I feel like I’m going to explode.

Let’s be 100% real here. I’m riding the shark week crimson tide so to speak, which explains why I’ve been feeling the way I’m feeling, only this time it’s more pronounced than normal. I’ve been switching between days of weeping over a movie (The Pianist, to be fair) and having an overwhelming sense of gratitude from looking at the mountains. Days where I question if certain things were as real as I thought they were and days when I think fuck it. I do know this – I’m totally in love with life right now (like now now) and at the same time some things have never been more uncertain for me. It’s that feeling of slowly inching up towards the precipice of a roller coaster and knowing your stomach is about to drop any second.

For the past eight months or so I’ve been living and working in Mexico. At the end of the week I’m packing it all up and heading back home (Arizona) for a few days before heading off to my next assignment. The last few days have really been a time of reflection for me and I can’t help but savor every taco, embrace every sunset over the Sierra Madre, let every drop of mezcal fill me, and just generally bask in the grit and glory that is the motherland. It hurts to leave it all behind willingly. Then again I get this way every time I’m about to leave a place where I’ve left a piece of myself (or found a piece, depending on how you look at it). In some way I’m always terrified that I’ll never be there again or see the people who went from strangers to friends. The reality is that nothing is guaranteed and whenever I’m faced with big changes like this it unnerves me a little.

Thinking of the inevitability of loss, of any kind, gives me this thirst for life and passion even more. For years my bestie and I always wanted to get friendship tattoos (which we eventually did). The closest we ever came before actually taking the plunge years later was one drunken day in Prescott. It was my birthday and to celebrate we went on a weekend getaway. It was one of the best trips we’ve ever had. Just the two of us, both still single, we were truly free that weekend. Of course we were day drinking and making friends with strangers and riding that toasty high when we started talking about how amazing life was and how we should find a tattoo parlor and finally go through with it. But what would we get?, we asked. In that moment I knew: “live life!” It was brilliant. It was everything we felt at that moment summed up in two simple words. It would be the best tattoo ever! Or so we thought. Fate and sobering up saved us that day and we always laughed about it, thanking our lucky stars that we never got something we’d go on to regret (#noragrets).

Fast forward to this weekend. For whatever reason, Coldplay’s ‘Viva la Vida’ has been following me around the last few days. The constant appearance of the song also got me thinking of what may be my favorite Frida Kahlo piece, Sandías. You may know it better as the watermelon painting with the words ‘viva la vida.’ To give you an idea of the meaning behind this seemingly plain painting, here’s a great explanation:

In her diary, just days before her death, Kahlo penned her final entry stating, “I hope the exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.” Viva la Vida is a bright and vibrant celebration of life in both its simplicity of composition and complexity of emotional expression. It is not emblematic of the fear of death, nor is it hopelessly longing for the continuation of her own life. Rather, death, in the context Kahlo created, becomes a natural path that transcends the earthly plain and its burdens.

For me, following the end of what I thought would be a lifelong relationship a few years ago, death became an almost daily thought. Not in a suicidal way at all, but in the sense that once I no longer had someone by my side who cared for and loved me, once that constant was suddenly gone from my life, it made me think of the end, of everything, and how nothing lasts forever no matter how much we hold onto it. It was this sinking feeling of despair that also started getting me to examine more deeply what I wanted to achieve out of this life and how I wanted to go about doing it. Live life. Not so simple after all.

Viva la vida translates to ‘long live life’ and in Mexican culture there’s a strong relation and tradition with the beginning of that phrase, mainly to express national pride during Mexican Independence Day celebrations (“Viva Mexico, cabrones!”). In a way it feels like an evolved, more grown-up version of my original ‘live life’ sentiment. So much so that I’ve been playing with the idea of making it a reality. A physical representation of this mantra that I can’t seem, nor do I want, to escape. In this sense I think about how ‘viva la vida’ isn’t only a representation of living, but it means living so fully that when the time comes you can welcome it as a natural progression onto the next life.

Luckily over the past year and a half I feel like I’ve been the closest of actually putting this idea into practice more or less consistently. There have been a lot of people that have come into my life (and some only for a short while) but I can say they’ve each taught me something I needed to know and added their grain of sand to my path of ‘living life.’ People who have opened my mind, my ears, my thoughts, and my heart. Of course nothing is certain. I’m still trying to figure it all out and find out where I fit and finding those people who fit my own puzzling pieces. Ultimately I’m trying to do nothing more than be fulfilled even in a small way, each and every day. I just want to enjoy this watermelon of life. Viva la vida, cabrones.