Aqui esta version en Espanol:
Poesía: Bellos Sentimientos
you burned down my impenetrable wall
with your kisses, with your caresses
with your honesty, with your authenticity
and while I’m terrified that one day you’ll leave
I’m reminded every day you’re not temporary fantasy
by never feeding me bullshit promises
by never avoiding conflict
by never treating me like a princess
And by always inspiring me
and evolving along with me
In the beginning, it was just me and you –
and it was hard making sense of being a mom
the heavy weight of caring for another human
felt like it was going to crush me at times
and I tried my best with my lack of knowledge
with my lack of judgment
so your lullabies were the goo goo dolls and sugar ray
and your bedtime stories were stephen king and cosmo
the pediatrician did tell me to read to you-
at 17, I thought he meant anything
at 17, I was far from June Cleaver
and I felt so inept at times
and while other moms read parenting books
on how to become mommy dearest
I focused on school books to graduate from high school
so we’d have a fighting chance
so while you never had a typical mom
you still lucked out with a mom
who’ll always fill you up with love and strength
a mom who’ll always have your back
I wrote this poem in September of 2022.
running in the sun warms my body, warms my thoughts
it invokes my need to worship it like my ancestors
before the colonizers declared it wrong and pagan
but they couldn’t erase my blood and my DNA
and my deep connection to the Sun,
my ancestral GOD
Always bringing me to the surface of gratitude and love
I wrote this poem in September of 2022.
I call to the waning moon for inspiration, for motivation
Some days it’s hard to keep going, to keep trying
I call to the waning moon to turn into Mama Killa
and bring me comfort and growth
As far as what my future holds for me, I’ve been doing a lot of long term goal planning and manifestations the past few years and that’s been working for me. Here’s a recent blog post I wrote about it:
goal setting
The past 2 years was me trying to find out who I was and what I wanted out of life. I had this very vague idea, almost like a sketch but now I have a clear picture of what that is exactly. Getting out of survival mode was crucial for this development and I’m excited about the future. One thing I can tell you is that there will definitely be more storytelling. In fact, for the month of September, I’m telling my story chronologically with some of the moments in my life that most impacted me. This came about organically as I was planning blog content for that month and I said, “fuck it, let’s do this” and “let’s see what happens”. I think that so much of my healing happened because of my storytelling. It was important for me to retell my story because that’s how I took ownership of it. It helped turn me from a victim to heroine in my story and this has been monumental to my healing process. Of course, sometimes that looks crazy and messy but it only proves what a resilient and powerful Queen I am to still be standing despite the chaos and trauma I’ve been through. Here’s a poem I wrote in April about it:
Sharing my story
I’ve taken off my mask and stop repressing my true self-
And while it’s terrifying at time, I show the world my authenticity
and vulnerability
I share the parts of my story that are terrible, happy, sad, lovely, crazy, beautiful, and tragic
so others don’t feel alone and find solidarity
in my chaotic and bicultural story of love, rage, defeat, hate, and resilience
And bring to light my rich and vivid experience of the duality of being a rooted and rootless,
Peruvian and American, a hateful and kind woman living her life fearlessly and shamelessly
I restarted this blog a couple of summers ago as a way to cope with my mental breakdown and at the time I had only 17 followers and now I have more than 300 followers who have been incredibly supportive and encouraging throughout this self discovery journey. Thank you to all of you who have given me this safe space on the internet to share my story through blogging and poetry. This has been incredibly instrumental in helping me in my recovery from BPD . It’s given me a sense of love through community that I didn’t know could exist and I’m incredibly grateful and humbled by it. Anyways,if you’ve made it to the end of this blog post, you’re the best. I’m not sure what year 3 after my BPD diagnosis but I hope I continue to evolve and live a life with purpose for the betterment of myself and my kids.
It’s been 2 years since my BPD diagnosis and some things have changed, some things have remained the same. I still have the same two jobs and still adhere to my strict routine of consistency and routine with exercise, writing, and therapy. I’m still on the same meds for my anxiety and depression. All of that has helped with my continued progress and growth. And I still continue to suffer from major depressive episodes but it’s not as bad as it used to be and here’s a blog I wrote about it recently:
But You Can’t Be Depressed, You’re a Mom
What has changed overall has been me. I remember last year writing about how I was living an authentic life and while that was mostly true, there was still something I had to take care of to make this true, my divorce and telling my youngest son about it. I went back to therapy to navigate these big feelings in actually starting the process and following through and telling my youngest son about it. I’m glad to report, I filed for divorce a couple of months ago and told my son who took it better than I expected. After this, I felt like this major burden of guilt and grief has been lifted off from me. It was hard, really hard to have lied about this part of my life for the past four years to my son and to other family members. Three of those years, I felt like I was leading a double life as I had to be careful not to let one part of my life bleed into the other. It was awful and reflecting back on this, I think this was a major trigger for my mental health breakdown in the summer of 2021. Feeling guilt and shame with the immensity of emotions that comes with BPD is horrible and something I would never wish on my worst enemy.
Another major thing that happened in year 2 is that I took two trips to my homeland, Peru. The first one was in September of 2022 and the second one was in March of this year. Both times I went, it was amazing and the first trip helped me reconnect with my roots and find a sense of identity I had been searching for all of this time. I hadn’t been back since I was 9 so it had been 32 years since I had been home. It was strange, glorious, amazing and overwhelming at the same time. It felt like I finally found a piece within me that had been missing all of this time.
The second trip was even better because I took my oldest son who hadn’t been on a plane since he was an infant and we got to visit my dad’s hometown of Oxapampa. I think I’m still processing that trip because it was so special and meaningful to take my son to Peru and show him his and my roots. I’m honestly still processing both trips and I’ll write about both of them later. What I can say is that both trips helped in my healing and recovery process from my BPD symptoms. Before, I was still floundering when it came to trying to establish a stable identity. That changed radically after I came back from my first trip.
to be continued in part two-
Life on the BPD 