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We have all heard the phrase `the grass is greener on the other side' and this journey is the perfect answer back to that statement, for it proves that we shouldn't always be wishing for something we don't quite understand, because once we have it we may realize it is far from desired…

There I was a week ago. I was thinking of what I would have changed if I had been given the chance to change it now. No, because back then it was a test. It was the fork in the road you stop at before you keep going ahead. The one side that leads you to where you are supposed to go and the one side you thought that would. Of course I thought I took the one side that would. I mean was I suppose to be here, or was I suppose to be here a long time ago or should I even be here at all?…that was the question I kept asking myself until I found the answer in front of me.
I purchased your book because it was simply titled, “Freestyle.” I always loved freestyle. It is the type of music that would always bring me back in time. A time where my younger than life mom would go from heartache to dance club with the beat of each tune. It was the type of music that helped me get into my skinny jeans and sometimes right out of them, too. I could always count on Judy, Cynthia, C-Bank and Chrissy Ieece to mend my heart right back into place. Along with a bottled scent of Eternity to burn away the sweat and pain away. It was probably the most liberated time in my life, even though I thought my mother constricted my life so much back then. I wasn’t scared of anything back then. I felt I could do anything, unstoppable and my Latina culture supported that ideal. It was the strength that I held onto all my life and it is what I am made of.

Then somewhere between what I wanted, what I was looking for, what I needed, and what I aspired to be, I changed. I changed into someone who was more conscience of what I really wanted and needed. I left a lot behind, but I gained so much in the process. Everything at a cost, a sacrifice, and so many mistakes in between that sometimes I didn’t even remember that person who was so young at heart anymore. I had changed and evolved into someone new. I am still me roots and all. I am just at an improved state of mind from where I was back then and now I have a real understanding of unconditional love.
When I saw your book, I thought it would bring me back to that free spirited place in time where tenements and bodegas and freestyle music blared everywhere. It did but it also did something else. It sat there by my nightstand next to the popular Twilght saga series and my trusty bible. I am a multi reader, and an occasional freelance writer for local print so my home has ten completely filled bookcases filled with my personal literary collection. It is not unusual to find yourself in my home as you would find yourself in let’s say, “Barnes & Noble,” reading, browsing the latest subscription of over fifteen magazines, and sipping on green tea or yes, a mean “café con leche.”

I stared at your book for weeks. In those weeks I was having my usual midyear what am I doing with my life crisis. The time of the year I always question and regroup the next year of my life. Everything is so seriously important right now with this economy that it makes you question if you are doing everything you can to stabilize yourself now and in the future. The pressure piles so high that sometimes you find yourself looking back in time around the corners of your mind thumbing through a collection of tunes, say “Freestyle?” Even if it is just to escape and to remember where you came from in order to find clues to where you are going. A place where you had so much less and survived so much more that it reminds you how really special that time was and how quickly it past.

So finally, I pick up your book!!! and I couldn’t put down for fear I might not find why I am so drawn to Idalis. Then as she finds the true meaning in what is important I start to see that I have, can, and will fine my way into what is ahead for me, too. The way she learns to jump in and learns to save herself. She was finally true to herself, and sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. Hard because of the fear and the ideal fact that now there is much more at state. The way Idalis went to look back, I told you I recently went back to the Bronx, how ironic, the same block where I grew up and all. The very next day there was a drive by shooting near the same place I was driving around at 2 am in the morning. I mean technology has increase the ability to look back, and the ways in which we can look back are endless… remember how Idalis Google her way there? In the end she realized she wanted what she already had experienced and loved all along. She was looking for what supported her new self, her new changes, her new improvements, and her overall new foundation. Different paths or people choices just means, things would have been different but that does not mean or guarantee that they would have been better. Places stay the same but people change, we all do. We become the mothers and the fathers and sometimes both. We evolve as the earth and universe continues to sing the way it did long before we came and long after we are gone.

The same day I finished your book, I saw the “Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” that night. The movie nearly three hours long, touched on this very meaning. How it feels to be young and get older, how everything in the universe has a place in which we are where we are suppose to be in order for things to happen the way they should. All these mythologies remind me of one of my favorite series, “LOST.” I am not sure if you’re a fan, but it does go back and forth in time a lot in order to appreciate the present purpose of our life. The fact that our lives move so quickly ahead the opportunity to really influence someone at the perfect time only comes up occasionally. I feel you did that for me in your book. I felt obligated to share that with you in this way. Whether it is to inspire you to once again inspire others, or if just maybe to pay it forward to day in your life at this moment as you continue through your next project. I hope I did this for you.
By the way, I don’t know why but for me the concept went perfect with the movie I viewed after. It was those signs that reminded me it is normal and fine to start over anytime and in any way we can in order to find what makes us happy. We can’t have regret or resent for our fate and the cards that we are dealt, it is time wasted and never found. We must learn to let it go and move on, and jump in to save ourselves. Thank you for accepting my friend request, I hope we can become good literary friends. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any assistance to you with your stage production of, “Freestyle,” in NY or Orlando, Florida or any future literary endeavor. Good Luck to you and all your future projects.

Charries Semidey-Salazar