Cochran street was supposed to be our bright new start in a new country naive immigrants we all were thinking america would accept us thinking our family would have our back instead my parents were exploited and me and my siblings were treated like indentured servants- we never talk about how the toxic it all was
or the trauma it brought or how we tried to fit in a country where we were squares in a peg holes and how dad fell further into his addiction and depression and we don’t talk about any of this because dirty laundry is never aired out in public
The main thing I’ve done to improve my sleep is try to go to the gym consistently. I do this especially when I’m depressed, super stressed out or just feeling super angry. It helps to relax me and it tires me out. Sometimes, when it’s not so hot, I do try to go for a 30 min walk/jog. It’s also helpful for mental clarity. There’s also something about the right song hitting when you’re on the treadmill or stairmaster that’s rather powerful and invigorating. I always leave the gym in a much better mood.
my beloved LA is under siege the place that saw my immigrant child self grow, and learn English the place my parents decided to make their new home the place with tastiest hot dogs at culver city mall
my beloved LA is under siege and all I can do is watch the carnage be livestreamed and I’m transported once again to the L.A riots in 1992 when I was 11 and violence and madness was a stone’s throw away from our small apartment while mami pretends nothing’s happening as she cooks dinner and we’re all glued to the TV
my beloved LA is under siege and I couldn’t be prouder of my people standing loud and with a firm grip of love and justice for the most vulnerable of us whose only crime was to come this country in search for a better life
I try to banish the clouds of doubts and insecurities in me everytime I’m in love, I get like this everytime I start to feel comfortable in a new sanctuary I start to question if i’m worthy, if i’m deserving is it possible that really, I’m the problem and the one who sabotages everything
I’ve walked through the warzone of my love life long enough to know when a bomb is about to explode (when I fall of some guy’s dream girl altar) It’s a minefield full of suppressed feelings consequences of accommodating to a man’s ego And I’ll tread ever so carefully I don’t want to be alone, I just want to be loved, I’ll bend and bend until you call me Gumby Except I’m not and then I’ll snap and another bomb will go off “You’re crazy,” you’re dangerous” “ I don’t recognize you” all for expressing my feelings and wanting respect and dignity
that silver lining turned into a dark cloud real quick
phosphene blooms across the room when I catch you staring at me and I feel an electric shock go through me this feels like a new kind of crazy this feels like a new stirring of hope I never expected to feel this way ever again And this feels like my silver lining a long time coming
I’m the girl who screamed wolf in love in my poems one too many times always acting like I’m the victim always acting like I’m the hurt party always acting like I’m fucked over in love when the truth is I too have broken hearts I too am shit at relationships I too dispose of men once they fall off from my pedestal and so perhaps, I need to stop screaming wolf and accept that every once in a while I am the wolf who’s capable of destroying and disposing of people as well
ego finally captured, I’m calm and humbled the spiral of paranoia is gone no one hates me, no one’s out to get me it was a false narrative I created in moments of madness it was fake news as I let my emotions get the better of me and control me I’ve gained clarity again
I punish the men in my life with silence I learned it from my mom she’d last days without saying a word to my dad after a fight always waited until he broke down and apologized she always needed to win and while I’m not as brutal as her I need to protect myself when a man makes me feel like I’m not good enough, like I’m a monster so I walk away calm and give a silence so deafening they’re ask a million questions why they’ll search answers in between the lines of the posts I write and if they’re smart enough and get the hint, they’ll stay away from me
The first and last time I tried to die I tried to get everything right I wrote letters to my loved ones and swallow each pill one by one All that was easy enough but really dying was tough Something inside me was too stubborn And sent one last text out to a friend who alerted my husband Between her and him, I never reached my end but in that moment I understood the suicidal writers and poets Living is exhausting,living is agonizing I yearned for the sweetness of death to take away my mediocre breath But the universe or God had other plans And today I finally understand Living is painful,living is terrible But living is also beautiful and really living is admirable
the prettiest stocker/receptionist on the Eastside of Athens
I exist between stocking and typing I exist between boxes and documents I exist between hip pain and carpal tunnel I exist between grocery clerk and receptionist
this was the image that inspired me to write this poem
I saw a cross written in the sky and I wondered, “Is that you God? Is that your sign that I shouldn’t lose faith or hope and I need to keep going,to keep living? Is that you God ? Telling me everything will be fine and one day peace will be mine
Faith found me one day and told me to keep going when I didn’t want to Faith made me believe in GOD when I wanted to fall into the abyss of depression Faith held me as I cried endless tears of my about my latest life’s catastrophe Faith loved me when I couldn’t love myself Faith brought me people who believed in me When I couldn’t believe in myself Faith decided to one day bring it’s accomplice HOPE
Today is the last day of my self imposed break from social media and alcohol for Lent and while I thought it would be hard to give up these things for 40 days; it was easier than I thought. My decision came out of concern for my mental health when once again I was depressed, anxious and started using threads my personal diary as I drank. Here’s a link to my messy threads account:
drinking German beer about to post some nonsense on threads…lol
Also, since the election, it’s been hard to be reminded every day that half the population kinda hates people like me but like so many of my friends, I felt like I needed to be informed of everything happening every single minute of the day. I thought it was important in order to keep myself and my family safe but this “need” started interfering very much with my mental health in ways that were terrible for me. I started getting triggered by posts and felt a great sense of paranoia (as if the world is out to get me) . I had also just been through a breakup in January that ended up being a lot messier than I thought at first and the constant barrage of information about all of the terrible things had me in a spiral for depression and anxiety constantly. I think I cried every week from January until the 3rd week of February while I wrote incredibly sad and depressing poetry that will probably stay between the pages of my journal. It was during this time, I also took my medical provider’s advice to up my dosage of Seroquel since I was having problems sleeping. All of this combined extended my emotional bandwidth again and again and until eventually it snapped. And I was about to snap and felt incredibly emotionally dysregulated to the point that my patience was incredibly low and I was snapping at people close to me. I knew I had to do something to get out of this downward spiral I was in. I had to identify what wasn’t helping me and that felt like social media and alcohol. So around the third week of February ,I uninstalled Instagram, tiktok, Threads, and Facebook. I still went to work and aside from my parenting/daughter duties, all I did was read and exercise after work for a week.
one the Amazing books of poetry I read that found me in a serendipitous way
I didn’t even turn on the TV that whole week. Needless to say, I felt much better by the end of the week. By the end of the week I also had a medical appointment with my medical provider and we talked about my how my new dosage of Seroquel wasn’t helping me and decided I had to go down to normal dose and that made a difference as well. That’s when I decided it would be a great idea to give up social media and alcohol for Lent as a type of reset for my nervous system and I’m glad I did. Now, I’ll be honest in saying that I have put a lot of that energy into my YouTube channel it has helped it grow a bit.
I’ve also been reading a lot of poetry blogs on WordPress which is always great and inspiring. And I think that in the month of March, I wrote an insane amount of poetry, like for the first 4 days in March, I wrote something like 100 poems. I’ve also been reconnecting with old friends I hadn’t seen in a while and still going to open mics.
open mic at Canopy Studio on March 27th
I’ve also watched tons and tons of Latin American Classic Movies on youtube. I don’t know how to compare this time period except for the time one of my kids infected me with lice and I was miserable and had to slowly delouse my hair and it tooks hours and hours but afterwards, I felt so incredibly relieved that I was able to do it and got to keep my hair cause lord knows I am vain and I don’t look good with short hair. Anyways, in this case, we’ll say the lice were like all of those social media posts that kept reminding me the world was burning, people were terrible or fake, and of course, the social media posts that brought up feelings of envy and jealousy and of course, anger. I was becoming infected by this algorithm that became incredibly unhealthy to my mental health. And also, I was paranoid all of the time if I was being judged by my posts since I tend to over post and overshare. I was starting to care a little too much as to how I was being perceived. So I needed to delouse my mind by giving that up along with alcohol. It has helped my mental health so much and I’m able to regulate my emotions so much better now than I have been in a long time.
this time served to reconnect with my friend from college
This time period has also been good for introspection into how much I want to make social media a part of my life because I think there are benefits for it. I’ve been able to find a creative community both local and online through social media. Also, I’ve used it to share my poetry and to promote my blog and other writing projects. Social media can also be used to uplift one another as well, and hype the people in your life. And to an extent, it’s been good to share life updates but not the way I was abusing it by posting several selfies in one week. God, I knew it was a problem when one of my aunts mentioned it to me at my grandmother’s funeral in 2018. I remember how embarrassed I was when she told me but I kept on posting shamelessly. Now, that I’m at my big age of 45, I think I’ll post selfies or life updates sparingly. I think as I get older, I want to be a bit more private about my life. I also need to be mindful because I have parents, kids, and a state job I do want to keep. It’s like that old Spanish saying my Mami has always tells me, “Eres amo de lo que callas, y esclavo de lo que dices” which translates into, “you are the master of what you keep quiet and slave of what you share”.
at the end of my time away, I feel so much better
links to amazing poetry books I’ve read:
Follow my Goodreads Account for more book recommendations.
As far as movie recommendations, here’s my letterboxd account y’all can check out and follow.
If failure was a task I would be the poster girl for it I’m a failure at love, I’m a failure at life, I am a failure at Being Human but all of these are thoughts of the past me the new me doesn’t see herself as a failure or that she has ever failed at life she sees failure as a stepping stone and learning curve the new me sees herself as a winner of life and not the loser of 1 because she never gave up or didn’t give in or because she’s a resilient queen
Life on the BPD 