Oh, the plants. Audry II from Little Shop of Horrors would be in Heaven.

Shrubbery overtakes our living room, creating a jungle for the autumn spiders who thrive in the dark and humid climate that cools the house during those hot West Texas summer months. The plants come in various sizes and stages in their lives. Recently, my grandmother has tried to grow a Lavender Bush in the front room. All of the rose bushes she once nursed in this room, have now become an explosion of red, orange, white, blue and pink roses in the front yard.

Then, if you keep traveling through the house, you'll venture into my room. An earth toned room with comforting colors that match the various empty wine bottle collection that sits in front of a mirror. Books overrun the room like a small library and manuscripts collect dusk on a corner floor. Pictures of me and various friends at wine festivals, bars and even from my fraternity days hang from the walls.

There are no velvet Guadalupe's or Crucifixes decorating my walls.

However, somedays when I lock myself away in my room and write, it's as if their presence penetrates the walls and are never completely out of mind. No matter how far I once traveled and how badly I wanted out of this town, out of this house, away from the rose bushes and hidden from the judging eyes of the Virgin Mary paintings and the Saint Martin Prayer statues, it was never far enough. The colors and images have seeped into my blood and have become a part of my soul... Shit.

It is in this same house that every Sunday, our family once met for meals where they told loud and crazy stories among the clutter of the room. I remember always laughing, sure there were sad moments and trying times, but we always got through it with laughter.

Two days after graduating from high school, I had had enough laughter. I needed to take my life seriously. I needed to venture off and become someone special. Someone important. I saw too often that lives were wasted away among the laughter and hidden behind the cluttered living rooms and wanted nothing more but to prove I wasn't just some Mexican boy from West Texas, you know the kind, backs freshly dry but not quite enough.

So I left it all behind... Seeking a world that would be welcoming to me. They would all see how hard of a worker I am and forget about my skin tone. They would all know that I am smart and capable of, yes, solving some of the major problems in the world. How hard could it be, really? So many other' have come before me. I would have various romances that would lead me to the love of my life and that would last for my entire life. No divorce for me! I would have children who would be well traveled and articulate. It would all come together. It had too. I was, after all, more than just my Mexican-American background.

Boy I learned a lot.

It has been ten years since I packed up my bag, and with my grandmother's blessing, boarded a bus that was Chicago bound. It has been ten years since that trip lead to me transferring colleges to New Mexico. It's been ten years since I once first saw the New York Skyline, floated across the ocean at night on a cruise ship to find the white sand beaches I only thought existed in beer commercials. Ten years since I chased black scorpions away on white sanded deserts. Ten years since I found love in various forms, colors and genders. Ten years of growing, changing and becoming a man. Ten years of learning that sometimes the world can be cruel, harsh, cold and a lonely place. Ten years of learning that the world can also be beautiful and kind if you surround yourself with the right friends and...

... a loving family.

Now I'm back, at the beginning, trying to find my place in the world among the clutter and chaos that now seems, well, beautiful and colorful and everything is exactly where it should be.

There's no order, just living.