a year from now things will be radically different I will not be stewing in my misery and making poetry out of it instead I’ll be more empowered, more creative than ever instead I’ll be wiser and stronger understanding the rollercoaster of the storms of 2024 was needed to inspire another cathartis, another catalyst for change the universe had to humble me for a bit to remind me of what’s really important to assess how I’ve been living my life and whether or not the many hours were worth killing myself over a year from now this will be radically different I’ll have a deeper knowledge, understanding and clarity about what’s in alignment with me life will be more balanced, more full of joy and with an abundance of everything that inspires me everything that brings purpose to my life
siempre Guerrera-Also Happy Peruvian Independence DAY!
I embrace the crone I’m becoming and let go of the last vestiges of girlhood no longer will I twirl my hair, bat my eyes, or make myself cute and soft for the male gaze trying to get their attention from now on I’ll accept my wrinkles, my aches, my gray hair, my crow’s feet as proof that I have lived and experienced a life few would’ve survived as proof that I am a goddamn Guerrera
maybe I restarted the blog for a younger version of us out there in another state, another country who needs a roadmap, Understanding, knowledge, and wisdom in navigating a hard situation they never thought they had to face maybe I restarted the blog out of hope that some couple out there who’s struggling can find something useful in my story, in my prose, and my poetry to get through their own hardship through the worst of it and make it to the other side, evolve and grow together in intimacy and find their own happy ending
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 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
these must be the new dark age of my life where I can’t find my life’s purpose, where I cry because I don’t think I’ll ever be loved where the sleeping pills in my drawers are tempting me to end my misery
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?
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
the day I was told I needed a total hip replacement surgery
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
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
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.
Betty and Don at Fancy Event
(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.
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
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
Life on the BPD 