I wrote this poem in August of 2024.
if self sabotage was an olympic sport, I’d win the gold medal
so many times I’d been close to reaching my potential
only to screw it up later
maybe it’s the insecure and anxious little girl
who still lives within me
who’s scared of conquering fears and chasing her dreams
I need to figure out a way to quell her
to give her closure and peace so she’ll let me be
live in peace and stop sabotaging everything
I wrote this poem in August of 2024.
August is here and I hold onto
the few slivers of hope left in me
as I reach another rock bottom
self correcting and not making myself a victim
making sure I’m better than yesterday
Trying my best to control my emotions
knowing that somewhere in the wash
of this downward spiral
will come the biggest silver lining
I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
I’m going to paint the sky with all of the colors of your love
red, green, yellow, dark gray, midnight blue, and black
every single color you’ve brought to my life
it’s will be the most epic mural who beauty will rival
the taj mahal
a mural decided to my own miracle of your love
wordpress prompt:If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?
I want someone to take to oxapampa
so I can show him where part of my story started
so he can watch the sun rise and the sun set
on my family’s farmland
so I can experience joy through his eyes
for the first time as he observes the beauty
of the land
So I can watch his face when he takes a sip
for the first time of the world class beer 7 vidas
so we can take tourist pics at the plaza
and the church were my dad was baptized in
dance the night and awkwardly laugh
at the cultural appropriation of the Cheyenne Club
so right after we end up at the Hakuna Matata karaoke bar
when I sing “Lover” to him off key
as he sits in his chair and cringes in embarrassment
and tells me I’m crazy and everyone stares at us
so we could have breakfast with my tia
with the eggs, chorizo, coffee, and milk coming
from the family farm as we all awkwardly make small talk
about our plans for the day
I want someone to take to oxapampa to hug trees,
go on hikes in the jungle, and make love in some little cabin
but I’ll have to wait and wait until the universe
sends someone worthy of going the magical land
of oxapampa
written in September of 2023
my energy is a precious commodity
i don’t give it to anybody
my time and effort now has to be earned
because of so many false starts and lessons learned
I’d rather embrace my solitude than once again
Become Joe from “YOU”
because I’m much to beautiful
to fall for another insensitive fool
I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
I wash my hands of all my past sins
my wrongs never defined me
It was a toxic narrative I swallowed whole
when I was addicted to suffering
and being a martyr
What makes a teacher great?
As I’m thinking about this answer, two teachers come to mind. One is my 11th Grade English Mrs.Idica and the other is my college professor of creative writing, Dr.Blais.
I took Mrs.Idica’s Asian American Lit and Creative Writing class my junior year of high school. I did really well in my creative writing class but almost flunked the Asian American lit class. I remember not liking her too much at first because she pushed us to do our best and was strict. I think I did well in the creative writing class because I really loved writing poems and little short stories. At the time, I didn’t think it was something I’d ever be passionate about but of course the class did have a great impact on me, here’s a poem I wrote in that class:
Poetry: That Night
Mrs.Idica ended up being my homebound teacher when I was on maternity leave with my first son at the beginning of my senior year. That meant that for 6 weeks, she came to my house to give me my school assignments and helped me with them if I needed help. She would stay and talk to me and always encouraged me to drop out of high school and to continue on. This was important for me to hear as there was pressure from people in my family to drop out and work. She could have easily just dropped off my work and not have these conversations with me but instead she showed up with the compassion and grace I needed during a really dark time in my life. She also had the patience of the saint as I trudge through my school assignments since I was an terrible student. She never gave up on me or told me my life was ruined because I had a child at such a young age. In fact, she was one of the few people who didn’t shame me and reminded me my child was a gift. The encouragement from her and her belief in me really made a difference in my life. I don’t believe I would have put so much effort that last year in high school and graduated on time. I think what made her not just a great but exceptional teacher was that she was caring, had the patience of a saint, and was this light of compassion and encouragement for me when I needed it. This is a poem I wrote about her:
poetry: saint tracey
I also want to say that I’m still in touch with her through social media where I share updates about my life and my writing. Even now, she tells me she’s proud of me and that means a lot to me.
Another teacher in my life who was exceptional was my creative writing professor Dr. Blais. Like Mrs.Idica, she pushed us to do our best in the class and provided a safe space for us to express ourselves creatively.I also learned to be super disciplined with my writing in her class and the editing process. She was very patient with us and in her class I wrote 3 plays and both of them won 2nd and 3rd place in the college writing competition which meant a lot to me since it was the first time I was writing plays. She also encouraged me to continue writing and even invited me to one of her playwright workshop groups but I couldn’t go due to family obligations. Also, her class was my favorite escape from my busy mom life that included 2 small kids and 3 part time jobs at the time. It was a crazy time in my life where my mental health was a bit touch and go but going to Dr.Blais class helped me cope. Like, Mrs.Idica, Dr.Blais saw potential in me and encouraged me and was incredibly patient in kneading the writer out of me. I think taking her class validated my passion for writing. Especially when the last assignment was making a book which I titled “My Quarter Life Crises” . I felt accomplished in making that little book of my poems and plays. Here’s a link to one of the plays I wrote in her class:
Play: Choices
Unfortunately, I lost touch with my Dr.Blais after college and can’t seem to find her anywhere. Last I heard is that she’s had success as a playwright in New York.
I think I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had two educators show up in my life who made a positive impact on effect. It doesn’t always happen that way (thinking about my super condescending English professor at UGA- but that’s another blog post) . It’s hard to imagine who I would have become without both of them.
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
as long as there is breath left in me
I will try
try to be a good mom to my kids
try to tell my story
try to love everyone the best way
i can
try to find understanding
for what happened to me
try to find joy in the most ordinary
of moments
try to dance my way through
my most depressive episodes
try find my inner peace and calm
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 wrote this poem in June of 2024.
lately I hate everything I have written
Sometimes I get the urge to burn
Or delete everything
but something tells me
this is how I know I’m growing
I’m evolving in my craft
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
this modern world got my victorian and pure heart all fucked up
don’t know which way is up
don’t know which way is down
don’t know what is right
don’t know what is wrong
I want someone’s hand to hold but they reach for my breast
I want innocent kisses on the cheek
but they reach for the heaven between my thighs
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
my exes should all get a participation trophy
for dating me, for marrying me,
for putting up my madness
for becoming muses of my poetry
unwillingly, unintentionally
for surviving the rollercoaster
that is me
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
I hope this story is buried for a final time
and you don’t pop up again
and I have to play whack an asshole
once again
blocking you on yet another platform
would the universe be kind enough this time
for it to be good riddance forever
cause I’m tired of my past mistakes
to constantly come out of nowhere
to disturb my present
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
I’m ready for steak dinners and an expensive bottle of chardonnay
shared over awkward getting to know you conversations
with no expectations to put out
I’ll be a completely different woman when I’m dating again
a woman selective about who allows near her
a woman who no longer seeks validation and attention
from the wrong men
I wrote this poem in May of 2024.
I wanted to kill my sex drive so I stopped taking buspar
and while my sex drive has finally waned
the side effects are slowly killing me
between the mental fog, the constant headaches,
the nausea followed by the loss of appetite
there’s a reason they tell you to wean slowly
from psychiatric drugs, to do it under the care
of a medical provider
stopping cold turkey lends to a spiral of madness
and a physical ailment I never intended
Life on the BPD 