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

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.

Birth Rights and Birth Rape?

I am officially 17 weeks pregnant and feel so excited and yet so incredibly terrified all at once.  I suppose my mind should be focused on the joys of the holiday season, or saying goodbye to 2010 and welcoming the new year of 2011.  But, it's not.  Most of my thoughts are centered around one little person; my unborn 17 week baby. 

It's crazy, how life can all of a sudden change so rapidly, and make us into people that one never thought one could be.  At this point in my life, I suppose I am nothing if not a mother or soon to be mother.  And with this role comes an inmense amount of responsibility. 

I've been extremely sick these past few days, and the very idea of my sickness harming my child worries me beyond belief.  So I've been obsessed with reading up on ways that I can get better, naturally.  Like most mothers, I've spent countless hours trying to figure out what to do and what not to do during pregnancy and like most find myself frustrated at the countless amount of conflicting information. 

As I approach my 20th week of pregnancy, my most pressing concern is whether or not to get an ultrasound.  I have read many things that indicate that ultrasounds are dangerous that they are a form of strong energy and radiation that can harm and mutate cells.  So from the onset of my pregnancy, I opted not to have the 7th week ultrasound that doctors usually offer.

I remember how powerless I felt, as I sat in the waiting room with my husband looking over the sign-in sheets and release forms provided to us by the doctor.  Amongst the stack of papers was a release form authorizing ultrasounds.  We decided to leave this page blank and after discussing it with the doctor/midwife, we were 'allowed' to refuse the ultrasound.  However right after this, I was told to lie down as the doctor/midwife rubbed a gel over my belly and placed a machine over my stomach, i.e. a handheld doppler. 

I state doctor/midwife because we started off going to a doctor and switched to a birthcenter shortly after the first two visits.  The experience of the doppler, however, was the exact same.  Same in the sense, that right after I had expressed my desire for a natural birth experience and my concern for ultrasounds and soundwaves to my doctor and midwife on two separate situations, I was never asked for permission but rather simply subjected to radiation from their handheld dopplers.  I never signed any sort of release form or was even told what the doppler was.  Instead, like most women who go to a medical practioner...simply assumed that whatever they were doing to me was "safe" and "in the best interests of my child."  I had no idea at that point what a doppler was or that it was similar to an ultrasound in posing similar risks....I simply "trusted" my midwife/doctor. 

Granted, I was super excited when I heart the baby's heart beat.  Seeing my husbands' glossy eyes as he loooked at me overwhelmed with joy "to know" that our baby was alive and okay is one of the greatest experiences of my life.  And yet, today I am saddened.  Scratch that, I am enraged and absolutely pissed off at the notion that even when one goes out of their way to do their research, to educate oneself and be prepared to demand our rights in birthing our child the way we choose to, we are still at a huge disadvantage because we are going up against a system that is not there to facilitate birth for us but rather operating to control us.  There is a huge power inbalance, and in this system...we practically have no rights.  We have no rights unless we truly direct every single energy cell to ensure that no process goes unquestioned, unless we become skeptical of everything and everyone until we drive ourselves mad with uncertainty.  It is debilitating and exhausting...and I'm only half way if that there.  I am afraid of what awaits.

I have read countless stories on blogs and internet posts of women whose birthing rigths have been taken from them, women who have been abused and violated in despicable ways.  Women who have been cut, forced, and probed to have a birthing experience they never solicited but simply was imposed upon them.  Perhaps my doppler experience is minimal to the stories of pain and anguish of having one's vagina sewn without anesthesia or water broken, labor induced, coerced and manipulated to take drugs, have ultrasounds, and whatever else women are subjected to during pregnancy and labor.  My point however is that women are seldom asked, they are told and even when they question, they are tricked and deceived to give up whatever power and rights they have under the mantra of "its for the baby." 

In reading these stories, I came across a blog post that talks about the notion of "birth rape."  Sure this is a very powerful and yet perhaps "too intense" concept, but is it? I too felt uncomfortable at first with the idea that the violations that women experience in the birthing process could compare in gravity with "rape" of being sexually abused.  But in retrospect, the concept seems to be quite fitting.  What doctors and midwives are doing to women should be labeled alarming and shocking and disgusting, because it is all that.  It should be labeled violence, because it is violence.  They are violating our rights to our own bodies and our bodies themselves as they subject us to their bullshit technology, medicine, and science.  A science some of us never asked for or consented to. 

I am not trying to say that all doctors and midwifes are bad evil people, but some of them are.  And this sort of birth rape is taking place.

As I sat here thinking about it...I am brought to tears as I remember the image of my mother's stomach after giving birth via cesarean to my twin sisters.  My mother was sewn up in the most despicable way, leaving a horrible scar behind that she consistently complained about and hated to the point of tears.  As time went by my dad told her that he loved her scar because it was a reminder of the birth of his children.  I grew to assimilate the scar with it being simply a part of giving birth, a part of pregnancy.  But in retrospect, I realize that I was wrong, that my dad was wrong.  This scar is a symbol of mutilation to my mother's body.  A symbol of her rights being taken from her.  The scar didn't have to be done the way it was, I see so many people now in days, who've had surgeries with scars that are practically invisible.  But for my mom, giving birth in the 70s in a small town in mexico, she had to take and accept what she was given.  This is the way surgeries were done then.  this is as good as things got. 

today, women, myself included, continue to take what is available....for the most part.  Sure we now think we've progressed because we can chose the hospital or birthing facility we want or because we can chose our doctors, or because we can chose to have a natural pregnancy...but even then...even then...it seems like our birth rights are on shaky ground...and we have to fight CONSTANTLY to maintain them. 

The history of birthing in america and in the world is not a pretty one, it seems like the medical system is constantly fixing old mistakes...and here we are in the middle of it all...and our only weapon..against this beast of power and control...our only defense against being potentially 'raped' and 'violated' is our decision to become aware and to question absolutely everything we can....

here's hoping i survive this rollercoaster ride of pregnancy!