Tag: holidays

I am the Sun

Published on by browngirltalksblog4 Comments

Every year I get the Birthday Blues.  It never fails.  I know some people get so hype and litty every year when their birthdays roll around, but me I get the birthday blues.  It’s a combination of anxiety and nervousness of having everyone LOOKING at me and engaging with me that gives me a dread that I can only describe as such, the ol’ Birthday Blues.

Over the years I think I narrowed the reason why birthdays get me down: a new year for me always marks looking back on the year before and constantly comparing myself to, myself.  What did I do? What did I accomplish?  Am I where I wanted to be? Did I achieve the goals I set out for myself last year?  Normally, the answer is no or not quite.  And every year, like clock work, I have to re-set those goals, re-evaluate why I didn’t get to where I wanted to be and come face to face with some failures–eesh even writing that sentence gave me anxiety…  Then, just like I always do, I set some new goals, re-set some old ones and try to remind myself I’m not a complete waste of space for having to re-set the old ones I didn’t accomplish.  A constant comparison with myself and everyone else who has ever turned my age before me.  So yeah, I guess it’s safe to say I get the Birthday Blues.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love birthdays, my best friends’, my family members’, my partner’s-I love to celebrate them.  Even preparing for mine is fun it’s just THAT day, the day of reckoning or celebration (as some may call it), the day of the party, the actual day when all the attention is on me, is overwhelming.  But, this year I didn’t quite get the same feelings of dread.  Maybe because I was too busy doing 1 million other things, but I didn’t feel that same “oh god I have to sit down and look at all my failures again,” feeling and for once the only thing that gave me anxiety was that I was going to be 31 and how I hoped that no one would make the restaurant staff sing to me at dinner this week…

I realized that all these years I’ve been constantly competing with myself.  Every year I set the bar higher, do more, do better, be more efficient, work, volunteer, write, research, find my passion, pay off my debts, let go of the weights in my past, love harder, be kinder but remain steadfast.  It’s like me and my goals are flying around in space rotating around the perfect “BGT” trying to get sucked into her gravitational pull to find some kind of order…  So, naturally every year, I let myself down when I don’t achieve all of these crazy benchmarks, and me and my crazy goals are spiraling out of control in space, but not this year.

See this year, I realized I’m the Sun.  Me, this BGT is the Sun, and I’m not waiting to join anyone’s imaginary gravitational pull, because it turns out, I am the pull.  This year I am praising myself for every single accomplishment and failure and I’m equally proud of them all.  I am happy to be in love with someone who only expects love in return.  I am lucky to have dog that’s 11 but is confused for 5.  I am privileged to have a family that loves and supports me despite my flaws.  This year, I am walking into 31 leaving behind a past that I thought would have it’s grasp on me forever.  I feel lighter than any goal weight I’ve ever set for myself.  I found my voice and wasn’t embarrassed to share it with anyone and everyone who was willing (or not) to listen or read it.  I am working everyday to find my passion and enjoying some laughs along the way.  I am using new found time at home to write and research more and I’ve never felt more invigorated to work towards change of all kinds.  Every day, I’m trying really, really hard to be kinder while maintaining my passion and steadfastness and hey I have a little less debt than last year too…  I guess that’s what happens when you turn 31 and realize you are the Sun. 🙂

For My Brown Girl Angel

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Celebrating the New Year is always a weird time for me.  I look back and think of what I’ve accomplished, what I failed to do, what I want to work on for next year.  Normally I’m left feeling like I came up short and I enter the New Year promising to be more motivated.  As this year came to an end though, I didn’t have time to reflect.  I was too busy living in a sea of denial regarding my nina’s (Madrina/God Mother) bleak medical condition.

My nina, who also happened to be my aunt, was a giant influence in my life.  Some of the first memories I can remember  are spending time with her and my cousins in her old house watching a small black and white TV cuddling on the couch eating toast.  In my culture your nina is more than just an aunt or someone with a special title, it’s someone that your parents have a connection with and who they would want to raise you if anything ever happened to them.  It’s a pretty big deal.  I was lucky enough to have a nina that was best friends with my Mom–two brown girls who stuck together when their sister in laws would ice them out.  They were pregnant together, would escape my grandpa’s bad mood together and in at least one case they were in the room with the other when one of them was giving birth.  My mom says that the bond she had with my nina was more than familiar or a normal friendship because they chose each other, as sisters.  That bond they shared was handed down to their respective kids and even now as an adult I consider my cousins my siblings.  We have that I-will-always-be-there-for-you-even-when-you-piss-me-off-and-are-a-complete-asshole-ok-I-love-you-bye, type of relationship.

These past few years my nina has been pretty sick and because 2016 was the year of ultimate bullshit, it took her with it on 12/29/2016.  I try to be annoyingly optimistic and because of that before this year I refused to see my nina in the hospital or to accept she wasn’t going to be OK.  In November when she got ill I refused to see her.  “I’ll see her when she gets out,” I said to myself.  Then my cousin who is like my sister said, “she might not get out you need to go see her, I’m sorry if I’m being harsh but you can’t be a bitch titty.” So I went, she was the smallest I’d ever seen her but as sassy as ever.  She was smiling and bullshitting just like I remembered.  But, it was the beginning of the end and she was fighting a losing battle.  I will say that in true Brown Girl fashion she was admitted into hospice, then evicted because she wasn’t sick enough.  Her release had all of the nurses talking about how she was breaking all the rules–true to form, nina.

When I realized that this was actually it I talked to my cousin and told her I want to talk to her, I want to ask her all of these questions, I want to compile all of her wisdom and put it somewhere safe.  A piece of me wanted to have her forever, her words, her experiences, her lessons.  I had so many things to ask her so many things I wanted to know that I needed to know before it was too late.  But, if you know a Brown Family, you know that when someone is in the hospital then there are 15 of you in the hospital.  So, there’s not a lot of private time to have a conversation.  But, finally, on the day before her birthday–she was home at this time–I had some one on one time with her and I remember wanting to ask so many things.  I wanted to record her voice, take pictures of her hands, of her hair, of her soul so I could carry it with me forever.  But, in true nina fashion, she lead the conversation.

She told me a story about her oldest daughter, a story I never knew–this was a story tabbed under the “I’ll tell you when you’re older category.”  I remember being in awe thinking of the life she had lived before I even came into existence.  How courageous and tenacious she was,  it was her ever present characteristic and even now during her last days, she was fighting cancer and telling me a story making me feel like I was 6 years old all over again.  I was sitting, legs crossed as close to her bed as possible taking in every detail about…how when she was little and in Mexico…or, when she moved to Los Angeles and worked at the newspaper…how she met my dad before he met my mom…  “Wait, what was I saying? I forgot…”  I laughed, she laughed, this wasn’t a side-effect of cancer, she ALWAYS got so caught up in her own stories that she would lose her train of thought.  I didn’t blame her, they were so detailed I could see Sinaloa too without ever having been there.

I didn’t get to ask her any questions.  I didn’t have any prepared.  But, we sat there and talked like we used to, a conversation long overdue.  “Como esta tu nuevo trabajo?  Te ves mas calmada” “Porque te fuiste de la otra oficinia”  I told her why I left and she responded, “that man wanted you to kill yourself working for him, que vaya a chingar a su madre, tu tienes que vivir tu vida.  That’s what I tell Sarita, you can’t kill yourself over a job, you guys have to live you’re still so young.”  We finished chatting, I kissed her a little longer and hugged her a little tighter and then I left.  I’ll ask her some more questions next time I thought.  I’ll get the lessons, the wisdom, the message that I’m looking for, the thing I need to hang on to–I’ll get it next time.

A week later my nina was back in hospice and a few days later she took her last breath with her family, chosen and not, by her side.

I kept yelling at myself you should have asked her, why didn’t you ask her, why weren’t you more prepared to make the most out of your last few visits?  In the following days and through the tears and thinking of the good times it hit me.  My nina was never a, “do you see the moral of the story” type of person.  She was the person who told you her stories and hoped that eventually you’d see how the message applied to you.  My favorite thing she used to say was “no hay mal de que por bien no venga,” (Nothing bad happens without something good happening too).  I always turned to this when shit would hit the fan for me.  Look for the silver lining something good has to come from this.

So, I’m choosing to see the good in this and I’m choosing this as her last message to me, “TU TIENES QUE VIVIR TU VIDA.”  I didn’t get to ask her everything, I didn’t get to feverishly take down every detail so I could ingrain every part of it in my memory forever but I got what I was looking for, her wisdom.

I end this year a little more broken, a little weaker and a little more sensitive, but in the words of my Brown Girl Angel, no hay mal de que por bien no venga.  So I’m looking at the positive, “you have to live your life, mija,” oh yes nina, oh yes, I intend to.