I am a piece of shit

November 4, 2021

I believe at some point we all have to figure out a way to see ourselves the ways in which others see us, and what's scarier is to accept and embrace these images as truths about ourselves. I don't know why inherently we are so afraid to come to terms with the reality that maybe some of us are not good people. Maybe some of us are the monsters, the pieces of shit that society despises.  I am a piece of shit.  I am a person that is deeply flawed, afraid, confused, and eternally unsettled by the idea of staying the same.  I want to grow daily into a person that dares to accept herself for who she is; irregardless of how ugly that makes me.  I am not going to change.  I perhaps can learn to make new decisions that keep who I am in the dark corners where nobody minds, like the dust and dirt under the carpet or a spider in the corner of a room, I may be able to successfully hide these nasty dirty edges that make me an undesirable woman, an angry woman, a violent and mentally ill woman, but at the core, who I am is there and it's so engrained within every cell of my body that to destroy its presence would in essence be to suffocate the life out of my very being; my soul.  We all make such great mistakes to assume that souls are to be pure and meaningful or pretty; some of us have souls that were birthed in struggle and in rage and in a refusal to let things slide.  I am in a way proud of who I am becoming; a person that dares to stand in the middle of any space and yell " I am that piece of shit" and I am okay with that; there's absolutely nothing wrong with me as I am, I deserve to exist as much as a beautiful flower in a garden or an intense skycape that simply radiates in all its beauty.  Anger and darkness have their place and right to exist too.  Action requires fire and fire is anything but calm and peaceful and proper and right; fire grows and permeates and rises and burns and does not ever apologize for its flames because that's what gives it power. All this to say; that as I get older, and my face begins to show lines and wrinkles, as I continue to fight and destroy relationships and inconvenience order in the spaces I enter; I am beginning to finally come to see that I am made of fire and have no intention of extinguishing my flames; in spite of those who try to suppress my spirit; I will continue on this journey that only God can take away from me; and if anyone has a problem with that; they can prepare to get burned. 

on writing & happiness

7/1/2020

I want to believe ever so badly that I am a writer.  Still, I seldom actually sit my ass to as Hemingway so eloquently said "bleed on paper." I suppose it has to do with happiness.   Over the course of the last five years, and of course maybe longer, I have been on this quest to find or create my own happiness.  Here's the thing about writing, it doesn't go with happiness.  Most real, in depth, raw, cuts through your soul type of writing requires such an intense level of grief.  You can't do it any other way.  You are "to bleed" because it cuts and it hurts, and it is the closest thing to honesty and truth I have ever discovered.  You can't stare at your own bullshit on paper.  I mean I suppose you could, but good writers, they are considered good because their words actually resonate.  They resonate because they are real.  So anyway, I'm sort of getting tired of trying to be happy.  Maybe some of us are not meant for that.  maybe some of us have a role to play, a role of shining light on things that are nothing to be happy about.  Lord knows I have done my part in trying to heal the dark aspects of my identities. Yet, every so often, I just fail miserably. I am starting to also recognize that I am most in my own element as a person of darkness.  I find myself continuously drawn to failed or broken causes, trauma, I empathize so profoundly with the pain and mourning of the world.  sure, I am seduced and often by the immeasurable beauty of a sunrise, intoxicated by the play of light and the awakening of the world on an early morning.  Yet still, I am a child.  I am certain I am toxic. I am mentally ill and for that I don't know what to make of it. Fuck I don't even know what mentally ill even means.  all I know is that I don't always feel well. So often I feel so deeply and I allow my emotions to get the best of me.  

Anyway just typing this is so uncomfortable. I don't know why I feel the need to even name it.  so often I feel like people look at me with these eyes of judgment.  Like all is well with me on the surface and in many ways it is.  but some of it, the part of I'm happy, that part itself its a lie.  I don't know if happiness is even a thing.  I think realistically it's found in moments.  Of course I have those, many in fact.  But it's such a fleeting thing some days.  I can't ever seem to catch it.   Anyway this is just another moment, another evening full of emotion and meaningless intensity. I'm alive. 

midnight rant

days like today
loud noises live in silence amidst the exterior busyness of the day
people's desires and expectations
they suffocate me
like a snake they wrap themselves around my neck
as i gasp to breathe i'm reminded yet again how I'm not enough
how we are not eternal
i can't help it
i have come to realize that i am but this person
inappropriate and untimely
i fall short
and yet again

I'm tired god, please
please save me from this skin and its expiration
help me navigate this darkness que me atormenta
rescue me from the past I'm now creating
i may not know how tomorrow ends but i know these are my most beautiful memories
the routine of the ordinary happenings
these are the things you long and miss one day
i wish so badly to return to those instances of simplicity
where nothing mattered more than togetherness, and family
                 
                          -----------------

i lived in a house full of arguments and disputes
we had nothing better to do with our time i guess
we enjoyed the challenging nature of the next debate
i remember fondly sitting around the house, the couch or the dinner table
debating whatever came to mind
       race, politics, technology, music, gender
we had no place to go
no one to visit
we didn't follow sports or anything popular
at most jerry springer and montel williams played in the background
cristina while my mom was cooking rice
        claudia and us
we just sat around yelling, disputing, making sense of the world
what from afar may have seemed like a loud fight
for us it was much more intimate and innocent..the way young boys wrestle or compete
we found pleasure in our arguments
in discovering language and its power to convince, to frame, to stylize and empower a position
i enjoyed it, perhaps too much at that
but it was what we did

mexican people are many at times perceived as submissive and timid
the image of the probervial brown man under a cactus comes to mind
but they're wrong about us
our family was loud
is loud
our voices stood strong and as a kid you learned quickly to be opinionated or enable others opinions to shape and define you

i miss those days

the problem i've faced throughout my life, is that these lessons, these linguistic exercises would later on get me into trouble
most do not like confrontation or dispute
people find it uncomfortable
and so i've made a few people uncomfortable throughout my life
and while i have my regrets i realize now that its something in me
something that perhaps cannot be changed
i say what i think
the truth offends e incomoda

but what's my alternative?
to rest comfortably in politeness?
i don't make love to arbitrary words, its just not in me
i rather die
i don't want to live symbolically
i aint no fucken placeholder
i exist in this every edge of me which is rough and uneven and imperfect
and I'm ok with that

I'm sorry god for seeming insensitive
I'm sorry momma
i do care
i do long to be a good person
i owe that to you momma

i know biting my tongue would make you proud of me
and god knows i'll do anything for my momma

but

you also taught me to be proud

and i can't help it if i am, and very
   esp of you
of being your daughter
of being your enojona
peleonera
fea
  me siento podrida y agridulce
               pero soy fuerte mamita
fuerte like you

life ain't easy
it's shitty right now

i can always tell you anything and everything and today i can't
i can't run to you like i always do
i can't cry to you
i don't want you to know how much it hurts me to know you are going through this
i wish i could take your place

but i have kids too and I'm happy they are safe and that I'm here to care for them the way you cared for me and still today, you are teaching me this

 you are teaching me how to live and how to love without conditions, how to care

i learned as a young child how to fight and to swim in whatever current we encountered, i learned that from watching you and my dad struggle and fight con las unas for our future

and here we are again, life has never been perfect, but you always made it worthwhile
it's still worthwhile and while i may have my moments
i want nothing more than to live and to see you live many more years yelling at me and telling me how i've got it all wrong
i want your voice in my head screaming loudly and telling me to think with my head and not my heart


make no mistake, I'm swimming


i hope and pray planning life for tomorrow could be easier
but my heart is in a coma

it sits still

i can't breathe thinking about tomorrow

what came before today was lovely and I'm enjoying the now just as much,
you exist in these spaces of time and that's good enough for me
tomorrow i don't know
what may come will come
and i just can't envision more than that

I'm broken

fuck you cancer

Anger

today ray and the kids and i took a road trip to yuma, i was so afraid to leave for what seemed like an eternity away from Phoenix.  the thought of something happening to my mom and me not being near enough to come to her in time is something that had me worrying extensively.  the thing is though, that life is so short that it makes sense to live it.  i saw a sign on the drive there, it said "feed your body well, it is where you live" it was an advertisement for organic food.  i didn't eat well today though, i ate crappy, and that's not like me as of the last year or so.  I just feel so very angry about my mom.  it just doesn't make sense to me why she had to get sick.  out of all the people out there that this could have happened to, why her? at times the pain i feel gets translated into an urge to fix things, to do right, to eat well and to take care of myself and my children, and then there's days like today where I just want to quit...i just want to say "fuck you cancer, I'm not afraid of you, i'll do what I want!!" and yet that's exactly what I don't want to do...I want to have this experience be motivation for myself and family to do something positive, to live a healthy lifestyle not just for a year, but permanently.  I realize there will be days where I fail, but I'm committed to keep trying

t r y i n g

to just put in the work and try to live a healthy and productive life, i owe that to my momma.  we had breakfast at cracker barrel.  She loves that place.  I was thinking how nice it would be to be there with her.  ray emerson loves it so much too.  he loves looking at things and playing with the gadgets they have in the store while he contemplates a way to get us to buy him something.  he was so grumpy today, parenting is definitely not easy.  he screams and rages at times in ways that seriously makes me want to lose my cool, but i know its just not what i want for him.  i don't want to compete with his anger and be tough on him.  i want to have a relationship with him, where I'm his safe spot, not a person who controls and makes him afraid.  i'm working on it.  one thing that worked today is just letting him be angry, giving him permission and the space to hate me and everything around him and then allowing him to jump into being happy as soon as he was ready.  i assured him that we loved him and to let us know when he was done being angry.  we didn't lecture him as to why he was mad or why he shouldn't rage, we just worked on rewarding that he was ready to be happy.  i think cancer taught me that, i feel like we all need space to be mad sometimes, even if it's not pretty.  life is not always what we expect or want, and realizing that sooner than later is important

when i was little it always took me forever to find a way to be okay again.  i knew how to get good and angry but i had no idea how to come back from it.  sometimes things my parents said, the way they reasoned with me, or just in having space to think about things, made me realize i was wrong  and though i wanted to be okay again, i just did not know how to do that, how to go from having been at one end of the spectrum to the other.  sometimes my mom would just hug me and that would be just what i needed, but as i grew up, it did not get easier, others didn't know to hug me and help me cross over to being okay.  i had to learn eventually that happiness is just a choice.  you just have to decide when its time to let anger go...

i'm trying

the problem with cancer

it's been a bit over a month that we found out.

Tue, Mar 29, 5:02 PM

The date and time stared at me in a text message as I processed 101 configurations of what news my dad would divulge to us at 8:30 pm that evening.

They found out a couple months earlier.  On March 4th, we all went out to eat for my Dad's birthday.  It was confirmed that she would begin treatment.  I keep replaying the dinner over and over again in my head, attempting to remember every detail of that evening's interactions.  The way my mom smiled at me and the way my parents smiled at each other.  I remember how adamant my dad had been about all of us going to Rocky Point for his birthday the last time we'd gathered.  It hurts.  It hurts to know that as we sat there oblivious to the notion of anything wrong, they sat there, composed and 'normal,' they looked at us proudly from afar, asked to take photos of each one of us with our partners, they sat there trying to hide all the pain they must have been feeling.  I'm not well.

It's crazy, you never think this will happen to you, to someone you love, to your mom.

that's the problem

Thu, Apr 21, 7:44 PM
As I walk into a room, if I cross glances with someone, anyone, I wonder if they know.  Why would they? But these are the kind of thoughts that enter my mind ever since the news.  I have nightmares.  I feel this urge to tell everyone.  I don't want people to think it's just a normal day, life is not normal anymore.  I'm angry.  I hate everyone and everything.  I hate politics, I hate activism, I hate life.  Even the sound of laughter bothers me.  All problems pale in comparison.  I don't want to care about anyone but her.  She made me, she's fire.

Tue, Mar 29, 1:00 PM
I had seen my dad that day, he didn't say anything just that he was wanting us to go to the house, but just us, that he wanted to talk to us, but he wouldn't say why.  It was all so mysterious.  We had heard various news about my Dad's health not being well over the last year, so I along with my siblings automatically feared something was wrong with him.

5:45 PM
When Ray got home from work I told him, he seemed worried but told me that everything would be okay, that no matter what they told me that he loved me.  I put my sweater on and got in my car to leave, as I drove off Let It Be played in the background.  I began to cry as I anticipated the worse.  And just like that, out of no where, the thought popped into my head, it's my mom?

8:15PM
my sisters, brother, and I gathered anxiously in the house, my mom suggested we sit in the large living room, an occurrence that seldom happens with the exception of holidays.  I asked why we didn't go to the table, we always gather around the table, but she said no.  She never says no.  It was obvious this was serious, and I was not prepared.

9:30 AM
I dropped off the kids at daycare that day and I called my mom, as I usually do.  I asked what she was up to and before she could answer I proceeded to tell her the laundry list of problems I had and what she thought about everything.  She listened carefully and tried to give me the guidance that I've come to rely on over the years.

I spoke to my mom several times that day as I usually do.  'Go ask your mom' ray teases me sometimes...he gives me a hard time because of my inability to ever make a decision without consulting her.  That's the thing, she's always been there for me.  For everyone that ever needed her or didn't know they needed her, she's always been the kind of person that can't remain unnoticed.  She's stubborn and she's so fucken smart.  She's a problem solver, nothing is ever too difficult for her, because she always figures things out, she's a doer, a person with a positive and persistent drive to get shit done, to solve any dilemma and not dwell on things.  I grew up blessed to have this resource of knowledge and optimism.  And yet, as a child I never appreciated her.  I took her for granted so many times.  I hated that she felt so overbearing.  That her opinion was always offered, and that she was always right.  As I grew up, I began to realize more and more how much I needed her, how incredibly beautiful she is, and how lucky I am to be her daughter.

She's kind, she's good, she's resilient.

8:30 PM
my dad told us he had bad news, that it was a delicate subject and he was sorry he had not told us sooner, that they did not want to worry us, that this and that and it all blurred away into white noise as he spoke and explained and explained, eventually we asked what and who, my mom spoke up loudly as if she was claiming a prize, "Yo" "Yo tengo cancer"

my heart dropped

through the silence the scream of one of my sister's pain froze me, my mom proceeded to beg her and all of us not to cry.  That if we loved her we would be strong for her, because she knows she will be okay, and that she's not afraid.  That she assured us she would be just fine but she needed us to be strong for her and not cry.  As I look at my siblings pain, I interrupted her and lied.  I told her that I wasn't sad nor worried.  that I was not going to be sad if she wasn't sad.  That I knew she would be okay.  The last part I meant and still mean.

I did my best to conceal how frightened I was and am.  I'm so afraid.  I'm more than sad, I'm broken.  Cancer breaks shit up.

that's my background noise.

AND YET cancer also unites.  it's a wake up call as my mom says.  it wakes you up, shakes you up and tells you that all you thought mattered may not matter anymore, that the only thing worth a damn is family and love and relationships

there is so much happening right now, 2 emergency room visits later, one cycle of chemo later, drugs, tears, rage, fear, love, organic food, medical marijuana card, hair cuts, arguments with doctors, food, lots of food...family -- Its' all happening, and its happening so fast

we are all afraid

but,

       all we can do is

                                  Let it Be

and put it on faith,

put it on faith

god willing this nightmare will soon be over

On Race and Gender in this Election

On Gender and Race in this Election

By Angeles J. Maldonado, PhD in Education, Leadership, and Policy Studies from Arizona State University

If Bernie wins, great news.  It will signify a win for progressives.  However, if Hillary wins I will be particularly happy and genuinely optimistic.  As a mother and a woman, it's clearly time to see a woman be president.  Yet voicing this very thought around the sea of self-proclaimed progressives can mean exposing ourselves to shame and even ridicule.  On social media, it would be nice to see more posts indicating why Bernie is the best candidate as opposed to post after post about why Hillary is not.  There is so much unspoken and loud sexism around this election.  So much so, that it has became increasingly difficult to bear witness to the vast amount of abuse that Hillary continues to face, especially from Bernie supporters.

I have seen more posts from Bernie fans bashing Hillary than I have seen posts bashing Trump, and even less bashing Cruz or any other Republican candidate.  Recently, I have become particularly annoyed at the posts praising Bernie's wife, brings me back to women studies 101.  It seems to me that we are more comfortable embracing a woman as First Lady than the threat of a woman President.  But gender doesn't matter here, it's all about the issues we tell ourselves. I don't buy it.  

Gender like Race DO matter.  It's appalling how we can't even recognize what a huge deal it is to see a woman fight her way to the top, Hillary has managed to do that, but we don't care to contextualize her actions, we don't see her as courageous or strong or fierce we see her as a bitch because she did this and that and this.  I think if we want to find a reason not to like her we will find plenty, but what's sad is that an unconscious reason why she's not good enough, for many, has to do with her gender.  

Politics is a dirty game and to me everyone out there is dirty in some way, they are all performing trying to say the right thing to get elected, none of these people really care about us.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't care but I think we need to keep in mind that whoever wins will not resolve our lives, it's up to our community to pressure all candidates to care enough to bring our issues to the forefront.  

I believe the trump enthusiasm is but a reaction and revenge to Obama's historic win as the first Black President.  White supremacy is fighting back.  In the same way dismantling patriarchy continues to remain secondary, because we have more important issues to confront and gender equality alone is unimportant and laughable, it's a past issue.  

As a mother, gender equality matters to me. Hillary winning is a symbolic and necessary win for women, for moms, working moms, stay at home moms, women who spread themselves thin to accomplish their goals despite the many challenges setup expecting them to fail. I want my sons to grow up respecting and seeing women as equals not as secondary beings whose sole job is to serve and attend to the needs of men. 

As a college student I most likely would have voted for Bernie, he says all the right things.  But at this point in my life I want someone who embodies change not just proclaims it.  It's never been easy to be a woman and this election continues to prove exactly why.   The attacks out there against women are not just embarrassing but shameful.  

So while Obama has a horrible track record of deportations and other issues, I'm nonetheless glad he became President because he brought change even if only symbolic, which is many times more important than we care to recognize.  Leadership is always symbolic.  Which is why I long to see more people of color and women and LGBTQ people in positions of power, because we need people that look like us as role models, as symbols and placeholders that illustrate hope that things are changing.  

Given all of this, I continue to be amazed at how crazy people are getting to support yet another white man to power.  I understand the fact that he appears to be the most progressive of candidates, and therefore am sincerely glad his support is increasing, but what I fail to understand is why it’s necessary to be so nasty towards Hillary.  If you are so progressive, then shouldn't for that very reason “self-proclaimed” liberals ought to restrain yourselves from such sexist and aggressive attacks? Focus on why your candidate is the best "man" for the job, and that is precisely where the issue lies.

Dr. Maldonado is a mother and activist scholar whose research focuses on Immigration, Border Crit Theory, and Discourse within the immigrant rights movement in her home state of Arizona.

Writing

It's 935 pm and I feel this intense desire to write, I don't know about what, but it feels so strange to me to recognize that it has been quite some time since I have written.  Sure, there's the occasional facebook posts and status updates, but they are usually superficial and lacking.  One of my favorite things about writing is that it makes me feel relieved, as if in emptying out the words that sit in me that I feel just a bit lighter, perhaps vulnerable that I have allowed my thoughts to escape me, but at the same time a deep sense of relief that they are no longer in me to entertain and organize.  All in all, writing is something that I love to do.  Ever since I was young, I remember journaling what I had for lunch at school, or what had happened in my classroom.  Thus, it seems so bizarre to now abandon a practice that always makes me happy. I have not written in a blog or journal for a very long time and am beginning to feel disconnected from my self.  There's so much to make sense of.  I don't want to say that I'm going to begin to blog again because I'm afraid of not following through and failing...much of my life right now seems unpredictable.  I am now the mother of two children.  My beautiful Stokely Daniel was born on February 20, 2015. Stokely is now four months old and while we have established some routine and accomplished quite a lot, it is nonetheless a journey of ups and downs colored by unpredictability.  Anyway, I guess I enjoy writing because I love the idea of being able to record one's mind, so that my future self can read me and try to understand me.  So here we go.  First some updates:

Having a second child has made me so very happy and at the same time has challenged me in ways I never expected.  Through my children, I am learning the meaning of patience and sacrifice, most importantly what it means to commit.

My children are my life.

They drive me crazy.

crazy.

and yet at the end of the night when they are sleeping, I feel so blessed to have them.  I would not change one bit of my chaotic days.

Stokely and I have been successfully breastfeeding for four months now.  I am so proud of me.  Breastfeeding is such a challenging endeavor, it requires so much of oneself and yet it provides such an intimate connection to your child.  I am so grateful that I was able to establish this.  My present challenge is language.  I am trying my hardest to speak to him only en espanol.  I want him to learn spanish so badly.  I am also trying to teach Ray Emerson, but it is honestly so difficult.  I feel like I am battling the world just to provide my son a bit of his culture.  His environment is so vastly predominated with English words that it many times feels like an impossibility to teach him a language that is not valued enough, particularly here in Arizona. I am currently working part time at the law office and at the same time trying to figure out how and whether to go to law school.  I have to retake the LSAT but life is so busy for me already that at times I wonder if this is even a good idea to entertain.  It's something I have always wanted to do, but at the same time my priority right now are my children.  There's so much I want them to learn and most days I feel like I fall short of being a good mother.  but I continue to try and I guess in parenting that's the most important thing is our effort to strive to be good parents.  I have started to do yoga to help me destress and I absolutely love it.  It is a practice sort of like writing, I feel that it challenges me, and it silences my mind and soul and just allows me to feel alive.  The focus is always on the breath and the pose and the present....something i really want to strive to appreciate more and more...being in the present.  we live so much of our lives in the past or in the planning for tomorrow that we often miss the opportunities to really live today.  There's so much to do in this beautiful world, I wish I could do so much, but the days are always so short.  

Still I think it is important to have goals.  My goals right now are as follows:

1) Teach Stokely and Ray Emerson Espanol
2) Make fitness a priority in my life
3) Be present
4) Continue fighting for things that matter

more later....good night

Executive Action and "Being Happy with What we Got"

I came home last night so exhausted and with not much energy to even look at my phone and read up on any facebook updates.  It has been such an emotion filled couple of days that I am still processing what I feel.

Our community has been fighting for so long for some sort of relief and now we have it, that it is still difficult to have a reaction.  This is undeniably such a HUGE victory, but yet so many people have been left out of the celebration.  I’ve read posts this morning saying that we “should be happy with what we get” that we should be grateful to Obama for “giving us something.”  These words alone “what we are getting” remind me that this is not something we are getting from ANYONE. 

This is something our community has achieved, a huge milestone given the context in which our families live on the day to day.  We have exposed the ugliness and complex nature of immigration.  We have exposed the racism that still penetrates, breathes, and lives in the fabric of our society.  We have brought to light the injustices for people of color in Arizona and nationwide.  We have RESISTED and learned to resist from the people who live the reality of living in the label of illegality on a daily basis, despite an entire system designed to oppress them and keep them in a status of illegitimacy and trauma.  We have witnessed our families resist this very system that targets and harasses and hurts and kills through the construction of shifting borders that exclude and divide.   

We have resisted and learned to resist from the leadership of organizations who through various tactics have moved the movement for human rights forward.  We have resisted and learned to resist from our youth, from students and dreamers who questioned the status quo, who risked arrest, and continue to experiment with ways to demand more from this process that continues to deny our families the human rights we continue to exercise and know we have.  This is a HUGE victory for ourselves, we have exposed this problem and forced the United States to recognize its need to address the mess they know they have but a mess that our community has loudly and passionately been screaming is NOT okay and it is something we are TAKING NO MORE OF. 

While the administration thinks this is enough, we all know in our hearts that it’s not.  But should we be happy, YES! We have came this far in pushing for the recognition of our human rights and while this is not the answer nor the cure for this sick society that profits and sustains itself from the exploitation of people of color, it is a step in the right direction, a step to reenergize our movement and continue fighting till brown and illegal cease to be synonymous, to continue fighting till the stigma of criminality is shifted away from the sweat of immigrant workers, till every single mother no longer has to worry about abandoning their children when and if they are kidnapped by our government through detention and deportation, till every student is able to focus on living his or her dreams and their education instead of on trying to protect the status of their families, till we are finished teaching fear to our children by having to have conversations about la migra, till speaking Espanol is something we value rather than denigrate, till ethnic studies is recognized as a necessary component of our history and education, the fight will continue till  these and so many other important issues are resolved in our community, the fight continues. 

We know from Ferguson and various other communities that despite their legality, being a person of color continues to be a problem in the United States, we have scratched the surface of a much deeply rooted historical element of America’s tradition.  But in this tradition, the struggle continues and I know our community is far from done, we will continue moving forward.

Miguel Maldonado Vallejo

This year has been filled with so many highs and lows, one of the lowest was flying to Mexico to see my grandfather die.  I never did see him pass, I was there and while family gathered around him, and filled the room with love for him, he fed off our energy and in many ways, came back to life

it was

indescribable.

and yet i want to try to recall it because i know this moment changed me.  i never witnessed such strength, such love for family, as when i stood nearby watching his beautiful eyes hold me

the days, so many of them, have passed
and in moments I have forgotten about him,
and then I have days like these,
days in which I feel weak and scared or hurt and his image comes to my mind
he holds me once again,
and i feel loved
I feel lucky
I feel blessed that I had a chance to tell him, that I love him, and that I treasure him.
We spent the time that we had, loving him, listening, laughing at his jokes, trying to give to him what we couldn't give so many days that we did have
so many missed opportunities
that's what life is
we embrace one thing and lose another
I had to travel back "home," before he finally said his goodbyes
I had a job
a family of my own
a son
a life away from Mexico
away from the place that I most love, perhaps because it exist so far away from me now
because I can't live in it anymore
or so I tell myself

anyway these are just words
but i want to record it in my memory that i miss this old man
my grandpa
my papa miguel
my vallejo
the reason i proudly call myself maldonado

te extrano, hoy, y siempre

muchas veces no te entendi,
pero ahora eso es lo de menos

we learn that when it is too late

Professor?

So much has happened since I last checked in here.  For one, my goal of graduating finally came to fruition! I have officially finished my phd program in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies and can now put the letters "D" and "r" next to my name.  I still can't believe it.  I remember how far away this goal always seemed.  How unrealistic and impossible it appeared to be at one point, and now here I am, 'finished!'

Surprisingly, I feel a bit melancholic about the whole thing.  Knowing that I won't be attending campus anymore as a student.  Knowing that when I introduce myself I can no longer say I'm a student.  I suppose that I've existed in this identity for so long that it seems so incredibly strange to now instantly separate myself from it and know that there is nothing else left to do, I finished my journey, I thought.

For a long time, I just prayed for the strength and perseverance to make it to the finish line, I never once spent too much energy on what would happen post graduation, I never made any plans about what would be next or about employment.  I suppose this is a privilege I've had.  But also, I have felt that I just wanted to graduate for the sake of getting my diploma, of making my parents and my husband proud, with the aspiration of somehow continuing my life as it had existed before.  I didn't want to do what everyone else was doing, searching for jobs, having to move out of Arizona, etc.  Subsequently, I never worried too much about not having any teaching experience.  I figured life would work itself out.  I've always been strange that way, not much of a plan ahead type of person, mostly I enjoy doing the things I'm passionate about and not much else.

Luckily, things have gone exactly the way most of my life has gone.  They've just happened.  I've been blessed with the opportunity to teach as an associate faculty at ASU.  I was so excited about it and then suddenly felt the same weird empty feeling in my belly, nerves, and anxiety when I realized I was going to do this.  I was going to teach.  

Rrrrrrrrrewind............Suddenly, I wanted to hit the rewind button and return to the days when I would grab a coffee at the nearest shop and slowly make my way into a classroom, as a student.  I started missing the idea of having to read and write papers, having a notepad and pen in hand ready, and be the listener, the observer, the learner, the one that was going to 'gain' something from the experience of taking a class.  But now, it was different.  I now have to be the talker, the one there to offer something of value to what in my mind appeared to be a sea of students.  and though in reality there were only 20, my brain reacted as if there were 200.  i was so frightened.  and then my husband interjected--u just have to get thru it, it's going to be okay.  And it was.  It has been.

Still it has been such an adventure and challenge, I realize now that I'm the one that is getting so much out of this experience.  I realize now that my journey is far from over.  I guess in the end, I'm still a student.  I still get to observe, to listen, to learn.  I guess not much has changed, only difference is that I have to work harder it seems.  I can't afford to be late, or to skip reading, It's so weird, but somehow beginning to realize that the moment when I was little that I once imagined, that one portrait of a woman wearing knee high boots and a black coat (the image of what a grown up version of me would look like) is finally here.  I've grown up.  I'm a mom, I work, and now I'm even older, I see the light and energy of my students, and in strange way I get to relive my days in college, I get to experience vicariously the experience of learning and in the midst of this realization...i feel blessed.   I have grown up into what I wanted to be--minus the knee high boots.