It could be worse they say because I could be dead
my children left without a mother
my parents left without a daughter
My friends and coworkers left without entertainment
of my emotional and dramatic hijinks
And I left without fulfilling my potential or life purpose
It could be worse they say because with me gone
Who else will give you my special brand of crazy?
I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
it wasn’t until today I realized how ordinary you really were
It wasn’t that you were ever that interesting or special
It was me with my lovergirl delusional glasses
refusing to see past what was in front of me
Seeing and getting caught up in fantasies
of who you could be
when really you were, the most ordinary of men
not malicious, not especially intelligent
not really helpful
just kind of existing without any spark
without anything that would make me
look twice at you now
I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
my body has betrayed me one last time
and this time I’ll take charge of it
and control what’s happening
this time I’m old enough to stop
this nonsense and kill what’s causing me
the most insufferable pain
and I’ll replace the hip that’s the vane
of my existence,
the diseased hip that must be sacrificed for me
to stop the curse of martyrdom passed down
for generations
I am a powerful force in this complicated world
full of intelligence humor and intense sexuality
men want to fuck me, women want to hate me
both want to get near me
I’m an Amazon goddess in a millennial mom bod
I try my best to stay humble
but have you ever been
called the most beautiful woman in the world
or has your power make grown men cry
and run away from you
it’s hard to stay down to earth
when I hold so much power between my legs
and my hands
Soy una a mujer, made up of chaos and trauma
who carries strength and resilience as her armor
I wrote this poem in July of 2024.
july, july, july
it’s the month where I lose my mind
the heat gets to me and turns up the BSC in me
you won’t find me sweet and eager to please in July
you won’t find me full of ruffles and flowery phrases
in poetry
you’ll find me being a ball of immigrant rage and fury
you’ll find me a woman who’s had enough
of the American dream bullshit
and ready to roar and scream out everything wrong
with this country
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
hold onto hope, don’t let go
one day you’ll laugh about this
one day you’ll be okay
hold onto hope, don’t let go
Remember all of the times
you’ve been strong
Remember all of the times
you put one foot in front of the other
hold onto hope, don’t let go
your story is still being written
you’re still in time to change
your narrative
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.
my body feels like a rundown shack
that’s crumbling down slowly
I can’t get up in the morning
without my knee or hip
bitching and moaning
without me groaning in pain
and mumbling to myself
“Omg, another stupid day”
and cursing my genetics
that make me watch everything
I eat
and again I wonder
am I paying a karmic debt
for my colonizer ancestors
I wrote this poem in June of 2024.
you’ve change from spring to autumn within moments
never knew if I should wear my feelings on my sleeve
never knew if I should wear layers of cynicism
I’ve made it as simple as possible for you
and nothing happens
and slowly my hope of love recedes in the background
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.
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.
a glass of champagne in my hand as I raise a toast
who I used to be
a woman mentally ill and needy
a woman who gave men easy access to her hips
a woman who thought intimacy could only be created
and felt in between her sheets
we say goodbye to the his woman lovingly
as we usher a new era of me
a woman who knows her worth
and won’t settle of anything less
than she deserves
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
Life on the BPD 