How Surviving Emotional Trauma and Cancer Later Helped Me in Life in Prose

By Mario Fontenla

The idea to write this book was born out of my empathy for others who are suffering like I have after traveling so much during my youth and suffering from the emotional trauma of constantly being harshly bullied, to finally settling in New York City for many years, where I started volunteering for the Red Cross about ten years ago, which launched my whole career in translation and interpretation and made me start to write poems after living to survive cancer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984555946

Mario Fontenla

I am a cancer survivor who came from a family of scientists and always ate the healthiest diets known to science and took a full vitamin supplement when growing up as well as did weight lifting about two hours every single day all of which must have helped me fight my cancer much later on in my life. I am a testament to how maintaining a diet and exercise regime all your life is the best answer for any ailment for we truly are what we eat and I do not have a single white hair on my head at 55 years old and look and feel great!! I am also a very functional emotional trauma survivor and I can attest to the fact that these recipes are very good for cognition, memory, concentration, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or Alzheimer all of which I have none.

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Copyright © 2018 by Mario Fontenla.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018911559

ISBN:              Hardcover                978-1-9845-5596-0

                        Softcover                  978-1-9845-5595-3

                        eBook                       978-1-9845-5594-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/28/2018

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CONTENTS

Introduction

The National Parks

To Not See the Love

Competition

What Makes You Really Happy?

The South Americas

Cancer

Beauty

Happiness

The Cycles of Life

To Die Loving

War

A Beautiful Rose

Evil versus Good

Moments

My Father

Our Destiny

A Friend

The Winner and the Loser

The Higher-Order Thinking

Happy to Be Alive

A Mother

A Father

The Little Things in Life

To Be Conscious

Evolution

Contamination

A Walk in Central Park

Violence

My Passion

A Mango

The Tango

The Champ

Cowards

Courage

Violence

War

Wisdom and Ignorance

True Wisdom

Tolerance

Pure Love

To Regret Nothing

Life Is Good

Fame

Love

Infidelity

Together

The Truth

Cinderella

Talent

Justice

The Game of Love

Fifty-One Years

The Devil’s Temptation

The Giver and the Taker

The Moon

The Real Loser

I Have Made My Peace

People Who Think like Trump

Hope

Longing

Thanksgiving

Take Care

We Should Take Advantage

When You’re Down and Out

Two Sides of the Coin

The Guru of Love

Things I Love

There Is Always Less Time

A Defeated Man

Someone

The Sentimental Things

The Republicans

The Love of the World

A False Person

Art

Just Pop a Pill

What My Father Did

Love Begets More Love

Life Is Worth Living

The Poor Patients of Accidents

The People

The Love of My New Niece Liv

A Good Sister Paula

So Thankful for Life

There Will Be Winners and Losers

My Love for My Sister Sandra

Those Were Times When

When a Woman Just Doesn’t Care

Some Will Give It All and Some Will Not

The Real Loser

The Realist

Pagans

A Poem to My Nieces and Nephews

Liv at Three Months

The Cruel Rat

Why Hate Crimes?

Life Is Complicated

Surviving Cancer

Only Love Conquers All

Patience and Understanding

Light and Shadow

Violence and Peace

A Blue Clown

The Idealist

To Be Alive

I Shall Never Forget You, Fernando

Life Goes On

Honor Life

A True Friend

People Will Go On to Do as They Feel

No Longer the Man

Getting Out in Time

Being Smart

A Love Poem

The Truth

What Are Sentiments All About?

When We Lose Our Way

The Villain

The Best of You

Things of Life

The Greatest One

To Pay the Price

Colors

Human Nature

Love

So Many Ways

More Love Is Good

Nice Girls Prefer Nice Guys

We Must Unite

I Wish You So Much Good

Beauty

Is to Be Caring Enough?

To Know

Jealousy

Caring

All Mammals Feel Love

Be Careful with Falling in Love

Together Again

The Mentally Incompetent

Fifty-Two Years

How Much Resilience in New York

Life Is Precious

Go Chase Your Dreams

Embracing All Cultures

Nothing Has Changed

A Woman Is Not an Object

Why Are Women Always Targeted?

Losers Can’t Be Choosers

Some Did It All and All Did Something

The Rules of Attraction

Tolerance

Evita

Relentlessness

War and Peace

I Will Always Love You

There Is Always a Limit

A Sentimental Poem

The Number One

Use Your Time Very Wisely

Love Will Always Be Love

Enough

Tomorrow

A Port in the Sea

But Why So Much Cowardice?

Courage and Understanding

Power

The Life Cycle

Incomprehensible

Love Takes Time

Cries against Violence

Animal Cruelty

A Bird Flying against the Wind

Use Your Talents

The Good and the Bad

Never Play with True Love

Untying the Knots

The Greatest Cowards

Jealousy

Similarities and Differences

I Have Forgotten to Live

An Old Rose

Mercy

I Remember

My Boehm

Nothing Remains the Same

Love Is Love When Needed

To All Those Who Were Brave

I Will Always Love You

Fear of Rejection

The Generational Gap

The True Love

Deep in Love

Surprise Life

I Will Always Think of You, Deriggs

To Fight or not to Fight

Love Is Complicated

A True Romantic

Don’t Wait

My Way

The Children of Tomorrow

Going Back

Desperate Cries

Guilt

Love Is

Drinking to Evade

Loneliness

Anguish and Fear of Trauma

Cowards

Gregory

Quick Gains

New York

Verbal Abuse

Back to My Roots

Perseverance and Patience

Indifference

Ignorance

Finding Your Path

Honesty

Love Is Not Enough

Life

Envy

Persecution

Work

Loyalty

A Blue Rose

Lies

Introduction

Born in Gainesville, Florida, I traveled every two to three years to different parts of Brazil, Argentina, and the US, going from lab to lab since my parents were both nuclear physicists. My parents enrolled me a year ahead in school, and that added to the fact that every two to three years I had to not only learn a different language but make entirely new friends. This made it much more difficult to adapt to this changing situation, often being bullied in school for being quite the intellectual type with an advanced experience in the sciences and math and knowledge of the world.

I have had the great opportunity of visiting all the greatest labs in all three countries and of seeing for myself the computers online with the particle accelerators waiting to detect a bump in the mass distribution detected by detectors, which would signify the discovery of a new particle. Finally, on my seventeenth birthday, after graduating from high school in Los Alamos, where the Los Alamos National Lab is, I had the excellent opportunity to come study here in New York City at what was then called the Polytechnic Institute of New York in Brooklyn, where I went on to complete two and a half years of electrical engineering for which Polytech, as we like to call it, was one of the best places to study in the US. Not being able to complete my undergraduate degree due to the fact that Polytech was just too expensive, I started taking language courses in Italian and French and already knew Portuguese and Spanish from a very early age from my travels. I then joined the Red Cross here in New York City as a volunteer mailroom clerk and worked very diligently and hard, where I earned a reputation. One day I met Fred Leahy, which was to become my boss until today, and commented that I spoke and wrote five languages fluently, so he told me to revise the website in Spanish and see if I could improve it by translating it to a more universal Spanish, aimed at a bigger audience and not just with idiomatic expressions from one country. My work was vetted, and they said I was a keeper. That launched my whole career as a translator/interpreter at the Red Cross and later led to a paid job as a medical interpreter and K–12 school interpreter. Sometime during my interpreter/translator volunteering, I developed a lymphoma in the vocal cord, and by the grace of God, chemotherapy and radiation put me in total remission for the last five years. Now I wrote a book of poems with my experience surviving all that to help others that might be suffering like me.

Perhaps the most important lesson I intend to pass on to others about my book of poems is that all of us need to take a step back sometimes and think objectively and in depth about what we are doing with our lives so far or, as they taught me at Polytechnic University, take a look at the mirror and say What have I got to say for myself? or Do I like what I am doing in life? or Is this what I really want to do and enjoy in life? For as usual, we do not realize what we really want in our lives until we are much older and our ideas mature. It would be a pity to be eighty-some years old and have to say for ourselves we sacrificed it all only to provide for ourselves and just survived and never stopped to think we could have used our particular talents and skills to help others or a cause that we may be passionate about. When I first got the diagnosis of a lymphoma in my vocal cords, the only thing that was going through my mind was if did I any of the things I dreamed I wanted to do someday. So I started to search for those things after being given a second chance and found a beautiful career helping those who cannot help themselves, which I hold deeply as a basic value which I want to live by. Life is, however, a one-shot deal that you either live as best you can—there is no going back—or you get second chances. I think life is hard for everyone, but the important thing to me, at least, is to find our niche and start doing something useful and always look back and ask ourselves not what we can do but, more importantly, what we can do better this time, so if we fall, we can get back up and do even better next time. Only then will we have lived the most amazing life ever when we get old. Also, I believe we must always be appreciative of everyone and compliment and be polite to all and often use words like I’m so sorry or Thank you or I love you because it is important to treat all, good or bad, with some love, and I think this is the only way to truly be happy and solve any problems without causing even greater grief to yourself and others!

The National Parks

Our national parks can evoke great excitement and compassion

From their grandiose beauty and spectacular scenario, which is one of the greatest attractions

It can move our hearts to beat strongly with excitement

And yet there are no words that can describe their incredible allurement

They attract people from near and far to come see their beauty

Which extends as far as the eye can see

And for those with severe heartaches due to great loss in life

Their immensely amazing view can bring back great feelings of might

And make you fall in love with their incredibly gorgeous sight

Thus healing any ache of the heart no matter how strong or light

From its redwood forests to its rocky formations you must first see it

Before you are ready to lay down and quit.

To Not See the Love

Not seeing the love of another who loves you is only but a way to justify your own hate

Like the heart that only sees when there is pleasure and not the love in hard work alike

But when there are hard times, our love is only being tested for its fate

And true love will suffer and wait for as long as it may take

Yet cheap love will never survive the first sign of an ache

Real love will suffer anything and ask for nothing in rebate

Such love must come simultaneously from both you and your mate

And that external beauty can be very alluring everybody can contemplate

Nevertheless that inner beauty is of much greater value only the wise will debate

The wise take with them a love unparalleled by any external beauty and are capable of love so great

That it will wait and solve any problem for those who the same love do not fake

Only the naive will quit at the first sign of suffering and will easily break

But only the wise know all great love takes time to grow strong at a very slow rate

So great love could never come to those who will not wait.

Competition

Everywhere you look in the world, people are competing for something

But there must also be some room for people everywhere to be united

At times competition brings us together

Yet there are times when it makes us fight against and destroy one another

In the office sometimes competition only makes us push each other down to move up

And in sports it makes us all unite and cheer to win the cup

However, often we forget to act as a team and cheer each other on

And the only thing in our minds is who lost and who won

Yet competition was never meant to divide us and make us fight among ourselves

But to unite us within our team, company, or friends and compete against outsiders

Nevertheless, sometimes even family members compete and fight among themselves

I, at least, think that competition should only be used to improve all humans and not to destroy ourselves.

What Makes You Really Happy?

Happiness is so subjective to what is in our hearts

That some say it is going to see the Great Canyons or a necklace made of pearls

Yet to others it is driving a Lamborghini or eating caviar and drinking champagne in the Sandals Islands

When we think of what truly makes us happy, we often find it could be as simple as writing this poem

Or helping others have a better life than what they have been originally given

I say we often try what others tell us will make us happy to find happiness

But often the answer is that any little thing we really like doing can also fill our hearts with gladness

So happiness is so subjective that what one person likes doing can fill another’s heart with sadness

Because since we were very young, we were conditioned to respond to either our hearts or our brains

And the heart chooses emotional pleasures, while the brain chooses intellectual pleasures

I, at least, think we must have both