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
Pretty gets me in a man’s door but also makes me feel like a whore I’ve been pretty sexy, pretty nice, pretty sweet I’ve also been pretty crazy, pretty Petty, and pretty mean men love me when I’m pretty and submissive but not when I’m pretty reclusive men want the pretty girl who’s fun but not when I’m a pretty girl who’s a selfish cunt pretty gets me notice but also gets me dismissed
with this new strain of COVID, all of my cell are mutating and regenerating and making be at a standstill where I have time to sit and think about what I really want, about whether or not I’m doing enough to live a life worth living or if I’m just existing in a routine of monotony that leads nowhere in a routine I’ve deluded myself into calling healthy but really it’s far from it
Men love a pretty mess like me especially the nice ones who want to fix me and save me I’m their pretty princess who’s so lovely and sweet And for some, my pussy makes them think or say they love me but when I turn from a pretty mess to a crazy and chaotic hurricane they can’t stand to be around me and run away “I never signed up for this, you’re toxic” and I cry and then laugh at the absurdity you don’t get to choose just to love the fun part of me because that’s not love that’s their primal need and lust for me disguised as loved because real love accepts everything about me
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
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
la negación se asienta en mis entrañas pero lo disfrazó con una sonrisa y viajes al zoológico fingiendo que la felicidad doméstica es lo maximo mientras estoy temblando con rabia
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
denial sits in the pit of my gut but I disguise it with a smile and trips to the zoo act like domestic bliss is heaven when inside I’m trembling with rage
Entre la espada y la pared me encuentro otra vez es tiempo para otra evolución, otro renacimiento pero me siento cómoda donde estoy me siento tranquila aqui donde no tengo que dar explicaciones a nadie pero el universo tiene otros planes para mi pronto vendrá alguien o algo que me moverá el piso y denuevo caeré en el caos sin querer queriendo
envuelta en un ciclo de nostalgia cartas y fotos viejas y música de los 90 tratando de acordarme de quien fui Antes de me convertirme la madre de alguien
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
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.
