paranoidreader

[paranoidreader]

good day

do one thing every day that makes you happy. that shit really works.

[paranoidreader]

facebook post

from 03.25.2018

Though I never met you, my heart feels heavy and tears run down my cheeks as I read my mom’s Facebook post.

She says time flies and she wishes she could have made it stand still.

My depression may be due to a lot of things-- a new city, a new job, failure, loneliness, thinking too much about the past and about the future. But maybe today, my depression is this universal force, this mourning you, someone I never met who died at the age of twenty. I made it past that age, made it past the age when you drowned saving someone else, uncle. And today might be the first year where I cry and feel your death and I hope that wherever you are, you know that I am thinking about you and that I wish I knew you.

[paranoidreader]

you & me

03.21.2018

Though I am still depressed and anxious, sometimes you make it better.

You seem to understand and share.

I don’t know if you’re this way with others, but I’m glad you’re this way with me.

You’re one of the few men I’ve dated that didn’t tell me that I was crazy or that I needed to be on medication in a way that feels very gendered.

You did say I am a little crazy but assured me that we all are because normality is really a construct and that I should take medication if it will make me feel better.

When my anxiety gets really bad, you teach me soccer tips or guitar chords or a recipe. You send me music and invite me to concerts.

Maybe I try to examine life too much, give it too much meaning.

But you do remind me that the life unexamined isn’t worth living.

[paranoidreader]

those days

03.21.2018

During those days, I was going to the emergency clinic for sleep medication. I was missing work and making many desperate choices and, on occassions, no choices at all. I was not taking care of my body, I was scared, hit by life, hit by loneliness. I was regretting my decisions to sleep with men. I was on a heavy sleep medication regime for five days. I sort of hated it. My nervous system felt disconnected from the rest of my body. I was shaking and my head felt heavy. It still feels heavy sometimes.

[paranoidreader]

panics - angels #2 & #3

from 03.21.2018, brooklyn.

I was on the subway when time slowed down. The speed of the train and the passage of time felt dissociated from each other. What’s the next stop? Did I miss mine?

I got up from my seat, asked a man what the next stop was. I don’t recall if he heard me or maybe just ignored me.

My body must have been shaking or something about me must have given me away.

In that moment, two angels approached me. One of them young. One of them old. Both Latinas. They asked my name and my age. They confirmed they knew exactly what I was feeling. I started crying and told them I was alone.

They expressed that they were both immigrants, that they both had experienced long periods of insomnia and loneliness and knew how I felt, but that they were here, alive.

The old woman held my hand and told me to pray to Papá Dios. They both said that I am really young. But sometimes, to me it feels like I have lived for such a long time.

And now I am starting to realize that there’s this intergenerational strength, this pull, these forces. Our ancestors reaching out to us, watching over us. I realize that as well as that some of us, immigrants, low-income kids, we grow up at a young age and carry a lot of sadness.

The younger lady said she was getting off at the same stop as me. We got off the train and  I accompanied her to pick up her daughter from daycare. She introduced me to her daughter, who stared blankly at me. The lady told her, “Remember when I couldn’t sleep? She is going through the same thing.”

The lady and her daughter walked me to a street close to where I live and we said our goodbyes. I got home that day, even though I was scared I wouldn’t.

Angels,

I don’t know your names, but thank you.

[paranoidreader]

[paranoidreader]

panics - angel #1

from 03.21.2018, manhattan.

I was on my way to the therapist’s office in midtown Manhattan, my thoughts

rushing,

escaping me,

strangling me,

when I got the scary (yet then persistent) thought

that I could not breathe, that I was going to

die.

My chest tightened and I felt I couldn't breathe and my first instinct was to run.

I feared the thought of death so much and I knew that the only way I could assure myself that I was still alive was if my legs moved, if I ran before time ran out.

And in that moment when I started running, I felt my mind escape my body.

Suddenly, I felt like I was in a dream or, actually, more like a nightmare.

It was a different reality:

senses were heightened, time stood still but I moved fast.

I felt like I couldn’t talk, couldn’t read all the characters in my phone, didn’t know where in Manhattan I was.

I started going up to people, asking for water, for food, hoping that nourishing my body would bring me back down to earth. A few people ignored me. I must have looked scary.

My greatest fear in that moment was that nobody would ever find me, that I would never be able to get home, that I would become homeless in NYC, that people would stigmatize me the way many people do to the homeless and mentally ill in this city. And in my panic, I remember coming to the realization that I was ableist, especially in regards to mental illnesses. This realization terrified me as well.

It was like the time when I was confronted with my anti-blackness or my anti-indigeneity. Moments of shame, of truth. I appreciate these moments of unlearning and I recognize them as some of the most painful and enlightening moments of my life.

In my panic, I started asking a few people for directions. I couldn’t remember where I was going or the therapist’s name. But I had the information on my phone, so even though I couldn’t really express myself well, I started showing people my phone and writing things on the “Notes” app.

I started panicking even more when people didn’t know where I was going or when people flat out ignored me. I really thought that I was going to stay in that headspace forever.

Eventually, an angel listened.

This angel was an Asian woman who lives in Brooklyn. I don’t remember her name or where exactly she said she lives, but she took me to the therapist. She walked me through the streets of Manhattan, holding my hand, and her touch brought me back down to earth. We had a hard time finding the office but she stayed with me through an episode that lasted about forty minutes. She talked with my roommate on the phone and gave me water and said that I was pretty and young. She wasn’t scared of me and she stayed calm.

Angel,

I can’t remember your name, but thank you.

[paranoidreader]

perspectives

from 03.21.2018

Late January and early February of this year were by far the scariest times of my life. I experienced more severe anxiety, insomnia, depression, and two very intense panic attacks (followed by a few dissociations). While I did not fully comprehend everything that was happening to me then, and I am still trying to figure out what it is or might mean now, I am grateful that I have been able to better know the power of my mind.

Sometimes, I lay in paralyzing fear, ruminating over this power, over how it can paralyze us, motivate us, and cause us to experience a wide range of feelings, emotions, desires, most of which we cannot really pinpoint or less, define. This is a scary thought for me, a person comforted by certainty, but also one that highlights the importance of giving our lives meaning, of finding the meaning in our lives.

We are repeatedly told that the journey to understanding and healing is non-linear and only now am I beginning to be fully aware of what that means. I recognize that the trauma I have experienced does not compare to the trauma of others. But in regards to my own life, I have recently been more reflective about my experiences growing up as a low-income, Latina immigrant in the United States. My single mother loved my brother and I more than home (s/o to a friend for this beautiful quote/thought), and migrated because she knew that our opportunities in our home country of Panamá were so limited. We have struggled, but I am really grateful to be in this country.

Even now when my mami and I talk on the phone, she tells me about how hard it is to get a job en nuestros países, especially when you are a woman because you are expected to aesthetically present a certain way: to be well dressed, bien peinada, maquillada, jovén. She tells me she probably wouldn’t be able to get a job there. And that makes me think about my present situation: how I work an office job that at times feels vastly unfulfilling, but I am able to wear what I want for the most part, I am able to be late or make mistakes and that’s okay because life happens (not saying the States are unproblematic because they clearly are NOT).

And while at times it feels like everyone at the office lives in an isolated island-cubicle, I live for

lunches with my co-worker, a fellow first-generation Latina,

for walks and talks with another co-worker,

and for the fact that I can look around and see women, many women of color, many immigrants, in a space that wasn’t meant for us.

And while working an office job makes me reflective about the uses and abuses of capitalism, I am also grateful that my mom brought us to this country where my brother and I have been able to do so much and experience life in a different way. And as of lately, I am choosing to apply this meaning to my existence as a 1.5-generation, Honduran-Panamanian immigrant to los Estados Unidos.

[paranoidreader]

about me

Since coming to consciousness about many things, I am not sure if I have become a stronger or weaker person. I write about these things to engage in a process of self-understanding, self-loving, and self-healing.

“Why am I compelled to write?… Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger… To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit… Finally I write because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more scared of not writing.”

-Gloria Anzaldúa

[paranoidreader]

from 10.20.2016

I miss you. I miss you and I won’t keep hiding it because I want to appear strong or because my friends tell me that I shouldn’t talk to you. 

[paranoidreader]

soft brown boy

from 07.17.2016

soft brown boy:

i am sorry i hurt you. i was fully conscious of what i did. i know that i could have ended things in a way that hurt you less. it hurts and scares me to know i can hurt others like this.

you are special. you feel things deeply and you challenge machista dictates of how latino men should act and feel. you are smart and politically conscious and sometimes we cry thinking about how colonized the world and our minds are. you are a sharp dresser and you’re younger than me; you’re still learning things. you trust me and you write to heal. you told me about your mom.

thank you for everything you gave me and i am sorry i was not different. i can’t and shouldn’t be in a relationship right now and i question society’s strict conceptualizations of love. i really like you but not enough. and that hurts me but i can’t pretend.

[paranoidreader]

from 06.18.2016

these nights i’ve been struggling to sleep alone, feverish with memories of our nights together.

[paranoidreader]

on the emotional & psychological labor of my own journey as an immigrant

from 06.18.2016

Early this morning, my mami boarded a plane to Panamá, her homeland, a place she hadn’t returned to since migrating to the United States 11 years ago and living as an undocumented immigrant in this country for most of those years. This time, I was able to help finance her ticket back home as a tiny gesture of gratefulness for everything she has done for my brother and I, especially moving to this country as a single mother and allowing us to experience and learn so much. I am living vicariously through her at this moment, just as she has lived vicariously through me when I left for college out of state and then outside of the continent. I am extremely grateful, yet I can’t help to think of the privilege attached to being able to travel and return home, since there are so many others who can’t and who left their homelands decades ago as a way of surviving.

Today, I feel a mixture of happiness for my mom, nostalgia for the land and family I haven’t seen in eleven years, anger that this is a reality many immigrants face, that returning home is a privilege and not a right for many (because of many different reasons: legal, socioecomic, issues of safety).

Today, the emotional and psychological labor of being an immigrant (so often overlooked by many, particularly in public anti-immigrant discourses ) has felt really heavy. I have been crying and thinking a lot. All I can really say is la lucha sigue.

[paranoidreader]

from 06.08.2016

even though my hand smelled like smoke after holding yours, i didn’t want you to stop smoking for me. i wanted you to do it for you.

[paranoidreader]

from 06.08.2016

i don’t expect writing to heal everything. but it does something, right?

[paranoidreader]

April 21st, 2016.

“Yes you’re wonderful and I miss laying with you and listening to the smiths and looking at you smile :)”

[paranoidreader]

from 06.06.2016

I have to be honest (with me, with you?)

I still think about you.

I still wonder about you.

I wonder how you are doing. I wonder what you plan to do with your life… do you want to go to college? Do you want to stay in the Marines? What’s your rank now? Does being a Marine make you happy? Does she make you happy? Are you happy?

Where do you live?

Did you find something you love? What’s your passion? What are your politics? Have they changed? Have you changed? Could we talk about the things that interest me now?

Do you know I wonder if I still care about you? And if that’s a sign?

And, I don’t know… do you ever wonder about me? Do you wonder if I am happy? Do you wonder if I am different? Do you know that I am graduating college next year, the college that was too far away for you (even though you moved states over and over and I always waited for you)? Do you know that I am still bitter sometimes but do you also know that I still love you sometimes? Do you know that sometimes I look back at the bad moments but other times I look back and I think about the good? Because I can’t deny there were times when I was totally and completely happy and

in

love.

Do you wonder if I met somebody else? Or if it has become difficult for me to trust, to love? Do you wonder if I feel understood by somebody else? Do you know that I kept the sepia Polaroid I took of you? The one where you are wearing your senior shirt, the one where you are smiling big, hands in pockets, standing in front of my art displayed across the dining room in my family’s one room apartment? Do you know it was so meaningful sharing all those things with you? Bringing you into our small space. Do you know I never felt judged? Do you know that I am mad? And that sometimes I think you couldn’t handle all that I am, all that I have become?

Do you wonder if I care about you?

Because I wonder that too.