rantingsofadamnstudent-blog

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via my last post

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Draft 6: Life ahead

So, to bring this story to a halt, I just want to talk about myself and thinking of my future onward. Being that I am a senior, I know that there are new things that are going to lie ahead. I have been a student since the beginning and I never fully stopped. I literally never took a break, my first day of college was set to begin on the same day as graduation. That being said, obviously, I went to graduation. I just don’t know what the future has in store for me. Student is just more than a term for me, it is my identity. As I got more and more in depth in my degree, I decided to add more challenges to myself. The event with my grandfather has unfortunately taught me to balance myself and school. With this knowledge, I got a job to fill in my “free” time. Working a minimum wage job in retail isn’t where I want to be, and it is definitely not what I want to do. Graduation also means that I won’t be doing that anymore. New things scare me. They scare me to a point where I question if I will be good enough or if I will live up to the expectations that have been set upon me. Social work? Case working? Big yet small difference. They say that customer service is just basically apologizing for things that you didn’t even do, is that also social work? I’ve been told not. What if I don’t transition my patients correctly? What if my patients don’t have the proper care, right equipment? Did I even check if my patients are living alone? Oh yeah, that’s right, not patients, clients. They feel a way if you call them patients. It makes them feel like there is something wrong with them. I even start to think about my responsibilities as an adult. Am I supposed to be getting ready to move out? Should I start contributing to the rent currently in my house? I’m going to have to start getting my own health insurance soon. Eek. Graduation for some are seen as an ending, for some it is a beginning. I see graduation as a carpet that has been pulled from under me, and I am terrified to fall on my face. I know that if I mess up in my current job, its just a short drawer, If I mess up on my career, it literally may mean death. So, as the date May 20th 2019 gets closer and closer, my anxiety rises higher and higher. yes, it is a celebration to what I have achieved so far, but it keeps my mind racing. On top of that, I actually had an issue with my Associates degree. I took a writing intensive course that there was a whole mix up with that hindered me. They said I wouldn’t be able to walk for graduation because of it and I was so upset. Although, now I took the course and passed it here in Brooklyn college, I fear it will hinder my graduation here in Brooklyn. The fact that I did fix the issue to an extent, I am granted now to walk when I should have been able to walk for the graduation back in June, 2017. That being said, that means that I will be graduating from two institutions this year. The funny part of all of this though is that I will walk for my Bachelor’s degree before I get to walk for my Associates’ degree. That means I will be a four year graduate before I am a two year graduate. The only plus side? I get two different dinners and two different celebrations. My post honestly is just as my train of thought at the moment, very scattered. I am usually a very organized person, but within the past few months, I feel as though I am getting old as well. Although 23 is actually really young and I should not be complaining, I just feel like with the new step in life, I will be getting new expectations in life. My parents already put so much pressure on to me and have a great amount of expectations, that I just don’t want to disappoint. I already think about my future goals and how short of a time I have to achieve them. I want to be working full time, with my license and masters in social work, by the next three years and I already know that is not possible. Yet, I for some reason keep pushing myself to make sure it happens. I guess it’s actually a big possibility that it I don’t that I dint want to disappoint them, I just don’t want to disappoint myself. Graduation? I guess here I come.

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Draft 5: Detachment

Okay google…Why does crying make your head hurt? “According to healthline.com, Sometimes the emotions you feel when you cry can be so intense that they lead to physical symptoms, like a headache. How crying might cause headaches isn't clear, but intense emotions, like stress and anxiety, seem to trigger processes in the brain that pave the way for headache pain.”

Okay, but Hey google…is it healthy to cry? “According to agingcare.com, “Crying is not only a human response to sorrow and frustration, it's a healthy one.” It is a natural way to reduce stress that, if left unchecked, can have negative physical effects on the body, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease and other stress-related disorders”

But google…if this is true, why crying stigmatized as a weakness? “According to enlightensolutions.com, Crying is a Sign of Strength, Not Weakness. Crying is the body's way to not only reduce emotional stress but process it.”

My mother has always told me to never let anyone see you cry. Mom, did that extend to you? I grew up with her telling me to be in touch with my emotions, but also showing me another thing. Every time she cried, she would hide and said it made her seem weak. I never thought so. Ironically, this transferred to me, no matter how much my mother told me I wasn’t. With this, I Just built up an immunity to crying in public. Coping with the passing of my grandfather, you can imagine I was an emotional wreck. I couldn’t cry at home because god forbid I started a chain reaction of 3 girls crying. I had to think level headed about the situation. Keeping myself busy always helped, and the whole ordeal has taught me a lot about responsibility. I even feel like it made me grow up fast. I remember going over to my boyfriend’s house a few weeks after and just walking through the door and just crying, and it wasn’t just a few tears, it was a full total breakdown. The fact that my mother taught me it was okay to cry, I didn’t feel emasculated crying to my boyfriend and his mom. I just couldn’t cry at home because I feel like the moment I started, I broke the chain. I had to be strong and hold my emotions, so I could help out my family with their emotions. It was a line of regret, remorse, anger, and even just self-hate. Being the logical person, I had to pick up the pieces when they fell apart. It was so hard to pick up their pieces when my pieces just kept falling. I just couldn’t process the death. I couldn’t even cry at the funeral and barely at the burial. Since the beginning, I feel like he was suffering. It took about three or four years for the cancer to claim his body. That is three to four years that he has been suffering, so in my head, he is at rest. Of course, I would want him back with us, but he’s better resting than suffering. I always tell my sister this, but it also gets me through the rough times as well. We did the rituals of novenas where we pray for nine days for the deceased to arise to heaven safely. During these rituals, everyone was overly emotional, and my mother would even cry from time to time. Again, I was as numb as a noodle. Most of my coping mechanisms follow me through how I process a lot of things. Although I am a very loving person, people can say I am a bit detached. They even say that I am a logical person, I just can’t explain how I feel about things. Personally, I believe I am excellent in describing how I am feeling to someone, I am just horrible in showing it. Even thinking onward, the only thing I can think of is if the way I process emotions and events will rub off on or directly impact my future and future children. I hope not.

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Draft 4: I love you Papi

So, I guess there’s no time like the present. This is the part where I talk about the moment that brought me to pieces. I knew I couldn’t handle death well when I had to put my dog to sleep senior year in high school. I had that dog since I was three years old, so when it was her time, I just lost it. I had a full-blown panic attack in the vet’s office. I cried for about a week. This wasn’t my first experience with death though. When my great grandmother passed when I was about eight years old, I just couldn’t comprehend what was going on. I know what death was, I just couldn’t figure out what it meant as a family though. That was just because of my ignorance as a child. When it came to my dog though, I felt it right in the heart. I had her in my life for fourteen years. She was old reliable and when she just wasn’t there any more, the house just wasn’t a home. To cope, we got another dog six months later, but she still has a special place in our hearts. This situation was different for my grandfather though. There are no books on how to grieve a loved one. I was just one evening that my grandfather was having digestion issues and the runs. Of course, I didn’t see it as a big deal, but I didn’t now what was to come of it. I actually went with my uncle to the hospital that evening. The doctors had to do a bunch of tests to figure out what caused it, but that meant staying overnight. Especially because he was elderly and now dehydrated. I remember that When I found out that he had colon cancer which was reaping havoc, I was very hopeful. I was like cancer, Pfft, he could beat this. After all, my grandfather is strong. I was nineteen at the time. They had to preform a surgery to remove a portion of the effected colon and put in an artificial thing to connect his digestive track. I remember being like “easy peesy.” At some point, his body rejected it and it left him on life support. Again I have to reiterate, I WAS NINETEEN (19). Everyone had a hectic schedule, so I was in the hospital almost everyday with my grandmother. This was finding a way in between school, with five classes and two labs, and an internship. I was stressed out of my ass. I remember sitting in a lecture one day talking about what we like about our internships and I just felt another panic attack coming on. I just had to breathe through it. Seeing him everyday with tubes coming out of him, unconscious made things hit so hard. I was terrified, but I couldn’t tell my mom it was too much for me, she already had a heavy burden on herself. I just had to suffer in silence. One thing always led to another and after he woke up, he ended up developing a pneumonia. A ton of antibiotics later and he was okay. The cancer wasn’t gone though. He lost so much oh his strength being in and out of comas, that we had to send him to a rehabilitation center for a bit to regain his strength. Once he was able to walk again, he was home. That sweet spot lasted a year. He still needed more strength to start radiation treatment to defeat the cancer, so we never really got to it. All of a sudden, he got sick again, pneumonia. He was hospitalized again but wasn’t comatose. However, he was having more symptoms of aggression, and we didn’t know it then, but the cancer had spread to his brain. Lymphoma. We had no choice but to start radiation. Do you understand how hard it was to watch the man who was so freaking strong, debilitated? His mind was going slowly but none of us gave up on him. We visited him almost everyday and we always called him. I regret not seeing him the month of April that year. I was in a car accident and I had sustained an injury to the knee. He asked for me that whole month. As soon as I was well enough to walk without a cane, I was in that hospital. I never really got to say goodbye, but in a way, I feel like I did. I always told him I loved him and wouldn’t leave his room until I heard it back. May 22nd, 2018, my mother got that call. I just couldn’t believe it and was numb in his funeral. I had to stay brave, even though deep down… I felt like I was dying. I will never forget his words to me and my sister since we were little. “You know I love you. You both are my girls.” I love you too Papi.

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Draft 3

Being a woman in society today makes me feel like I can’t voice my opinion in certain situations. I remember in high school I only had one friend who would speak openly about sex. She was a dope person. I had to do a story of I remembers for English class this semester. It is basically a poem starting with I remember and then having to speak about a memory. Doing this makes me realize that sometimes life just sucks, even when you’re going great. I started off with the good old days of school games and sleeping on the sofa and waking up in bed. Then it elevated into different and more serious matters like failing my first class. When I started to write about this, I remember thinking I wanted the main point of the poem to be remembering losing my grandfather. Since he has passed on only 1 year ago, May 22nd making the full year, it was such a pretty raw feeling. I was debating heavily on whether or not I wanted to write about him. Since he was a HUGE part of my life for the 22 years that he was here, I felt I needed to talk about him. For the sake of this, I thought I would add those I remembers here, since they were so personal.

 I Remember waking up on a Saturday morning and smelling hot ham and cheese sandwiches. I wanted it with coffee.

I Remember wanting to go to school.

I Remember wanting to grow up and be just like my big sis.

I Remember back braces and elevator passes in middle school.

I Remember feeling disgusted in my own skin and wanting to make a huge change.

I Remember going on a diet and losing 70 pounds.

I Remember gaining it all back.

I Remember meeting my boyfriend for the 1st time and feeling so nervous I didn’t know how to approach him. I kissed him on impulse.

I Remember getting a Pomeranian from a gym.

I Remember Domino’s pizza on a cold winter afternoon. Warm snuggles under the covers. A Corgi pup just full of life.

I Remember my grandfather picking us up from elementary school. She and I would share a mini pie and watch Disney’s house of mouse.

I Remember recording DVD’s with him and watching movies.

I Remember the day I found out he had cancer. . .

I Remember life support, chemo-therapy, Dr. visits.

I Remember believing he would make it.

I Remember the day we got that call. May 22nd.

I Remember having to pretend to be together, when my whole family was a mess.

I Remember panic attacks and Love.

I Remember Feeling like the negative feelings would never end.

I Remember changing my thought processes and meeting new people.

I Remember going apple picking and making an apple pie with Luis

I Remember feeling overwhelmed and then comforted all at once.

I Remember complaining all summer and working in the Fall.

I Remember getting kept at work after seasonal. I Remember BBQ’s and Beer.

I Remember new friends and old.

I Remember that I am stronger than my lowest tides.

I Remember that no matter how hard things get to always be me.

I hope I will remember that. . .

I actually found a lot of comfort in writing. When I was in high school and felt outcasted, I used to keep a journal that I would write about how I was feeling. When it was a good day, I didn’t really have a reason to write in it, but when it was a bad day, I would fill up about two pages. As the strong person in my family, I couldn’t let anyone find it and know that I have FEELINGS. I hid that book and once I remembered it two years after the last time I ever wrote in it I tossed it in the trash so fast. I need to keep a sound head, especially in the family that I have. Its full of hot heads and over emotional women. If you glare at my mom the wrong way, she would take it as having an attitude. My father is just rude so if he came at you rough… well you have to just have to suck it up take it or prepare for a huge argument. With no real, close friends, I could only vent to my biased sister or boyfriend. That being said, taking creative writing this semester I thought I would be able to take off some steam. NOPE! I honestly express myself on this blog, and why? Only like 2 to 3 people read it. I don’t mind a few eyes, I care about a whole audience knowing I have these feelings.

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Draft 2: Middle school and High school. . some of college (Part 3)

This round about has brought us to a point of college. Graduating high school was both a turning point in my life and the start of a new part. I lost all of my friends and gained a few new ones. Even during graduation and prom I felt outcasted again. My friends had turned on me and i just had to make due with that fact. In this part, I started to go through a level of independence and working. I was in charge of taking care of my school work and taking care of the needs of my family. unfortunately, My family counts on me for a lot of things, and when it came down to my grandfather getting sick, I had to be there for him. Through out this time, I felt completely overwhelmed. My “friends” were no longer in the picture and my the person I leaned on the most was the person i met the most recent. My boyfriend. For somethings that he has done, i can never thank him enough for. He has stood by my side from the beginning of the relationship til now. He and i have gained a substantial amount of weight together and i feel that that is because of the pressure we are on. He being the youngest and strongest in the family making sure that his parents were okay and I was just the most relied on. Pizza was just there for the both of us.

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Draft 2: Middle school and High school (Part 2)

Graduating middle school and going into high school. More like out of the pan and into the fire. I dropped 60 pounds and I was feeling great. I joined so many after school programs and I was even in a major. My self esteem though was very low. Because of growing up overweight, I never really saw myself as thin enough. I was never pretty enough, and I was never first choice. This had taken a major hit on my psych. I dated guys every other month. I needed a man to validate my beauty, and I always felt lonely. To top everything off, my parents were so over protective, I wasn’t really allowed to do much outside of school. I only really went hanging out with friends once a week and even then, I had to be home by 6 or 7 the latest. To combat this, I kept myself busy in school all the time. Salsa class, year book, talent shows, singing club, internships. All of these were better than being at home. It wasn’t until I met my boyfriend Luis. He is a year older than me. When I started dating him, my freedom inclined a bit. My parents met him and loved him. He treats me well and always puts me first. All of this, and he is very protective with me. Protective boyfriend + Protective Parents = mutual understanding. He took me on dates and only ever uplifted me. He calls me beautiful on the daily and tells me to stand up for myself. He looks at all of my insecurities and reassures me that i am beautiful and worthy of love. All the other guys I met in the past were just interested in sex and never really cared about my emotional well being. I even knew a pothead that once said LOVE ME!! even though I didn’t love him because we have just seen each other for two weeks. 

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Draft 2: Middle school and High school (Part 1)

 So, In middle school I wasn’t exactly what you would consider “Cool”. I was almost 200 pounds and I was only 4′9. I wore a back brace and was just learning the concept of fashion. There wasn’t really a lot of things you could wear that could cover up a bulky plastic back brace. This was my first middle school. It sucked. Through it all, I was able to make at least a few friends, none that lasted a lifetime though. I went to another school that was predominantly African american and the only Hispanic people I saw were usually stuck up. My friends were all Jamaican or west Indian. That still didn’t bother me though. I was invited to a friend’s sleep over and all. The school it’self sucked though. The principal was pregnant and was leaving the school, so she let the students run a muck. I didn’t feel safe there. I ended up transferring where I met up with an old friend who was Hispanic. She and I became like peanut butter and jelly, but friendships never do last. I was completely self conscious about myself because this is the time where people get boy friends. My mother let me stop wearing my back brace to school and we wore uniforms so I had two things less to worry about. I was still fat though. 

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Draft 1: Growing up memories

So...

 I grew up in a neighborhood where I was the only person who looked like me. I grew up around mostly Jamaicans and Haitians.  I never really felt outcast-ed, I never really didn’t have friends, and I never really was treated like I was different. the only thing that did take a hit was my identity as a Latina. I mean I ate the typical rice beans and chicken, but I really didn’t speak Spanish. Family was always important to me, but sometimes I just never understood what the hell my grandmother was talking about. I didn’t learn Spanish in depth till about 5 years ago.

 My mother was a hard worker, I have never seen a day where she wasn’t constantly on the move. Whether it was working, taking classes or just simply doing laundry, she was always busy. She wasn’t around a lot during the day and I didn’t get to see her till about 6PM during the weekdays. during the weekends I didn’t see her till about 3PM. Not that she wasn’t a bad mom or anything, she was just always busy and tired. She worked a full-time job at a hospital ad went to school during the weekends full time to get her masters.

 That being said, I spend a lot of time with my grandparents. It got to a point we called them Mommy Angie and Papi. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a dad in the picture though, he was just working all the time as a carpet installer and would sometimes have to do long distance jobs. This was just life as usual for my sister and I. When my mother came home, she would be just so exhausted, so she really couldn’t help us with homework all the time and little me just didn’t understand that. I thought she was just being mean. Now I speak to her about it and she tells me that she looks back at when I was 6 and said she feels so bad that she couldn’t help us. I reassure her all the time that she indirectly was by going to school and securing our future.

 While my mom was away, I used to spend the most time with my grandmother. She taught me how to cook and used to take me everywhere with her. I used to go with her to visit my great grandmother all the time. Knowing my great grandmother was a luxury that not a lot of people get to have. I still remember the smell of her house till this very day. Every time I would go over, I would have some good home cooked food and some kool-Aide. I even had a stash of toys at her house. On the way back, my grandmother would always stop at the 99¢ store, where I would get to choose 1 toy to bring home. It would always be some really girly toy like a plastic tea set.

 My grandfather on the other hand was much less of a hands on baby sitter. He used to make my sister and I some mac and cheese ad we would all just watch movies in his room. I for some reason remember a lot of Hayao Miyazaki films like “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and “My Neighbor Totoro”. I would sit there for hours watching tv until my parents would get home. My sister and I would fight about who got to sit where. He even used to play a lot of music and crack so many jokes just to keep us entertained.

 My uncle was the last baby sitter on the list. He was also the person who kind of but not always babysat us. He got bored easily so we would almost never stay in the house. He even took us to some convention that I vaguely remember where he got me a Renee doll from Sailor Moon. I honest to god have no idea where that doll is now though.

 As we got older, and more financially stable, my parents moved out and got us an apartment of our own. We still had babysitters on demand, because we just upstairs in the building, but we saw them less. Mother graduated college and my dad had gotten injured on the job so out of nowhere we were ambushed with tons of our parent’s time. Luckily, we were still very young, so it wasn’t hard to adapt. We were going to the movies almost every weekend and restaurants every month. I don’t remember when we started to drift a bit with the supervision of our extended family, but I was upstairs after school with my dad more and less at my grandparents watching tv. Micky’s house of mouse switched to grand theft auto video games and all.

 It took a village to raise my sister and I, and it didn’t take us too long to realize that. Every chance I get now, I stop by to visit them and make sure they are okay. As we get older, it’s like we forget they are getting older too.

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#Me Too

The thing about the #MeToo movement is that so many people are demonized for having gone through it. If they were not straight up raped or “Drastically” sexually assaulted, they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. If the incident happened at a party scene, they were just “asking for it”. Since when do we as a society feel it is completely okay for a whole gender to rule power over another? Why is it that Men can force their power over women and it still be excused? Victims aren’t just women though. Some women do the same to men and it is looked upon as not a “real” traumatic experience. It is often times overlooked and dismissed as nothing serious. This goes through the same thing for inter gender sexual assaults. People need to spend less times thinking about how they ended up in the situation and correct the behavior in society today. The internet is a new way to shed light on the situation. more and more people are urged to come out in social media and talk about the experiences. they are finding more and more support in finding out that they aren’t alone in this situation. 

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Response to Wonder Woman

As humans, we need to feel belonged, we need to find something to identify with. Being LGBTQ, being Hispanic, being disabled. No one gets to choose how they are born, but we all need to belong. The poem by Genny Lim talks about this and I feel like Goes in to speak about the complexity of our lives. How we live, how others live/ What we see going on in our lives and in others. The quote i posted before speaks to a theory in the flesh. We need justifications for complicated things. where we don’t fit in and where we don’t want to. Everything we feel is our identity and if it doesn’t fit into what society deems correct, we are rebellious, we are wrong and it is our fault that they don’t understand us. For that, we must choose how we feel the world wants to see us and go on with that. Speak predominately English outside, talk Spanish at home and say nothing to a “Man”. Being a woman is already 1 strike against you and you did nothing at all. In the poem, it also doesn’t talk about a woman working, it is the wife of a professor or a woman in poverty cleaning. never a woman doctor. Why? Because Society.

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I wonder if the woman in mink is content If the stockbroker's wife is afraid of growing old If the professor's wife is an alcoholic If the woman in prison is me

Genny Lim (Wonder Woman)

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Curiano Quotes Life - #LifeQuote, Love Quotes, Life #Quotes, Live #Life #Quote, and Letting Go Quotes. Visit this blog now Curiano.com

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Never be afraid to be who you are.