jas and life

im laying wide awake at 2 a.m. just reminiscing about the times I’ve spent by your side, and how much I miss sitting in front of you to tell you about my long days. you dont know this but you changed my life for the best. I can’t picture what person I could’ve become if it weren’t for you. you stood by my side through all the hardships and truly shaped who I am today. every day that im fighting is for you, to make you and him proud. and I miss your voice in the mornings, your endless and unconditional love. I never wanted to leave but I needed to grow, and I feel like it was such a hard choice. and some days I regret it… I try to see you often just to feel that sense of security that you never failed to give me. I try to feel your warmth every time we embrace, and sometimes I feel like if I hold you long enough, maybe that warmth will linger with me until I see you again, which takes days and hours that I dont have. I feel like im failing you, because lately its like ive invested all of my time and energy into one thing that isn’t you. it seems so selfish. because you’ve spent all your time and energy into me and my growth. yet here I am, spending my time and energy into something that isn’t directly benefiting you. I want to make you proud– but sometimes maybe I dont, and I am so sorry. im sorry for any pain ive inflicted on you and any sadness I might’ve caused you. I need you to know that I just want to see you happy. you deserve so much better than what life has given you. youre so special and hold so much value in your kind heart. I aspire to have a heart just as big as yours one day. im going to keep fighting for you. im so tired and exhausted, every day gets harder. but I need to fight because you’ve fought so hard to get me this far, and giving up isn’t fair. and I won’t add more to your plate with my shortcomings. ill keep fighting for you because youre worth fighting for, and ill do my best to make you proud of me. you’ve seen me grow into the person I am today, and with growth comes sacrifice and scars, growth hurts… but its necessary. im growing each day ma… and its hurting… i wish you were here so I could tell you this, but I can’t say these things without breaking and I know how badly that would hurt you, because you always told me that it hurts you to see me cry. so ill save these tears to myself and keep fighting with a smile on my face, until one day I find peace. I love you forever. stay strong for me ❤

10/11/2022 — 1:35 a.m.

Your laugh is the best thing in this universe

I swear every conversation we share is one that I’ve rehearsed

because without practice I can’t say the words to explain how beautiful your eyes are

and how even when you aren’t next to me, I stop and admire you from afar

Your smile is worth more than anything the money of this world could buy ,

I’m in love with it because you mean everything to me, I wish I could explain why

but words aren’t enough to express what my heart feels for you, I think I said this before

Nothing else in this world makes me feel safe the way you do, all I need is your presence, nothing more

but just know that you are so loved by me and that will never change

I feel so imprisoned with these overwhelming feelings, let me out of my cage

I wish I could say this to you without my eyes filling with tears,

but for now I’ll , in these lines where I write without fears

I promise I will always fucking love you,

even if you can’t say it too.

j

I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need to get things off my chest. There’s so many emotions and things that I’m sorting through right now but can’t express to anyone because I’m so scared I’ll hurt someone’s feelings or disappoint someone. The truth is that I feel so much. There is this constant need for love, not the type of love that some women expect: the expensive gifts, the fancy dates, and the unrealistic expectation for a man to be “manly”. I long for the kind of love that lasts forever, one that never changes even when times change, even when the age changes. I long for a love that isn’t felt with just gifts and dates. The kind of love I desire is one that requires effort, it requires sacrifice and time. It requires patience, dedication, honesty, and so much more than this. I know what you’re thinking, where the fuck do you expect to find that? And if i were you, id think that too… 

But I’ve settled for the past twenty years of my life, i turn 21 in one week from today and can wholeheartedly say that I have not once stepped out of my comfort zone to experience something that I truly want. I’m not proud of this, but I’ve put myself last for such a long time that breaking this cycle seems so bizarre, and wrong even. There is nothing wrong with putting yourself first, I know this to be true because I encourage it for anyone, obviously. A life where you put your needs first ultimately results in a life that is filled with self-gratification, an abundance in self-esteem and self-love. But what happens when you do everything for other people? It’s a lifetime of misery and unhappy endings for you, while others feel happy. People have told me I’m such a “people pleaser”, honestly i never really understood the term but i’ve grown to believe that it meant i was just a nice person. The  older I get, it becomes more evident to me that people pleasers are exactly what the two words entail. There is no “understanding” to be made. It’s what it is: people pleaser. A person that lives to please other people. 

That’s what it is. And that’s what I am. 

I need to make others happy, even if it means sacrificing what I really need in exchange. I smile every single day and sometimes I’m so good at hiding what I feel that I even begin to believe myself. But I’m lying. 

I don’t smile because I’m genuinely blissful and happy, I smile because it pleases the people in my life. I smile because it’s easier to imagine that I’m happy than to truthfully admit that I’m damaged goods.

I come from a broken family and still haven’t found my way through the brokenness. The walls of my past shaped my way of thinking and molded me into someone that me from the past wouldn’t recognize. 

I picked out the photos that they would play in a slideshow during my fathers viewing and watched my mother sign the papers, granting permission to release his corpse to another country where my relatives were preparing his burial. How can something that was so broken continue to break? The saying “you can’t break what’s already broken” is a joke. Because I was so sad and hurt that he abandoned me when I was seven, but losing him to gunshots broke me. I broke and I was so hurt by this loss. I cried at his viewing and saw his lifeless face, it was expressionless and dead. It’s one of those images that will linger in my memories forever. And no matter how many years go by, it’ll never fade away. I forgive my father for all the hurt, for his part in inflicting all of the broken parts of me. I forgave him for being absent and failing to be my father. He didn’t give me the love that I longed for, one with honesty, dedication, one that required sacrifice and effort. I never received it.

Do you understand what I’m saying? The love I want is so rare, not even my father gave me it. The love I want is one that I deserve. Or at least, I think I do.

Maybe I’ll never find it, shit maybe I won’t even get something remotely close. But thats okay, because I will make the best out of a bad situation, like I always have. I’ll continue to hope that love is still in the world, and somewhere, someday, in someplace I will find the love that I’m desperately seeking for.

The love that one day I would reciprocate, to whoever that person might be.

I’ll love that person with everything, I’ll bring the sacrifice, the effort, the dedication and the honesty.

august 8th, 2022

j

one of the things that are engraved in our hearts and forever stored in our minds is our past.

the past does not evaporate the way that rain on concrete does

it does not wash away the same way that rocks on the ocean do

it is stuck within us, whether we choose to remember it or not is simply a choice.

I feel misunderstood,

my past is not clear to me, i’m twenty and I still have yet to understand why the events in my life occurred the way that they did.

one thing is for sure though: life fucking goes on

life won’t wait for us to understand it, we just push through our pain and learn to deal with it.

it doesn’t make sense

why do we fail to learn from the past?

why do we continue to do the things that harmed our nation?

why do we continue to kill each other, literally and metaphorically?

why do women continue to shame one another, knowing how greatly it has impacted women in the past, women like Amanda Todd in 2012

dead at the embrace of ropes suffocating her neck when she jumped off her chair

sometimes I wonder how she must’ve felt. I wonder if she felt misunderstood, abused, ridiculed. I wonder so many things.

why do men continue to objectify women, knowing how many women are victims of rape, women like Artemisia Gentileschi in 1611

living her life in silence because justice was never an option, she sculpted art with her hands, the same ones that helplessly tried to escape an event that would change her life forever

all because she was “asking for it”

what the fuck is wrong with us?

the problem here is though, speaking up about these issues makes no difference. nobody will ever reflect. learning from the mistakes of our past is evidently nothing but a fucking joke.

women will continue to hurt each other, men will continue to take advantage of innocent women, and we will continue to be a fucked up society.

I will never understand this, and im sure ill never be understood. the same way that Amanda Todd wasn’t understood, and Artemisia Gentileschi wasn’t understood.

the past does not erase itself, forgetting it happened does not make us good people, it makes us cowards.

we are a disgrace, and no amount of remediation will change this fact.

j

I reflect back to the years where my cousins and I would rush out of our houses on weekends, hoping to catch the ice cream truck before it departed from our street. Sometimes we would catch it just in time. The anticipation of tasting that first bite of the Oreo ice cream dessert popsicle that was bigger than my small hands was my only care in the world then. I wasn’t really worried about how the next day will go or how the bills would get paid, none of that. I would worry about eating it fast enough so it wouldn’t melt and become a sticky mess. I knew my mom would be so upset if I got my small dress filthy with sugary paradise. I loved that feeling. The feeling of catching the ice cream truck in time and the feeling of sitting with my cousins while each of us devoured our treats. Today, we’re living much differently. Im in college, pursuing a dream I am terrified of failing at it. I worry about how the next day will be, how my future will look. Truth is, I’ve always been one to worry. I worry about the small things, about how badly things can become and how one moment can affect my entire life. I worry about being okay; not the fake okay, the one that we all pretend to be in front of others.. I mean genuinely okay. My mind is like a roller coaster going through the motions, and I’m holding on tight, because everything is depending on me. But, is it wrong? Is it wrong to wish that I could go back to those weekends where I chased ice cream trucks, where I indulged in sugar without thinking of bad things, like diabetes, or healthy diets, or overindulgence. It was just so much better. Worrying about desserts and keeping my dresses sugar-free was so much better than worrying about life, how to overcome loss, and how to handle pain. I miss the sugar, and I miss the little worries. I miss it all.

I slurped the last of my apple juice from the carton and coughed because I drank it way too fast

He smiled and used his thumb to wipe the juice from my chin

I love mornings like these when it was just the three of us eating japanese food until our tummies hurt

I love the way you translated the fortunes for me in broken bits of English because I only knew Spanish

That restaurant that closed down just six years ago held my entire childhood, the same halls I roamed crushed down

It was torn into nothing, the huge place that seemed like it was mine suddenly came crashing and it was forgotten

But not in my mind, it was alive all of these years and even though it hurts that it’s gone, I understood that it does not mean I need to forget it

I don’t think I could ever forget, the way my tummy hurt after a day of good food

The way my throat hurt after drinking my apple juice a little too fast

Or the way his thumbs would caress my face when my little cheeks were red from the embarrassment

How could I forget the way the japanese restaurant brought us together?

I could never forget, even if it’s gone.. even if you’re gone.

j

love could be intoxicating,

too dangerous to touch,

poisonous and dangerous,

but we’d hold it anyways

j

for the longest time, i thought the key to a happy life is to surround myself with people that made me happy. but the older i get, the more apparent it becomes that it’s far from true. happiness isn’t that simple. i don’t think happiness is for everyone, at least not easily. i make so many mistakes in my life and a lot of them are too complex to explain here. but my mistakes are a part of who i am. when i was twelve, it was a hard year for me and even though the moments are blurry, i remember it was the first time i ever felt truly alone. i was only a kid, a very sad one, and i was alone. i was surrounded by the people that were supposed to make me happy but felt nothing but sadness. my mom worked day and night to give me a better future and i always felt lonely because she couldn’t really be around when she was too busy struggling to pay bills and be strong. i look up to her because i don’t think i could ever be that strong. i got used to being quiet even when the world talked to me. i made friends with my scars and kissed my pain, i got to know it so well. my suffering became my best friend. that feeling of ‘not good enough’ and ‘just give up already’ consumed me. i want to apologize to myself for always being so hard on myself. i never really cut myself any slack. i still don’t. i feel sorry for myself, for inviting in that loneliness and embracing it. my best friend knows all of my deepest secrets, and all of those secrets will die with me. i’ll be buried with all of those secrets, they will be right with me in a graveyard somewhere. best friends until the end.

today i started my morning off a little bit differently. after dropping my mother off at work, i decided to go to my local gym to occupy myself. so i hopped on the treadmill and started to warm up before sprinting. after running the first few minutes, i realized how emotionally exhausted i am and how much i needed this feeling. i felt free. sometimes im so caught up in my life that i forget to catch my breath and reward myself for the small things. it kind of sucks how there is absolutely nothing we can control in our lives, literally. the only thing we can really manipulate is our feelings, responses, and views. but what’s the point in that? i wish i could be in control of everything in my life the way i can control how fast im running. when i run, im the boss. i can go slower, i can pause whenever i feel overwhelmed and take a sip of water when i feel exhausted. the luxury of control is overwhelmingly expensive though. taking control of our lives would come at a significant price. for one, who wants to work every day of their lives ? taking control of this routine and deciding to travel the world with nothing in our pockets comes with a sacrifice. taking control of how much time we spend in bed would mean than we wouldn’t make it in time to our jobs, colleges, etc. i hate that, i hate feeling like i cant be in control. this is my life, this is my time, like let me have control of this. let my life be like a run. stop suffering whenever i want, stop going so fast if i want. sometimes i wish my life simply consisted of just running, because im only in control when im there. i would keep running.

i find that its so much easier to connect with people and things that have some sort of trauma that they dealt with or are still dealing with. when i say im into Sad, i mean it all around. sad people, sad movies, sad stories, sad memories, sad situations, sad everything. there’s something about ‘Sad’ that draws my attention. probably because we have a lot in common. i find it hard to forgive and forget, my entire life consisted of letting go of people that hurt me and learning to understand that sometimes it was not my fault. its sad to say goodbye when all you want to do is start over and make amends with your past self. but a part of growing is realizing that it is ok to let go of things that are not helping you prosper. maturing is realizing that it is perfectly fine to be sad after making the right decision for yourself. im so used to making choices that are best for the people around me because i dont like hurting people. i like sad, but i dont really like the emotion. i really dont like feeling sad or seeing others sad. a big part of the reason i chose to be in the medical field is to do the exact opposite, in fact. my goal is to facilitate the lives of others, to make it easier for them to live a happier and healthier life. so i ask myself, if im so determined to make life happier, why cant i do the same for myself? it took me a long time to answer that question. no, really, a long time. blaming myself for the mistakes my parents made taught me a thing or two about self love and how essential it is. but there is no guide that teaches us how to love ourselves. none. nada. no guides. you are expected to write your story and make the right choices regardless of the fact that there are no resources. how is it that these are the circumstances, yet we question why people harm themselves. we look down on people who end their lives, but can we really blame them? there is no “right” way to live. im a graduated student going into her second degree, and still cannot figure out if im doing the right thing. why? because there is no such thing. whats the point of plastering my college degrees on the walls of my future home if i dont love myself in the process of it. so many wealthy people die unhappy with their lives, its all Sad. we are sad. i am sad. you are sad. perhaps not emotionally, but we are sad because improving ourselves is challenging and not many can do it without any help. its okay to embrace Sad. but we need to love ourselves if we ever want to do better in life, i would give you tips and advice on how to do this but even im still figuring out how to love me.