.

Life is a paradox in motion.
We aren’t machines—far from it.
We live with contradictions stitched into our skin.

One moment, you’re overflowing with joy.
Grateful for all you’ve built, all you’ve survived, all you've endured.

The next, tears fall without warning—
grief crashing through like it never left.

It’s confusing.
Beautiful.
Brutal.

To celebrate how far you’ve come while mourning what you’re about to lose.
To smile at your daughter’s laughter, while knowing your grandfather might take his last breath today.
To hold joy and sorrow in the same hands,
and call them both true.

So how do we live with this?
How do we hold both peace and pain—without letting either swallow us whole?
Because maybe a paradox isn’t something to be solved—
but something to be lived.

The Domino Game

Life is a tricky domino game.
You spend years placing each piece with care—
one after another,
hoping they’ll hold,
hoping the foundation is steady enough to keep them upright.

You watch closely,
checking the balance,
adjusting the angle just so—
because you know how easily one small shake can send everything toppling.

You build it with love,
with intention,
with the quiet belief that if you just align the pieces right,
maybe the fall won’t come.
Or at least, maybe you’ll be ready for when it does.

But life isn’t just about stacking.
It’s also about watching pieces fall—
not because you failed,
but because that’s part of the game.

And that’s where I find myself now.
Standing in the middle of the beauty and the heartbreak.

On one side, my daughter—
bright, curious, overflowing with love.
A mirror of all the good I’ve fought to hold onto.
She’s a piece I protect with everything in me.
A piece that reminds me: you’re doing okay.

And on the other side… the pieces that are falling.
My grandfather—barely holding on.
My father—gone, just six months ago.
Two pillars of the life I’ve known,
crumbling faster than I’m ready for.

It feels unfair.
To be celebrating growth while preparing for goodbye.
To be smiling at life’s blessings with one hand,
while holding grief in the other.

That might be the quiet truth of it all:
joy and sorrow were never meant to live in separate rooms.
They walk together—always have.
One reminding you of what you have,
the other of what you’ve lost… or are about to.

There’s another piece in this game.
One that’s still standing—
not untouched, not invincible, but growing.
That piece… is me.

The person who survived.
Who rebuilt.
Who still wakes up and tries, even on the days when grief feels like gravity.

I’m not just watching the dominoes.
I’ve been one too.
I’ve fallen.
Been knocked over by pain,
by depression,
by silence and uncertainty.

But piece by piece, I stood again.
I learned how to move without knowing.
How to trust my balance.
How to keep stacking, even when my hands shook.

And maybe that’s where it lives—
the paradox at the center of all this:
In the same man who once wanted to disappear,
now choosing to be fully here.

Still showing up.
Still becoming.

There’s a fourth piece too.
One I didn’t place, but that keeps showing up anyway:
life itself.

Not the version I imagined in my twenties.
Not the perfectly drawn map of love, success, family, joy.
But the one that’s unfolded—messy, surprising, sacred.

The friends who stayed when I had nothing to give.
The conversations that quietly saved me.
The rituals that grounded me:
morning light through the window,
a hot cup of coffee,
Amparo’s eyes shinning in the room.

The kind of love that doesn’t arrive with fireworks—
but finds you in the middle of a Tuesday, folding laundry,
when something inside whispers:
“I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m still here.”

That’s the piece I never saw coming.
The one that didn’t need to be stacked—
but made the whole thing worth it.

Or maybe that’s life’s quiet trick:
While you’re busy trying to build something that won’t fall apart…
life is quietly building you.
Maybe it shapes you through others—
through the ones who came before,
whose fingerprints live quietly in the man you’ve become.

Inheritance

Not all inheritances come wrapped in paper or passed through signatures.
Some are quieter than that.
Heavier, too.

Some are the way you speak to your daughter—
gently, even when you’re tired.
The way you show up, every time,
because someone once did that for you
without asking for applause.

Some are the silence in your hands
when you fix something that’s broken—
a chair, a shelf, a moment.
And you realize your grandfather used to do the same.
Maybe his father before him, too.
Maybe it’s just what family does—
we pass on care
in quiet, invisible ways.

You didn’t ask for this inheritance.
You just started living it.
And only later—after the loss, after the ache—
do you realize what they gave you.

Not through words, but through presence.
Not in speeches, but in everyday gestures
that taught you how to be a man
without ever needing to say the word.

From your father, you inherited resilience.
Not the loud kind. The quiet one.
The kind that keeps picking you up from the floor
no matter how many times life knocks you down.

The kind that knows how to laugh
even when the world is burning around you.

From your grandfather, you inherited care—
disguised as tough love,
in knuckles on your head and old-school jokes,
but there, always, in his actions.

In how he drove you to school.
In how he played his same damn songs,
day after day after day—
and how now, somehow,
those melodies still follow you around like echoes.

They didn’t just raise you.
They built you.
With scraped hands, tired backs, quiet sacrifices.

And now they’re slipping away.
One already gone.
One on the threshold.

But here’s the paradox again:
You’ve never carried more of them, than you do right now.

They are in your voice
when you calm Amparo in the middle of the night.
They are in your stillness
when you choose not to run from pain, but sit with it.
They are in your presence
every time you choose love over fear,
connection over silence,
tenderness over pride.

This is the real inheritance.
Not what they left behind.
But what they left within you.

And no one, not even death, can take that away.

The In-Between

It’s like watching the tide pull back, knowing the wave is coming.
You’re not drowning yet.
But you feel it.
The weight. The shift.
The moment before everything changes.

You’re not in the goodbye yet.
But you’re not in the before either.
You’re in the in-between.

Where time feels slower.
Where you check your phone for a message you already know is coming.
Where you laugh at something your daughter says—and halfway through, remember the hospital room you haven’t visited today.

You’re there… but also not.

This is the place where joy and dread hold hands.
Where you’re living and grieving in the same breath.
Where you water the plants, wash the dishes, answer emails—
and carry the weight of something ending that hasn’t ended yet.

The world keeps spinning.
The street still hums.
There’s coffee in your cup—
and your mind in another galaxy.

And it’s hard to explain unless they’ve lived here too:
This space where you’re both whole and breaking.
Where you’re strong but exhausted.
Where you’re grateful, but haunted by the quiet knowledge
that something is slipping through your hands.

And maybe this—
this pause, this ache, this holding pattern—
isn’t meant to be rushed.

Maybe the in-between is sacred.
Not a detour, but part of the path.
Not the absence of movement,
but the moment before the shift.

A place where you soften.
Where you remember.
Where you brace—
but stay open anyway.

Because you know what’s coming.
But for now, you’re here.
Still standing.
Still feeling.

Still holding both.

And maybe that’s the only way forward—
not by choosing one truth over the other,
but by learning to live with both.

Two Sides / One Coin

There’s a strange stillness that comes when you stop trying to choose between joy and grief—
and instead, let both pull up a chair.

When you stop fighting the contradiction,
and just breathe inside it.

Because life isn’t asking you to pick a side.
It’s asking you to feel all of it.

To laugh while you’re hurting.
To hurt while you’re growing.
To grow while you’re saying goodbye.

There’s no clean emotional blueprint for moments like this.
There’s just the mess of it all—raw, alive, true.

One part of you is in awe of how far you’ve come.
Another part is breaking under the weight of goodbye.
And somehow, both are real. Both are honest. Both are you.

Grief doesn’t cancel out gratitude.
Just like love doesn’t erase loss.
They sit side by side—
whispers in the same room.

It’s okay to feel peace and heartbreak in the same breath.
It’s okay to be proud of your progress
and still ache for the people who aren’t here to see it.

Maybe this is the lesson:
That you don’t have to be one thing.
Not only strong.
Not only wounded.
Not only hopeful.
Not only afraid.

You are all of it.
All at once.
And still, you keep going.

Not despite the contradiction—
but because of it.

And maybe it’s not a contradiction after all.
Maybe that’s just what it means to be human, at the core.
The paradox in which we all move and flow, in the midst of it all.