Erasure

"yes
it is possible
to hate and love
someone
at the same time
i do it to myself
everyday"
- rupi kaur

~

For as long as I can remember, I have woken up with a face covered in white pimples. They crowd the creases of my nostrils and clutter themselves along my upper lip.

My eyes creak awake- the familiar blurry scenery there to drip me in new-morning haze. The left seam of my favorite boxer shorts has completely deteriorated, so my thigh and hip, soft in this fetal position, fall without barrier. The creases of my nose and the line of my upper lip are filled with tension. The pain is concentrated pressure, and if I run my tongue along my upper lip, I feel the pointed ridges of the pimples. I start my inner dialogue:

·      What if puss is actually cream cheese and I am #blessed to have a lifetime supply on my face?

·      Wait, what is puss?

·      Can I pop them by rapidly flashing smiles for a 2-minute sequence? (*tries 2 minute sequence*)

·      Counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.5 (?), 5, maybe 6? Fuck if I know.

·      What do I want to eat for lunch?

·      How many of them have conjoined…

·      ARE THEY WHITE OR THAT WEIRD GREEN CRUSTY COLOR

·      Do they glow in the dark? Serious question.

I sigh, no answers clear after all my fretting. I get up to go to the bathroom. When I look in the mirror, I see them. There they are: white lines like parentheses around my nostrils and ridges as quotation marks on the corners of my mouth. I’ve been daring myself lately. I look in the mirror and see how long I can last without changing anything on my body. I must admit, it is hard to look at myself without reaching to erase the ‘ugliness’. When I look in the mirror, I see my crooked bangs and the hair standing straight out at the nape of my neck. Watered-down mascara from last night’s face washing puddles under my eyes. I can taste my own breath. In my hole-ridden shirt, I see the long hairs that canvas the bone between my breasts. I crinkle my nose and the white parentheses elongate; when I hesitantly smile, the quotation marks raise parallel to my dimples.  

I admit that I don’t last long before changing something. I reach to pop my pimples first. The puss smears, and spot by spot my face begins to throb. I push my hair down. I brush my teeth, sometimes spitting out blood. I tug on a sweater to cover up the hair on my breastbone.

Most ‘self-love’ narratives- even when they attempt to defy the dominant, standard-setting frameworks (i.e. capitalism, white supremacy, the gender binary, Eurocentrism, cisherteronormativity)- still depend on the use of the word ‘beautiful’. Narratives promoting self-love work to reclaim the word ‘beautiful’, using it to attribute value to qualities that have been historically marginalized or deemed ‘ugly’. Re-conceptualizing what it means to be beautiful serves an important, radical purpose, but if I’m going to be honest, sometimes I don’t want to be beautiful.

I want to be seen.

Maybe ‘beautiful’ is not always an adequate term. I have memories of feeling beautiful, softly beautiful in both expected and unexpected moments, but not fully worthy. What if I told you my ugliness is worthy too? I must tell you that I am afraid to wake up next to someone because they may dismiss me as ugly before they really see me. I wish I could tell them: sometimes, I have rosy cheeks and white blemishes together, unedited.

When I grow up, I want to be bare. I must admit I wonder if I will be liked in my barest state. In this bareness, I would be seen by both you and myself, unwaveringly. If I could be bare, I would redefine what it means to be strong. When I am bare, my worthiness will need no justification because it will not have to be beautiful. It will be from me, and you will see me. You will know that my battle scars are in my eyes and that in my first childhood memory I am talking to trees and that I like the ragged, discolored skin on my left knee and that I sometimes believe in fate even when I am told not to and that I wish I was better at being kind. If you see me, you will know that I am not always kind.

You will know that even though I’d love to be seen, I have a habit of smiling after saying something sad. In this way, I try to erase the sad thing into something small. And, do you want to know a secret?

Sometimes being small is easier than being seen.

Insecurities

“the year of letting go, of understanding loss. grace. of the word ‘no’ and also being able to say ‘you are not kind’. the year of humanity/humility. when the whole world couldn’t get out of bed. everyone i’ve met this year, says the same thing ‘you are so easy to be around, how do you do that?’. the year i broke open and dug out all the rot with own hands. the year i learnt small talk. and how to smile at strangers. the year i understood that i am my best when i reach out and ask ‘do you want to be my friend?’. the year of sugar, everywhere. softness. sweetness. honey honey. the year of being alone, and learning how much i like it. the year of hugging people i don’t know, because i want to know them. the year i made peace and love, right here.”- warsan shire

~

My trip to Chile begins with an ‘almost’ fuck-up, which is not surprising as I always seem to live my life on the verge of chaos, unclean and slightly reckless. If you have ever been inside my bedroom, you know this side of me well. I live amongst piles of things- lucky to see a square foot of open floor space. It’s probably gross, but there is something about being in a space unhinged that makes me feel imperfect, and thus, much more human.

My flight from Denver to Houston was delayed, so I have three minutes to make my connecting flight to Santiago after getting off the plane. It is my first time pulling the ‘DESPERATE RUN THROUGH THE AIRPORT GET OUT OF MY WAY I’M SWEATING’ dash, so to get myself through the pain of harsh breathing and flailing suitcases, I script a movie narration in my head:

*‘The Winner Is’ by DeVotchKa plays softly overhead*

With a body that hosts both chicken-wing dagger elbows and the soft belly of an all queso diet, the girl of our story begins her journey in a rush. Sweat pelting her hairline down like a half-lubed penis, our girl puts one foot in front of another- over and over her feet pulse forward and through. Here, she escapes the chronic blistering thoughts we all have in those empty moments, in those times we must remain still on the border between awake and dazed. She does not know what she is doing, or really, where she is going.

Out-of-shape puke forms in the belly, and our girl moves forward.

Foot after foot, our story begins.

And this… Well, this is a story of a girl.

I make up fake movie narrations for my life often. Once, I was able to continue a narration for several months; I would finish one daydream and pick it right back up in my next dream. In this particular several month endeavor, I created a boyfriend in my head and for all intents and purposes, it was a pretty fo-reals relationship. We met in the park, held hands, had a steamy kiss in the feminist section of the public library. Two months into our escalating relationship, Wyatt (yes, he had a name) came over to my house to tell me he never loved me and that he was leaving me for my best friend.

In real life, I sobbed to ‘Unchained Melody’ by the Righteous Brothers for a solid thirty minutes before eating a whole Kit-Kat bar in one bite.

(Am I aware that I made this all up in my head and that I self-inflicted this fucked ending? Yes. Yes, I am. Stop giving me that look.)

Anyways, I am running in the airport trying to catch this flight, and I know I must be making the most uncomfortable facial expressions. My face is an open book- every thought manifests itself in some sort of visible expression. I can get so lost in my thoughts that I often am not aware of my facial expressions. Many times, I will be sitting with friends lost in thought, and someone will interject, “Aly, what is wrong?”. I usually am taken aback, not realizing such twisted expressions have made their way to my face. I then have to awkwardly mumble “nothing”, as I really don’t want to get into how I just had a small life freak out about eggs that crack with a double-yolk (WAS THE DOUBLE-YOLK TWINS, WAS IT CONJOINED TWINS, CAN TWO CHICKENS COME FROM ONE EGG AND WILL SOMEONE JUST LIKE DECIDE IF THE CHICKEN OR EGG CAME FIRST BECAUSE I’M SICK OF ALL THE RIDDLING OKAY).

I make it to my gate and my suspicion that I am wearing a ghastly expression is confirmed as the guy sitting in the gate next to me hears my heaving and glances up with an appalled look of concern. I shove my passport and plane ticket into the hands of the gate attendant with the utmost urgency. Do you ever expect the world to be at your same level of urgency and then get ridiculously disappointed when your level of urgency is not reciprocated? I get this all the time in the drive-through at McDonald’s when I want a McFlurry:

Me, ordering as if this is the last thing I will accomplish on earth: “I must have a large M&M McFlurry.”

McDonald’s employee: “A’ight.”

This occurs with the gate attendant:

Me, after running a literal marathon 1 minute and 45 seconds to get here on time: “Did I make it? Am I okay? Here’s my ticket! (+ !¹⁷)”

Gate attendant, without looking at me reaches out: *drops passport and plane ticket*

Me: ….

Gate attendant, after I dip down to grab my things and hand them to her: “Kay.”

The anti-climatic nature of this is deafening. I find my seat on the plane and close my eyes.

~

I travel on various planes and buses down to Puerto Natales, the base city for entering the national park area of Patagonia. During my travels, I meet a handful of other travelers. To make conversation, we divulge what has brought us here; most mention something akin to adventure and greater self-discovery. I listen, but I think about borders as we talk. I’ve been thinking about borders a lot lately. On this trip, I am traveling to Chile to hike the W-Route in Patagonia and to later attend a conference in Viña Del Mar. I will move with ease along the southern tip of Chile- my ‘sense of adventure’ and blue US passport working as justification free from further questioning. Meanwhile, on countless other borders, fronteras, borderlands and bordertowns, people trying to traverse land will be stopped, detained, emotionally/physically/sexually abused, de-humanized and abandoned.

I can’t help but think of borders. Of the twisted privileging of my individualistic pleasure over others’ existence and well being. When I think about borders, I vary my reactions from wordless spinning to flustered, incoherent rants to my friends and family. Borders and this spatial abuse of neocolonial power leave me flustered as fuck because the hypocrisy of borders is just so full of shit. A LOT OF SHIT- just all shit, like that same shit that names me ‘bilingual’ while others of different positionalities get labeled ‘can’t speak English’ even though I cannot roll my r’s and a decade of institutional training has left my Spanish SUB PAR SUB PAR I TELL YOU! Uh, it’s all just one big shit hole, a big hole with a big shit and…

I can hear Emma Burns telling me ‘to simmer’. I digress.

I finally make it to my hostel, a completo and greasy middle part in tow. After a much-needed shower, I lay reading on my bed and try to squash my growing fear of hiking the W-Route alone. I start a mantra to ease my nerves: I will not fall off a mountain and die. I will not fall off a mountain and die… My roommate interrupts my growing mantra to introduce herself. She is from Denmark and is traveling for six months before beginning her full-time job in September. Within five minutes of talking to her, I have invited myself to hike with her and her co-worker for three days. My innate witty charm or a needy desperateness? Not going to question it.

We wake up early the next morning to travel into the park. As we walk, the small talk quickly dissipates and evolves into bigger wonderings about the world. This is what leaves me addicted to traveling- the swiftness at which feelings and big ideas can color a conversation between two strangers. We hike for 8 hours the first day; of course, there is beauty I cannot begin to describe. My fondness for my hiking companions is confirmed after two key events: 1) the male co-worker immediately names us #squadheavybreathing and 2) we stop for coffee at the hostel on the trail, showing a winding calmness that warms our journey.

A few days and many conversations later, we reach the end of the hiking route. My companions will continue hiking another day as I begin my return back to Viña del Mar. We sit sipping a few beers in celebration and nursing our swollen heels. By this point, my neurotic, over-thinking nature has been revealed. Mathias, the male co-worker, asks me more about my plans for after graduation. Immediately, my tendency to freak out is activated, and I start spilling over. I spill self-doubt because right now, my self-doubt is the only thing I am sure of and I feel the need to spit out vulnerabilities.

I have a strong tendency for freaking out- for alienating myself amongst my thoughts so completely that I disjoint myself from reality. I don’t see my tendency to freak out stopping any time soon. (In fact, a few days later at the meet and greet for my conference, I will be overwhelmed by the prospect of having to meet all new people. I will grab a glass of wine and lock myself into a bathroom stall to chug the wine as my ‘social lubricant’. Then, in the sweaty fervor of going to the bathroom and eating an olive empanada, I will almost wipe my vagina with said cheesy empanada napkin. It will be a really close call.)

I finally come to the end of spilling with Mathias. He pauses, a look of sureness personifying his eyes. He looks at me to say:

“Let yourself be insecure, Aly”.

~

So, I am learning to open myself. I am learning to be uncomfortable. Unexpectedly, I am learning to be insecure- less rigid and more stable in the unknown. I hope to exist imperfectly.  

There is this socialized myth about what it means to ‘grow up’. It is closely tied with professionalism, so that somehow growing up means you are less free to be emotionally honest with both yourself and others. You grow up and you warp yourself into the image of ‘security’. But, I wish growing up was more about fullness- the fullness of laughing hysterically in public spaces or of crying in surprising times or of letting yourself be insecure in the face of vulnerability. Maybe I can still center silliness. Maybe I can be angry, unfiltered. Maybe I can still feel others deeply. Maybe, just maybe, I can break the isolation of stoicness.

Away from isolation, I am a feeling being. And so, if I love you (which I probably do), I have intertwined you into my being. I walk with you, I experience deep joy with you, I shake with you, I allow myself to be insecure with you. To be with you is to feel like the turning on of a warm heat lamp. As I intertwine you into my life and being, we may even develop an usness- those idiosyncratic intangibles that make us us. Our usness might be awkward laughing and ridiculous gossip and foggy glasses and sometimes broken smiles and tell me about your dreams and too much left unsaid.

In the end, I hope we exist imperfectly.

Exhale

Depression has a purpose if you use it before it uses you.

Transform it to light.

Compost it through art.

-xicanisma_

~

My sister noticed it first.

We were walking through the airport just a few days ago, and my demeanor was as follows: red, sweaty, self-pitingly hot. It was going to be a long travel day, one of those days in which you must detach yourself from any sensory cravings so that the constant shift between plane and airport and crowds do not drive you momentarily insane. I was feeling very sick. It was the stomach sickness that you’re not really supposed to talk about in public. As my family waited for our bags, I once again made it to the bathroom- red, sweaty, self-pitingly hot. I closed the stall and yes, I was still sick. I really wish it were socially acceptable to moan in public restroom stalls, that there could be a utopia in which restroom noises induced a sense of empathetic solidarity rather than crude judgment. I see a pair of purple shoes that belong to the person in the stall next to me; I know this person must have been in my position before! Wouldn’t they support me? But alas, I bite my tongue, ridiculous self-pity growing stronger.

I hear my phone begin to buzz, and it’s my father. As my flight was cancelled, he is trying to find other routes to get me back to Denver. In my typical flustered fashion, I fumble too rapidly for the phone to hear my dad already barking orders. With my phone in hand, I stumble up, quickly pull myself together and run out to meet my family. Oh god, running was a bad choice. I limp and stifle more moans.

We make it to check-in after walking though most of the airport. Still red, sweaty, self-pitingly hot. I stand in front of my sister, and she tells me I am bleeding on my ankle. Startled, I look down to find the wound. I finally locate it at the cusp of my shoe. I look a little closer and that is when I realize something.

There is no blood on my ankle. That’s shit. That is my own shit. I have pooped on my leg.

Somehow, when I was in the stall standing up and fumbling with my phone, my body had continued its, um let’s just call it, ‘cleanse’ and I hadn’t felt it. I still stare down at it, not blinking. On perhaps too many levels, I am not surprised. I amend my physical state: red, sweaty, self-pitingly hot, *shitty.

Bring it on, 2016.

I share this last moment of my 2015 because I want all of you to never be able to look at me the same way again  at this moment’s heart, it is all about intimacy, rawness and vulnerability, which are the words I hold close after a very very long, somewhat painful but also brilliant year. As I reflect on my 2015, I must again revel in the power of looking back, of seeing, of opening. Reflection- just as words were always meant to be- is the purposeful connection to the concepts that drive our lives and give value to the deepest essences of our being. It is the journey of connecting ourselves to ourselves. In this way, reflection is a fundamentally intimate state of being and knowing. To drive down walls both within ourselves and between others is to render vulnerability as a crucial microcosm of the human experience.

I’ve only just started to call it Depression. Now, I don’t really have a finite beginning or ending for this period of my life, but overall, Depression colors January and February of last year. I did not call it Depression, could not name it for a very long time as I did not want to admit that something big was broken. I know I chose to stay abroad because of this Depression; I have written about my great breaking point, but it extended, like a winding road, deep into the months that followed that moment. Most times, I am a very public person. I talk fast and stories spill out of me like waterfalls. But with Depression, I never talked about it out loud.

I’m not really here to analyze the causes of my Depression; I want to keep the many layers of this mine to hold, tucked just behind the cusp of my ear. I can tell you that I chose to be very alone- to the highest extremity when I decided to stay in Bolivia on my own. Alone is of course an incomplete term as I did have the support system of a few friends and a few families, but overall, my decisions, my actions and my well-being in Bolivia all rested on my own shoulders. Depression is a diverse experience. I have realized that I personally become very private, a contrast to my innate chatty nature. I do not share my brokenness until I can be sure that I have intellectualized it- composed it with great care, noted highlights that will be easy for others to understand without compelling them to ask too many questions.

I did cry on park benches, and I went to bed early so that my dreams would not catch up with me. I went on many walks. I drank cups of tea. I was alone; I think the longest stretch I went without human interaction was 7 days in the beginning of February while I was working on the farm. Let me tell you, the mind does funny things when you have that much space to be with yourself uninterrupted.

Interestingly enough, throughout this period, I got to exist as a fictional character. In Bolivia, I spoke Spanish, so while I did talk and get to know many beautiful people, the language I spoke in was not mine. My linguistic restriction here was one of privilege, but I still remember the disconnect that haunted me when I spoke in one language while thinking in another. At home, the identity I architected via my blog had a life of its own. I chose what I shared and I designed who I wanted to be, and so, for many months I got to exist as this identity in the space of ideal words: brave, funny, missed. My self-created character got to exist in adventure, and while that part of me was validated in my reality (the character may have been carefully managed but she was not untrue), she was incomplete. That funny, brave girl was just a sliver of my reality; I held onto her tightly. But brokenness was there too. Most times, instead of grand adventure, I was sitting on park benches trying to find pieces of Universe within me- a spiritual quest I am still surprised I resorted to. Through all these incomplete languages, I steadied myself. Through writing, I saved myself by loving words. I loved the way they felt under my fingertips. I loved that they made me feel beautiful. I loved that they connected me to others. I loved that they left me feeling warm and understood. Somehow, the identity I had architected through words also saved the Aly I felt inside, the one no one saw but me. Slowly, like a warm heat lamp, I began to believe in the best parts of myself again, and I claimed power in my weaknesses. 

A lot has happened since then. I came home and began the process of becoming human again; my character could not stay infinite. I let go of the physical manifestation of my childhood. I taught in a classroom for the first time. I got angry about different things. I was so so exuberant about something until it hurt me. So, this is what I’ve learned about pain, about brokenness: I did not become broken then whole again. To be whole, I would have had to smooth over cracks, mold them to be unseen, succumb to erasure. Instead of whole I am a mosaic. I reflect you, yes you, in my brilliance because I have invited along my pain, my Depression, as my equal. I am brave not because I am unbroken; I am brave because my scar tissue reveals that the World has exhaled within me and that is powerful.

Loveliest you, I hope that you run and find fat roses. I hope you dance with wild ecstasy in your fingertips and shoulders and bones. I hope you help wipe away someone else’s tears so that they may return the favor someday. I hope you laugh deep belly laughs even in shy moments. Share warm cups of tea. Be angry. Use music to awaken. And most of all, I hope you find sweet intimacy, rawness and vulnerability in this 2016 because hey-

You never know when you might shit on your ankle.