abuela, today is your 94th birthday and I still look for you in mine and papi’s face I still wonder how your story would have turned out if you hadn’t been taken away from us at age 50 I still wonder if your spirit was with me and my son on that magical day 2 years ago I still weave parts of your story into mine since our paths were so alike and today I wonder if along your goddess cleavage, I also inherited your fiery spirit and generosity I wonder if right now you’re looking down on me confused with the life I lead or accepting and understanding I was made different from the women in my family
Today is the last day of my self imposed break from social media and alcohol for Lent and while I thought it would be hard to give up these things for 40 days; it was easier than I thought. My decision came out of concern for my mental health when once again I was depressed, anxious and started using threads my personal diary as I drank. Here’s a link to my messy threads account:
drinking German beer about to post some nonsense on threads…lol
Also, since the election, it’s been hard to be reminded every day that half the population kinda hates people like me but like so many of my friends, I felt like I needed to be informed of everything happening every single minute of the day. I thought it was important in order to keep myself and my family safe but this “need” started interfering very much with my mental health in ways that were terrible for me. I started getting triggered by posts and felt a great sense of paranoia (as if the world is out to get me) . I had also just been through a breakup in January that ended up being a lot messier than I thought at first and the constant barrage of information about all of the terrible things had me in a spiral for depression and anxiety constantly. I think I cried every week from January until the 3rd week of February while I wrote incredibly sad and depressing poetry that will probably stay between the pages of my journal. It was during this time, I also took my medical provider’s advice to up my dosage of Seroquel since I was having problems sleeping. All of this combined extended my emotional bandwidth again and again and until eventually it snapped. And I was about to snap and felt incredibly emotionally dysregulated to the point that my patience was incredibly low and I was snapping at people close to me. I knew I had to do something to get out of this downward spiral I was in. I had to identify what wasn’t helping me and that felt like social media and alcohol. So around the third week of February ,I uninstalled Instagram, tiktok, Threads, and Facebook. I still went to work and aside from my parenting/daughter duties, all I did was read and exercise after work for a week.
one the Amazing books of poetry I read that found me in a serendipitous way
I didn’t even turn on the TV that whole week. Needless to say, I felt much better by the end of the week. By the end of the week I also had a medical appointment with my medical provider and we talked about my how my new dosage of Seroquel wasn’t helping me and decided I had to go down to normal dose and that made a difference as well. That’s when I decided it would be a great idea to give up social media and alcohol for Lent as a type of reset for my nervous system and I’m glad I did. Now, I’ll be honest in saying that I have put a lot of that energy into my YouTube channel it has helped it grow a bit.
I’ve also been reading a lot of poetry blogs on WordPress which is always great and inspiring. And I think that in the month of March, I wrote an insane amount of poetry, like for the first 4 days in March, I wrote something like 100 poems. I’ve also been reconnecting with old friends I hadn’t seen in a while and still going to open mics.
open mic at Canopy Studio on March 27th
I’ve also watched tons and tons of Latin American Classic Movies on youtube. I don’t know how to compare this time period except for the time one of my kids infected me with lice and I was miserable and had to slowly delouse my hair and it tooks hours and hours but afterwards, I felt so incredibly relieved that I was able to do it and got to keep my hair cause lord knows I am vain and I don’t look good with short hair. Anyways, in this case, we’ll say the lice were like all of those social media posts that kept reminding me the world was burning, people were terrible or fake, and of course, the social media posts that brought up feelings of envy and jealousy and of course, anger. I was becoming infected by this algorithm that became incredibly unhealthy to my mental health. And also, I was paranoid all of the time if I was being judged by my posts since I tend to over post and overshare. I was starting to care a little too much as to how I was being perceived. So I needed to delouse my mind by giving that up along with alcohol. It has helped my mental health so much and I’m able to regulate my emotions so much better now than I have been in a long time.
this time served to reconnect with my friend from college
This time period has also been good for introspection into how much I want to make social media a part of my life because I think there are benefits for it. I’ve been able to find a creative community both local and online through social media. Also, I’ve used it to share my poetry and to promote my blog and other writing projects. Social media can also be used to uplift one another as well, and hype the people in your life. And to an extent, it’s been good to share life updates but not the way I was abusing it by posting several selfies in one week. God, I knew it was a problem when one of my aunts mentioned it to me at my grandmother’s funeral in 2018. I remember how embarrassed I was when she told me but I kept on posting shamelessly. Now, that I’m at my big age of 45, I think I’ll post selfies or life updates sparingly. I think as I get older, I want to be a bit more private about my life. I also need to be mindful because I have parents, kids, and a state job I do want to keep. It’s like that old Spanish saying my Mami has always tells me, “Eres amo de lo que callas, y esclavo de lo que dices” which translates into, “you are the master of what you keep quiet and slave of what you share”.
at the end of my time away, I feel so much better
links to amazing poetry books I’ve read:
Follow my Goodreads Account for more book recommendations.
As far as movie recommendations, here’s my letterboxd account y’all can check out and follow.
If failure was a task I would be the poster girl for it I’m a failure at love, I’m a failure at life, I am a failure at Being Human but all of these are thoughts of the past me the new me doesn’t see herself as a failure or that she has ever failed at life she sees failure as a stepping stone and learning curve the new me sees herself as a winner of life and not the loser of 1 because she never gave up or didn’t give in or because she’s a resilient queen
short gray hair, steely blue eyes, red nose, transparent white skin stern hands with a wooden rules in them always ready to correct an unruly and wild child who talked too much, who wiggled in line or at their desk, who walked a thin line between angel and mortal her presence intimidated me and scared me to tears and a Godly fear of disappointing her quickly set in me at age 6 and quickly I learned how to swim found that the key to never feel her wrath was silence and unconditional obedience by blending in with the walls, with my desk, only speak when spoken to, ask permission for everything even to breathe, become a good little soldier of the Lord forget Spanish and leave my immigrant identity at home it’s how I survived 5 years of religious indoctrination it’s how I became an american
When I open my eyes,I whine and grunt Another day where I whine,whine, whine Working to live? Or living to work? I can’t remember which is better Living is really just guesswork Maybe today I won’t feel so much anger Perhaps I should find hope in this new day Instead of living in doom and gloom Maybe the darkness will stay away Or I’ll cry at work in the bathroom again
my first lesson in forgetting spanish came at age 6, that first week in first grade at holy spirit when Spanish came out of my mouth and sister Loretto screamed at tme and threatened me with the ruler I don’t remember what she said bu t I was deeply impacted learned to be good, to be obedient was to forget who I was and quickly I made my brain believe English was better, English was the language for survival in my adopted homeland and like a sponge, I absorbed it I didn’t lose heart when I was placed in the lowest reading group, didn’t cry when I mispronounced a word, and my classmates laugh I just kept on going understood that my parents sacrifice in coming here needed to be worth it there was so much pressure on my shoulders to succeed at age 6 instead of playing make believe and getting lost in disney fantasies my priority was to learn English and become my parents american dream
I’ve been called an exclamation mark before But I feel more like a question mark Because I always ask questions like: Why am I like this? How do I get rid of anxious thoughts? Where does my heart really reside? What is best for me? Who will love me?
I manifest a new boyfriend he’s a poem in the making he’s someone I’ll meet unexpectedly He’ll come when the marigolds sprout and spring is here He’ll be brave enough to try me on after I trauma dump he’ll be my new spring waiting to bloom with me
a lot of us search for someone or something to complete us or make us feel like we are enough we’ve been brainwashed by society’s conditioning that we’re incomplete without a lover or without our career goals satisfied and this is really toxic and false narrative we need to stop believing in we should look instead for the amazing in the ordinary and appreciate how it’s a gift to just be human and exist
the sexual tension between me and ghosting everyone is insane
we lie to ourselves continuously about our needs to save face, to avoid conquering our fears to not feel insecure we’ll tell ourselves we are better off alone and independent when in reality as humans we are meant to be social we are meant to share ourselves with others but it’s cooler to say, “I’m good with my solitude, I’m my own best friend” because deep down inside we don’t want to get hurt again
subtitles jump from my phone screen violently one of the few films from 1950’s mexico that address domestic violence one of the few films to portray the man as the crazy one but instead of him going to prison for his many crimes against his wife he ends up locked up in a monastery
before I was diagnosed with BPD, I was very sick I wished and wished to be anyone else but me I really wanted to be a middle class white woman the kind who grew up with 2 parents in a 2 story house the kind who never had to assimilate to fit it the kind who never had to to fill out a FAFSA application the kind who was never neglected and whose feelings were always validated the kind who writes stories or poems about her favorite horse instead of stories or poems about constantly feeling like a stranger in your adopted homeland the kind who is mostly respected by men and not fetichized or called exotic the kind who’s never had 2 jobs to survive in this capitalistic society before I was diagnosed with BPD,I was very sick I wished and wished to be anyone else but me but three years into recovery I’ve healed and wouldn’t want to be anyone else because while it’s true that many people don’t struggle as much me everyone (even middle class white women) still have their own set of insecurities and trauma I know nothing about I’ve learned I need to focus on myself, feel gratitude for everything I have as I reach my goals and chase my dreams and most importantly I now love and embrace who I’ve been, who I am, who I will be I no longer play a game of envy and view myself as a broken mess of who I’ve been or what’s happened to me I was never those things I’m a beautiful mosaic of everything I’ve endured, experienced and lived
Listening to my writing playlist while high a lot of songs about men begging the women to come back Interesting It is a hidden fetish, fantasy I had a man continuously
suffering for me regretting the day they fumbled me
Me convertí en la oscuridad para mi papá la Luz que brillaba en sus ojos por mis apagón y lloré Lloré lloré sentí que había matado el amor que sentía por mí pero no era así Si lo había Herido bastante pero me perdonó cuándo le de otra razón de amo
Life on the BPD 