Chapter 1: No Bad Lasts (Debut Single Out Now)
Chapter 1:
No Hay Mal (No Bad Lasts)
By Diandra
No Hay Mal Que Dure 100 Anos
There’s No Bad That Can Last
No Storm Is Forever
The Rainbow Will Reveal
Why Through It You Have To Go
Life’s Purpose Is To Grow
You Can’t Enter This World
And Leave The Same Soul
Ride Through The Darkness
And The Light Will Become Your Own
These are the type of affirmations I write to myself everyday. Daily reminders that the things people say to you are really dumb when you repeat them out loud, but, somehow, sound logical when you let them stay in your head. Frankly, healing yourself is really hard, but I always say, “No bad lasts.” In the some way good is temporary, so is heartbreak. Still, there are times when I feel my life has been defined by the many moments my heart shattered. Sometimes, I feel like making a song is the equivalent to putting into sound and verse what it is to feel that shattering again and again.
I fell in love once, and it, eventually, shattered me. It was with someone so selfish and evil that I still wonder whether he was truly a villain. Raiko Magan, or as the world would know him, Ray Magan, was my first love, and when I try to think of how I allowed him to become such a dominating figure in my life, I feel like I become a walking Dateline. My mind becomes a true crime series: episodic and hyper-focused on details that I missed in life that I know, now, in death or rather my rebirth. I guess I want to believe that I have some accountability over my own heartbreak rather than believing it was all destined. With that in mind, this is a story about accountability, and if I am going to write an album about how I opened myself up to Ray’s pain, over seeing myself as his victim, then I need to figure out where the wound started in the first place.
On the night, I left Ray I was feeling particularly existential. He was having a “hometown concert” at the United Palace, in the Bronx, which meant his arrogance was at an all time high and his indifference towards me even higher. There is nothing, for an artist, that is more empowering and potentially ego-tripping than a hometown show because it is “your people” coming to celebrate your achievements. Feeling the hubris, I stayed at a table, outside, at the crossing restaurant, Malecon: eating tostones, downing Piña Coladas, and genuinely asking myself the most depression-inducing questions like, “What does success mean when you are never allowed to dream?” In perspective, I had more self-pity in me than my drink had coconut rum.
Our last 24 hours “together” was horribly strange because it was not our worst day: far from it. We barely spoke. I stayed outside, for the most part, marveling at the incredibly bright sun, and I could not stop looking at the surrounding cars, the glistening concrete of old gum and smashed beer bottles, and seeing people walk to destinations I wondered how many stops they could be from the subway station. New York was like a mosaic of energy and intrigue: a daily, daunting reminder that you are not alone on this earth. It was a humbling loneliness; making you see you are apart of a collective, while making you feel like the most invisible part. With only a tea light candle in front of me, I meditated on the grief I would experience, in a few hours, at hearing the waves of applause and cheers for Ray, while I stayed unseen.
I met Ray when I was 19, officially, but I had known of his legend by the time I was 15. Whether it was Puerto Rico or “NuYorico,” word traveled from both islands on his flirtatious ways and the genuine possibility he had at becoming a star. By the time he met me he was 27, and seeking a new songwriter, muse, or girlfriend: all interchangeable. At first, it truly was a work partnership, my brother, Javier, having handed him, as a local hero, a few of my poems in hopes he’d hire me as a songwriter. Albeit, he was not a huge star; at best, booking a tour in local, tri-state dive-bars. Yet, he was better than me: a shower singer that knew she could tear up the stage, but would rather fantasize about it while washing her hair with Sedal and tea tree oil. That is what attracted me to Ray; he was going for my dream, which is why I never noticed the ways he blocked it.
“10 minutes away,” said a sudden text from my extremely judgmental, older sister. Panic got me out of my head and into my fried plantains. I had gone from over-thinking to over-eating because there is nothing, like family, to make you wonder why you do not change your life versus crying over it.
Asking for a hug from my sister, Mayeli, or Yeli for short, was like asking Freddy Krueger for a nice dream, but that is what happens when, from a young age, you become a co-parent to your siblings. Frankly, I do not really know my dad. I would say he was a ghost, but I lived in my abuela’s haunted house for a summer and truly feel they were more present. Moreover, my mother was an odd dichotomy of sweetness and secrets. She was like a kind stewardist; making sure we got on our flight, scheduled for age 18, but not really caring if we were prepared to handle our destination. As the second youngest of 8, my sister saw me as her daughter: one that she worked, at Walmart by age 14, to get Christmas gifts for every year. I didn’t mind that she saw me as someone she needed to take care of, I just wished her care was not in the form of nagging, passive aggression, or eruptive conversations that seemed scheduled during meal times.
My sister never liked Ray beyond his money. He would pay for her visits that he always regretted because my sister would always confront him. She was the first to see Ray as a barrier to my life rather than the blessing most saw him to be. For others, particularly men, I was the equivalent to Priscilla Presley marrying Elvis, which, in perspective, had its issues. Yet, to them, Ray was my safety net: an automatic set of abundance for my life. He would take care of me, even if he drained me and ignoring that I took care of him, as well. To my sister, he was the reason I never tried to get my dreams for myself; veiling his fear of losing me as the “power to his powerhouse” by claiming to protect me from opportunities that would branch into my own career. After all, the songs I wrote became his hits, but no one even knew that I could sing.
“You should write a song about menstruation. See if Ray sings it without realizing,” my sister said in front of him at a Thanksgiving I am still ungrateful for. Ray did not enjoy feeling like he had no involvement in his own success, but the truth is I fueled it. I was the gasoline to his car, or as my sister would put it, “The pepto-bismal to his much needed bowel movement so he could get out all his BS.” Obviously, that is a grosser way to say that if Ray had talent, my songs gave him a voice.
Mid stress eat my sister arrived. Unlike me, my sister was a strange mix of “old-young.” By 23, she looked 45, and was already married with her first son, Micaelo, who was, currently, my assistant. Now 45, she looked the same as when she was 23: frozen in middle-agedness.
“Hola, Bebe!” she laughed pulling her chair. “How is my baby sister doing? Eating fried plantains to make that acid reflux stay active.”
“Who needs Weight Watchers when I have a sister that watches my weight?” I snarked as I reached across to hug and kiss her.
“I watch your acid not you ass,” she declared as if different. “We come from a thick family so even a lettuce leaf hits us like a carb.”
I rolled my eyes and smirked. “How is life? The family? Puerto Rico?”
My sister had moved to Puerto Rico with her family a few years ago as a way to repair her own husband’s infidelities. Herman LOVED my sister, which made his betrayal so shocking but not strong enough to toss the marriage. Having married when both were 21, their marriage felt destined, but no destiny comes without its trials and tribulations and the difficulties of growing old with someone, eventually, made them grow apart. Honestly, it was disappointing to see Herman, a good guy, fall into the trap of seeking someone outside your marriage to avoid you no longer want in. Yet, Herman did not want to leave Yeli; he simply did not know how to deal with his depressions without self-sabotage: her being his biggest, emotional keeper. The limbo of where their love could go to be “less sad: led them to La Isla Del Encanto.
“Oh you know!” she replied oddly jittered. “Puerto Rico is always getting robbed, the family is always fighting about whose robbing it, and life feels like one giant ,stolen object I never reported as missing.”
“Jesus, Hermana! That felt heavier than an anvil,” I said shocked by her dark perspective. “And here I thought you came to confront me on my negativity.” You see what I just did there. I invited her criticism by claiming I thought it was coming first. Instead of happily dodging it, I went straight for it. This, my friends, is what the Ancient Greeks called, “foolishness.”
“I feel like you are angry and sad a lot more lately,” she said, casually, while reading the menu. Her big brown eyes trying to decide between chicken and beef while her mouth served me as a dish.
“Yeah, I’m sad. I definitely going through things.” I said trying to be overt and ambiguous, all at once. The weird thing about pain is that you want everyone to know you’re hurting while also wanting no one to see it like, screaming for “Help” in a forest hoping someone will hear you, while also hoping they do not find you. There was a part of me that saw my pain and self-doubt like the comfort blanket Linus used in those Charlie Brown comics. I rubbed my face with the warmth of familiar insecurities, while my sister sought to throw them in the wash.
“Is Ray cheating again?” she asked curtly and still looking at the poultry section of the menu. The sun gleaming into her eyes, and her gleaming right back as if it was the one dangerously staring at her without sunglasses. She was akin to Superman, and would not let anything stop her from stopping Lex Luthor.
“I would be surprised if he wasn’t,” I replied with a sad giggle. This is the type of low moment that, in hindsight, makes you feel bad for your past self. Most people see who they were with nostalgia, but this person, ‘The Sad Giggler At Her Man’s Infidelities,” had to die. She thought herself so small that her customary heartbreak felt faintly laughable, even to her. On her tombstone I put, “Laughed To Death.”
“D…. You could leave? You are 27…. Not 100! You are beautiful. You are smart. You are loving. You are fun. You are still not so broken by his behavior towards you that you can’t heal yourself and find someone new. You can still have your dreams.” My sister was in pure Ted Talk mode.
“I don’t have dreams.”
“Shut up! No me digas una cosa así, porque to ahorcó con mi tote bag, and its the Marc Jacobs one that says, “Tote Bag!” she said flashing it to me very much willing to hang me with it out of insult for self-apathy. Her long brown hair waving in the hot wind as if God was trying to cool her tension but could cool the wind, and her blue tank top absorbing her body sweat as if her emotions were ready to keep her boiling. She was seething at what I thought was a four-word comment. To her, it was the ultimate sign of a dead woman.
“What?” I asked blankly: almost like a robot confused by its human’s feelings. “I just want my peace.”
“Is this what you call peace? Hiding from your reality? Numbing your pain? Haciendote pendeja while your husband is a “Cuerno Pendejo?!” Somehow, she had transitioned from blinding anger to blinding rage within a blink. Meanwhile, I could feel an eyelash falling in mine.
“Sis, why are you doing this to you?” she asked with a hint of urgent fear like, I was standing on the ledge of a building and looking like I might, actually, jump.
I looked at my sister befuddled by her statement. Ray was the cheater. Ray was the user and abuser. Ray was my barrier and she agreed. I was doing nothing but surviving him, and she did not mind that when it meant fancy, holiday gifts or vacations. I was taking one for the team, or so I had convinced myself. The truth is my sister would be happy if I left, but my fear is that the sadness I felt would remain, with or without him, and that would mean my problem is me. That is why I hated Ray; I never realized how much I hated myself until I loved him. I didn’t fall for him because I thought he was great. I just feared I wasn’t.
“I’m not doing anything Mayeli, and please do not ruin this lush, plethora of a feast of plantains and frozen drinks that will 100% activate my acid reflux by trying to call me out for my bad life choices,” I said truly thinking I made a valuable statement.
They say that those that cannot do: teach. For my sister and I, nobody knew how to get inner peace, quite like us, because we never had it. Both of us had confused apathy for contentment. For me, my marriage had taken my self-esteem, and, for Mayeli, a childhood of adult responsibilities and duties to seven kids, by age 10, had left her ego unbuilt. We saw our lives according to the ways we survived, but did not admire that survival enough to feel we deserved to live. Mentally, to celebrate our life was the equivalent of celebrating surviving a terrible accident where we lost half your body; in a way, we lost half of ourselves. Of course, Mayeli would say I have no idea what I’m talking about, but her obsession with everyone’s problem felt like a diversion, which is a very depressive move or, at least it is for me. Frankly, I have given my best advice when I absolutely could not take it.
Tired of not getting into Heaven but, somehow, managing the gates, I decided to take my advice and live it up by horribly flirting with the waiter. “What will you be having?” he said with a voice that sounded like a sexy radiator or a smooth humidifier: a strangely, aerial appliance.
He was handsome with black tuffs of hair falling on his café skin like a garnier fructis commercial shot in South Beach Miami. He looked like he had, at least, a very faded six pack, which was the closest I had gotten to a sexy bod when I think of Ray’s stick figure physique. Ray was as close to getting an ab as night was to becoming day. Yet, I digress.
“What do you think she should have versus me?” I smiled as I placed my drink’s cherry in my mouth.
“I think she should have our Bistec with rice, and our Mojito. They are really good,” he smiled beautifully like, a Dentyne commercial. This man was made to sell.
“And me?” I said in a smokey tone drunk with seduction and insecurity and managing to find the holy grail of another cherry in my drink. In life, everything is energy, and, somehow, I was manifesting more cherries instead of his number: not that I would ever cheat on Ray again. Frankly, “revenge cheating” is not always as fun as “real cheating” because the latter is done despite your partner while the former is to spite him. Yet, he does not care, which makes the whole act feel emptier.
“I’m going to have to say goodbye to you if you are going to behave like this,” Yeli said handing him the menu. “I’ll take everything you recommended, and YOU….I recommend getting a dating coach before you leave Ray. I think a tsunami is less choppier than you trying to be sexy.”
He walked away awkwardly, while I chose silence over continued violence. I hated public embarrassment, which might be one of the biggest culprits for why I left Ray that night. Again, I am going full Dateline to write this record and right my wrongs towards myself. I stayed quiet the rest of the dinner while my sister went on and on about her worry and her potential wisdom for me. Maybe, that was the problem: I was no longer pretending, nor did I genuinely believe I was happy or could be happy with life or Ray. I had abandoned me while, forgetting, that is all I am and can ever be: me. Yet, it was moments like these, where if I spoke up for myself or just nodded over “bolitas de queso” as another person went off at my decisions that made me feel so helpless. I could not avoid confrontations, but I could not understand why they were always more than my moments of peace.
Whether I ignored my sister or left Ray that night, what lingered on me about the preceding events was that I did them for me, and they were not to hurt anyone or make them love me. So often, I either hid or fought others out of an unbearable need for them to see I was good. I was a good sister. I was a good wife. I was a good person. Yet, as I made the insane, gut decision to drink beer after drinking liquor, while waiting for Ray’s show to end, I had no idea I was in the beginning of my marriage’s end.
Sitting in sorrow and nausea, I was confronted by a “new person,” whom admittedly, and noticeably, was earning her “frequent flyer miles” via Ray’s jet: Hermosa Beltran. Rising in the music industry, Hermosa Beltran, a.k.a Hebazz, was a perfect example of an artist that was seemingly concocted for mainstream dreams, but, somehow, did not spark fantasies. She was gorgeous, and never missed an opportunity for a red lip and a tighter red dress. She was perfect in physical design: curved by an archangel that decided to become a sculptor in his off-time from guarding God and had hair so perfectly shined and curled that, had I not slapped her, I would have asked her for her conditioner. Yet, for however much she was pushed onto the masses, she never sky-rocketed or got a “stan.” She was at a constant plateau, which left her accessible to powerful men that would weaponize her ambitions against her in the name of “finding her a hit.”
“So you ARE here,” she said standing over me. If you have ever been in the basement of United Palace, it looks exactly like the office of a chapel. There is something in smell and aesthetic that emanates “we hold prayer circles and count the donation bins here.” The church-like clarity of the space made that “ARE” in her comment land on my head like Thor’s jack-hammer: as if I was not supposed to be at Ray’s show.
“I’m fine,” I said for no reason. Till this day, I do not know why I sloppily declared I was fine. She, clearly, was investigating the reason for my presence, but I was not having it. I was genuinely downing my Pacifico and blanking my mind with the wonders of what could have been with Garnier Fructis waiter.
“Tienes una problema?” said my sister behind her. Mayeli was, technically, 5’4, but stood like she was, at least, 18 feet tall. She appeared higher in height because, like a chihuahua, she relished scaring pit-bulls. Her whole life was a fight, which made her weirdly enjoy them and the head of the AARP volleyball club in San Juan. This was compared to me that would rather have period cramps for a year than fight with someone for a minute. “Do you need something because general admission is upstairs?” she barked.
“There is nothing general about me,” Hermosa replied with pure sass. She looked at my sister like a panther does a prey, but my sister had lasers for eyes and was ready to singe her like Buzz Lightyear sending someone to infinity and beyond.
“A mistress is always general: that’s why she never becomes a wife.” There it was: the beginning of my last five minutes as Ray Magan’s wife. My sister’s comment would become a figurative timer on how quickly my ten-year marriage would crash and burn.
“Funny, it’s because a wife feels general that a man gets a mistress. Besides, you imply that no one knows about me, but all I see are Ray’s friends and family around: talking to me.”
She was right. The floor was packed with everyone that loved Ray, and I had not noticed that I had gone unnoticed. A few years back, it would have been a must, a literal duty, to say hello to me like, I was a bouncer to his club. Yet, I had not realized that she was the one getting all the “hellos” right in my face. I had seen her earlier, and she was far from Ray’s first mistress. I had seen a few groupies pass by, and Ray, through the years, stopped hiding them. Still, what was really sad is that I stopped crying about them.
I had not noticed Hermosa’s presence had become a full replacement of me. I had the title of wife, but she had the duties like, making sure Ray’s company was as entertained by her as he was with himself. This was no minor feat, and her ability to achieve my status meant she worked hard because, as his wife, I understood that Ray only loved a woman who did not love herself. She had to erase herself to become his, and her presence meant her full erasure, and, in a way, my rebirth.
“How dare you, cabrona, act like you have some respect? You are a walking hole to that man, and you flaunt that with pride in front of his WIFE?” my sister yelled. She was incensed by Hermosa’s arrogance, and clutched onto the old wives’ tale that a man actually loved his wife, not his mistress, despite not being faithful to either; again, holding a title’s meaning more than the responsibilities that came with them. Yet, I was not like that. Frankly, I was not like anything. “You get the hell out and go back to whatever Red Light District you came from?” Mayeli announced to the room like one of the henchwomen that yelled “Shame” while Cersei walked naked. She slut-shamed Hermosa, while grabbing her arm to escort her out, and Hermosa looked like she relishing her role in this unraveling Jerry Springer episode. She had been waiting for this moment, my demise, but it was my sister that was giving her the anger she wanted from me.
Hermosa, in response, slapped my sister, of which I, in a complete turn of personality that would shock the whole Rorschach test system, shot up and slapped her. She fell so hard, her thump on the floor ricocheted like a bullet. Everyone got quiet and looked at me like I was deranged: a woman unhinged at what had become her usual. It was tradition: Ray cheated, I ignored, and no mistress was left on the floor grabbing the handprint I left on her cheek.
I began to breath heavily: feeling the onset of a panic attack. In my most recent years, anxiety attacks were horrendous: feeling like a heart attack that never managed to end me already. My blood pressure shot up, but, the odd thing is that I was feeling anxious out of custom and not true fear. It was like I was scared because I was used to being scared, and not because the situation challenged me. I was simply enacting the automatic, set feelings like, anger and depression, I felt at being subjected to Ray’s humiliations. In truth, I was exhilarated: not because I had hit her, but I had actually done something. I surprised everyone. I stood up for myself, and I did it without even considering others’ views of me. I was not proud as much as awakened.
“You really are going to hit a pregnant woman,” she promulgated: rushing me back from my temporary high of pride and into my fractured ego and pulsing body.
“Que?” said my sister shocked. “What are you talking about?” I looked up at my sister to see her brown eyes widened like an owl at night. Funnily, so was everyone else’s: looking at me as if I was a ghost that was trying to figure out a murder, and, inadvertently, realized I was dead all along. Basically, I was not Dateline; I was Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense.
“I’m pregnant,” she declared with relief to finally say it aloud to me. “Ray knows. Everyone here knows, except you, and they have known for awhile,” she bemused moving her hand from her red cheek to her invisible belly.
That was it. In perspective, I do not think she was the first mistress to get pregnant, but was, certainly, the first one that kept it…. and him. Yet, it was the fact that it was so blatant and I did not care. I did not feel hurt or even disrespected. My soul had been in a storm that I had stopped trying to escape because I did not believe I could. I no longer believed in my rainbows or safety. I lost faith in joy, and I felt ashamed that I had turned off and turned away from my life so much that everyone was living new lives without me, including Ray. He was bringing his pregnant mistress to his shows, of which everyone knew of this baby, except me: the woman he always told he did not want to have kids.
I gave up my biggest desires, motherhood and my own music career, for Ray to continue being a false god/living legend, and this was my repayment. He was having a child with a woman that, at least, he pretended he would help her career. He no longer pretended with me. He felt safe enough to drop his mask so I could see he was a monster. Eerily enough, I felt certain: a validation I had always been seeking but never gave to myself. I had confirmed what I had already known, for awhile; Ray Magan was the worst thing to happen in my life, but no bad lasts forever.
