I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
to see my american dream I just need to step into my backyard
and look at my holy trinity who call me mom
they’re the ones I try to better myself for
they’re the one who make my immigrant existence
worth living for
they’re my american dream wrapped up in burps, dark humor
and love
So I wrote this essay a couple of years ago as I was reflecting about the end of my marriage:
As my eight year marriage comes to its inevitable end, I’ve been rewatching the series Mad Men. When I first watched the series, I admired Joan and Peggy for being strong female characters in the show but I always thought there was something about Betty Draper that I could relate to. It’s strange to think about considering she’s a white upper class sixties housewife in New York and I’m a working class millennial immigrant Latina woman in Georgia. It’s hard to grasp that there would be any similarities between but there are many indeed.
(Me and Hubs at my brother’s wedding reception)
Betty feels trapped in her suburban idyllic existence and often times feels frustrated; I’ve also felt this way throughout the past fifteen years. Betty wonders if there is more to life than what she is living which is rearing children and being a good wife; I’ve constantly wondered the same thing except that I have the added burden of working.
Don, Betty’s husband acts like she should be happy with her life and gets mad at her when she shows real emotion, kind of accuses her of being crazy and sends her to a psychiatrist that he secretly talks to about her sessions without her consent and knowledge. My husband never went so far but for most our relationship he did accuse me of over reacting and/or accuse me of being crazy if I got “emotional” about something and/or brought up needs that weren’t being met in our relationship. It always felt that I was expecting too much out of our relationship for wanting normal things in a relationship. My husband has also acted like I should settle for what the little he can give me in terms of companionship and be happy with that since he was. For a long time, I felt that maybe I could and should settle for this but settling made me miserable for several years.
Don also kind of stopped investing time and energy into his marriage. He took Betty for granted because they were married with two children and hid behind his work and his many dalliances. My husband was never one to make time for us or continue to woo me in any sense after we started living together. Instead, he hid behind the raising of our children and the fact that he was always tired. He could never spontaneously compliment me and I was always either too fat or almost too skinny for him. Betty overlooked Don’s lack of affection for several years in the same way I overlooked my husband’s. I feel that this had to do with how women are conditioned to be polite and swallow their emotions because again–we’ll be accused of being crazy and/or hysterical.
The beginning of the end of Betty and Don’s marriage started when Betty eventually gets fed up after having one of Don’s affairs rub in her face and throws Don out but later they get back together because she finds out she’s pregnant with their third child. Don does try to be a somewhat better husband but eventually goes back to his philandering ways. There have been a few times throughout our relationship that I did try to break up with my husband but because he always apologized and said he would change, I always took him at his word and wanted to believe he would change. We even planned our third child and got married shortly after getting pregnant. I think I subconsciously did this because I thought a baby and a marriage would be the band aids that would fix “us”.
Betty eventually gets tired of Don’s lack of effort and also his lies and eventually asks for a divorce, she tells him something like, “I don’t feel anything when I kiss you”; it seems that this was when she knew that it was over for her and Don. For me, it took me a couple of years to be firm in my decision to divorce my husband. I think that I finally realized that there was no way I could continue the façade of our marriage when I realized that I no longer cared that he didn’t notice me or felt anything remotely like romantic love when I kissed him. It took him a while to understand why I wanted a divorce since he was happy with “us” and his main concerns were, “what about the taxes?” or “what about the kids?”. But like Don, he eventually agreed to it and said that he wouldn’t fight me about it. It’s kind of eerie that women like myself can still relate to a sixties housewife when it comes to relationships, marriages, and the stigma of divorce. I’m sure that people wonder why I would stay in a stagnant and awful relationship/marriage; that’s simple; I loved my husband. I thought that loving him meant that I had to settle for a marriage devoid of any real affection. I thought that the love I felt for him would be enough to change him one day.
I’m used to being a doormat
always allowing people’s energy to pollute
my life and take up my time
it’s the people pleaser in me who needed to fawn
be easy to get along with with,always avoiding conflict,
become the person they want me to be, always easy to digest and swallow
cutting away pieces of my authenticity-
never valuing myself or putting myself first
It was learned martyrdom from the women in my family
Internalized misogyny sold to me at young age
dressed up as selfless acts of love
but I’m done sacrificing myself for others
It’s time to unlearn this toxic way of loving and being
I refuse to passed this down to the next generation
of woman who come after me
I’m here to take up space, roar like a lioness
and passed down a new legacy of self love
that took me 41 years to learn
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
everyone I meet wants to fix me
my hair is wild and indomitable
my grammar is atrocious
my laugh is too loud
and we can’t forget about my crooked teeth
and while most of them mean well
I wonder what’s so wrong with me
that people always fixate on my flaws
What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?
Privilege and Luxury
Luxury looks like the chauffeur
who drives me and my sister
to ballet classes
and my brother to karate
Privilege tastes like eating garlic cloves
in bed with my bunny
who wears a knitted hat
made by my Mami
Luxury smells like el amuerzo
of rice and over easy eggs
the maid serves us
Privilege sounds like a bomb
going off near our house
one of its residents
loses his hearing because of it
Luxury feels like my mami understanding
terrorism is at her front door
and applying for U.S sponsorship
through a relative
Privilege is having parents
who crossed the border
for us and with us
out of love and for our safety
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
I look forward to the day when I’m no longer known as the writer with BPD
when I no longer make my mental illness a part of my brand
when I’m no longer dependent on my ex husband
and antipsychotics to survive
when I finally start to resemble something like a normal person
and not the vehement emotional mess I usually am
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
there are days I don’t feel strong enough to be their mom
maybe it’s insecurity that weighs heavily on me
after every fight, after every conflict
it was easier when they were small
and I was their favorite person
the one they ran to the moment I opened the door
nowadays I work much and they have their own interests
to have much to do with me
nowadays they bring up grievances of everything
I’ve done and am doing wrong
is this karma for being a bad daughter to my mom
is this karma for being selfish and self absorbed
for a few years of their lives
Who knows-
maybe it’s not about being strong, being right,
or being respected
maybe it’s about them knowing they are loved
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
saw you and knew right away there wouldn’t be a second date
thought I made that apparent enough at the end
but 3 years later you send me a snap to ask me
if I’m still interested
Sorry
but the woman you met is no longer who I used to be
maybe you had a chance with her
but the new me-she’s careful who she gives access to
the new me has cut off any strings left
from the old life the old me use to live
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
at 9, Mariah Carey taught me to look pretty
even as I’m suffering, even as I’m cast aside
for someone else
even as I’m crying and dying from grief
at 9, Mariah Carey taught me about
all of the lovely and terrible things
that come with falling in love
at 9, Mariah Carey gave me lessons
about life and love
I’ve carried into my middle age
I wrote this poem in April of 2024.
ancestor, ancestor-
which alcohol goes best with making shitty life decisions
ancestors says, not the PBR, not the michelob ultra light, it’s too basic of an energy
for the kind of epic shitty life decisions you tend to make
don’t reach for the margarita wine either, too obvious, too much of a cliche
and you already have plenty of them in your poetry
Go for the Guiness six pack
make your shitty life decisions with some English class
since most of your terrible decisions tend to include some asshole
whose ancestors are colonizer Englishmen
I wrote this poem in April of 2024.
ramen 3 times a day in the dingy 2 bedroom duplex
and it was an upgrade from the miniature apartment
in mid city L.A
the one where there was a bullet hole in my window
so what if the stripper and the landlord’s son
got in screaming matches
so what if the marine next to us beat his wife
weekly for her infidelity
despite the poverty experienced, despite the trashy
and toxic domestic energy
that dingy duplex was freedom to me and my family
it was hope and salvation from the nightmare
of indentured servitude L.A had been
I wrote this poem in April of 2024.
mami dressed me up in ruffles and pastels whenever she could
I’d swirled and twirled in my dress until I got dizzy
loved when everyone told me, “ay que bonita te miras”
and I awkwardly bowed, smiled, and hid
sashayed to every single one of my relatives
and did the same thing
it’s one of the few times I remembered being vain as a child
one of the few times I didn’t feel weird and like an outcast
external validation learned at the tender age of 8
this poem is inspired by the 2007 poem “small”
can’t blend in with this privileged world
wrong age, wrong last name, wrong ethnicity
I stand destined for failure
on this institutions steps
as the pressure to succeeds hang around me
like a noose around my neck
and yet I still keep going
and show up every day
if only to teach my kids a lesson
in how to keep going when you want to quit
I wrote this poem in March of 2024.
I hate it when I catch myself being unintentionally sweet
It makes me feel vulnerable and weak
It’s almost as if my armor of empowered Queen
is breaking and I can’t allow that to happen
I’ve come too far in my heroine’s journey
to allow romantic daydreams
to disrupt it
And I’m tempted to erase his messages
And block him
It’s not his fault or mine
It’s the faulty wiring in my brain
it causes the logic in me to short circuit
every time I talk to him
Life on the BPD 