i promised i wouldn't cry
how to please someone who is unimpressionable?
It all started with a bad haircut. Then it was a fight with my mom. Followed by a fucked up buttercream. I promised myself I would have a nice day. I would not cry. I would not be nostalgic. But now I was holding back tears, trying not to show everyone how upset I was. Clearly, I was failing. On the living room my family watched with worried faces as I had a meltdown about things not going how I wanted.
“What does she mean by nothing going her way?” asked my dad.
“She is being insufferable today. We had a big fight earlier about it,” said my mom. As always, my dad didn’t know what to say. He left home for the last time when I was eleven, so he had been spared by god itself from witnessing my mom and I screaming matches. But he knew how it went. He had been married to her anyway.
Back in the kitchen I listened to their conversation. The benefits of an open floor you could say. I threw the liquid buttercream through the sink. I was not going to get it right. Not today. Pick your battles, or whatever they say. Let me go worry about the decorations now, I thought.
We were hanging balloons when my mom announced Mafe, my childhood best friend, had arrived. She had texted me that she was almost home, but I had forgotten about it. I looked over the entryway and realized she wasn’t alone. Mafe, my high school best friend, who also happens to be Mafe’s college best friend, was behind her. I mouthed, “What the fuck!?” She had moved to Bogotá two months ago and wasn’t supposed to come home until late December. The other Mafe was coming home from a work trip. They were not supposed to be here together.
Having two best friends named the same is silly, I know, but also kind of fun. I love them with all my heart, and I know they love me too. I mean, they both flew home to be with me on my birthday. I mean, they both flew home to be with me on my birthday, and they were coming home to a breakdown about to explode. Bless their hearts.
I hugged both of them, and left them in my room. Guests were going to be here soon and I desperatly needed a shower. My entire back was soaked with sweat and the hair mask I had put earlier had dried off. As soon as I closed the door, I broke down. I look down at the black tiles with teary eyes. Hoping to find an answer on the bathroom floor. I knew deep down that I was upset because I had too many expectations that weren’t fulfilled. No one cared that the cake didn’t look how I originally had planned. Or that my hair was short now. Or that my living room didn’t look like my Pinterest moodboard. No one but me cared. I was trying to impress myself. Yet I was impossible to please. I felt discouraged. I knew I was being dramatic. I knew I was wrong. Judging myself too hard. I had made my bed and refused to lay in it. I had my head so far up my ass that I couldn’t step outside myself and look around. My family and friends were outside trying to help. But I have never been good at asking or recieving help. If I knew how, the evening would’ve gone way different. I guess self-awareness is not enough. It’s one thing to recognize when you are in the wrong, and a very different thing to accept it.
What’s the point in recognizing patterns if I kept repeating them?
The emotional turmoil I felt caught me off guard. I can self-regulate now, I thought. Why was I breaking down over stupid shit? Yes, I get emotional when I get a year older, and my hormones are crazy, and I’m still navigating life after SSRI’s. But this was too much. It didn’t make sense. I felt my emotions like quicksand. The harder I tried to get out of the rollercoaster, the deeper I sank. I thought about calling my therapist, but it was a saturday night and I didn’t want to bother her. I could do this on my own. I could fix me. Go to the calm place in my mind. Find five things to see, four to touch, three to hear, two to smell, one to taste. The thing is, when I get like this, I forget every grounding technique I ever learned. When the self-hatred creeps in, it settles, and when it does, my vision blurries. I can’t see past me. Can’t see past the feeling of inadequacy. The constant feeling that normal people don’t think how I think.
In these times I wish for a smooth brain. A brain who doesn’t overcomplicate things. That doesn’t psychoanalyze itself all the time. That doesn’t assign judgement or meaning to everything. A mind who just observes. But I’m a narcissist. I think too much about myself. I know this. A generational curse. Or maybe I need more hoobies. A job. A purpose. To throw my phone into the sea and become someone else. Leave the outside expectation of what a woman is supposed to be behind and just live. But I know outside expectations or my phone are not the culprits. The high standards I hold myself to are. I treat myself in ways I would never allow anyone to do. It’s gotten so bad that people are starting to notice and express worry. The worst part? My initial concern was not that I am being mean to myself. It was that people’s perception of me might change
Back in my room, I tell the Mafe’s that a US number called me earlier. They side-eye each other. Before they jump to conclusions, I tell them it wasn’t him. It was my Uber driver. But I tell them for a minute, I did think it was him. I pressed with shaky hands the green button and said, “Hello?” wishing it was someone else. Wishing it was him. But I knew it was not going to happen. I told him to let me go, and for once he kept his word.
We got ready to the sound of my ‘I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day’ playlist. I decided a long time ago that when I’m sad I am not allowed to listen to anything that’s not 2010’s upbeat pop songs. Somehow it works. Even if all I wanted to listen was Phoebe Bridger’s ‘If We Make It Through December’ cover, I did my make-up singing along to Pitbull. Fuck birthday blues.
While getting ready I looked at myself in the mirror and reminded myself that I was not a girl anymore. That I can never access my 18-year-old body again. Not without engaging in unhealthy practices that I sweared not to get back to. Still, the feeling of wanting to be thin again creeps in. It’s been hard learning to live with the body that I have right now. A body that doesn’t look how I want. But that allows me to lift weights, dance, do yoga, and do all of the things I love. I try practicing gratitude. Remind myself that my weight is the least interesting thing about me. I think about all of the people who are sick. I think about my grandmother, who is losing her mobility and vision as the days go by. I think about all the amazing things her strong body allowed her to do. All the babies she carried, the grandchildren she took care of, the hearty meals she cooked, the songs she danced to, the people she healed, the ways her body allowed her to serve her community. Actions that would have not been possible if she starved herself and didn’t take care of her body. Actions I won’t be able to do if I keep thinking about the rolls in my stomach and the cellulite on my inner thighs.
Life is already difficult. Do I really want to get back to the time when I was worried about the nutrional value of everything that touched my mouth? Why would I want that when a pain au chocolat does more for my emotional well-being than thinnes ever did? I don’t know if I will ever overcome my fear of gaining weight. But I do hope that fear doesn’t stop me from living a fulfilling life.
A while ago, my friend Inigo (go follow him he is one of the smartest, most talented people on this website) told me “everything worthwhile exists on the other side of fear” and it stucked with me. I am scared all the time. But I’m trying to not give fear the power to suffocate me. The present is the present. There’s no going back. Only forward.
The day after my birthday, I woke up at 10:30 AM. My friends left my house at four in the morning. We lit candles and watched them burn and become thin wax on the asphalt. Recalling times of when we were seventeen seated in the same spot we were at that moment. We gave JD advice on how to break up with his latest situationship. Talked about what manhood felt like. And had heated discussions about religion, asexuality and pegging. Your typical after midnight conversations. It was lovely.
I got hardly any sleep that morning. I was tired. The type of exhausted that makes rest impossible to find. I tossed around in every direction and no position felt right. I went to my mom’s room looking for comfort. Fight forgotten. In classic mother-daughter relationship, we didn’t acknowledge that she had screamed at me and that I turned away her efforts to help the day before. Words don’t mean much on this household. Actions do.
When I showered that afternoon I played, ‘this is me trying’ on repeat. I decided that I deserved to listen to a couple of depressing songs. Especially from the woman who gets me like only she can.
Now at 24 and officially retired from stan twitter, I think that even if I try to stray away from fandom culture and idolizing pop stars, I can’t never erase the ‘this is me trying’ tattoo that lies on my ribs or the arrow below my neck. They are with me everywhere I go. Although the parasocial bond is not as strong as it used to be, going back to Taylor’s music always feels comforting. At the end of the day, I have grown with her. The second I listen, “Combat, I'm ready for combat. I say I don't want that, but what if I do?” or “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser,” or “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid. So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since. To make them love me and make it seem effortless,” I disarmed myself. I pretend a white billionaire pop star understands me like no one else. I feel the lyrics as my own and live for four to five minutes in a world where my emotions are not isolated. A nice reminder that even a person likes her deals with personhood. That I am not crazy for feeling this way.
Back in October, I wrote, “Even a year later, there are still bits of red on my dead ends. I suspect the lingering color represents something deeper. Maybe the red that won’t leave my hair equates to the sense of shame that won’t leave my side. Guilt and regret cling to me. It refuses to exit my body no matter how many sessions of therapy I go to. It keeps eating me like a worm eats a rotten apple. Except the apple is never eaten whole. The worms keep on biting; it can never get enough.” Now that half of my hair is gone and the red dye too, I suppose i’s time for the sense of shame and regret to leave as well.
The tattoos like my past cannot be erased. And to be honest, I don’t want them gone. Both are part of me. On my upper back there is an arrow because of my star sign and because of ‘the archer.’ It is a reminder that I am not a victim. That as much as I have been hurt, I have hurt people. That I am neither a hero nor a martyr. I have the power to hurt and I can decide what hurts me. Even if my erratic and neurotic behaviour gets the best of me at times, I am entering this new age embracing all parts of myself because they make me who I am. And you know what? At least she’s trying.
Holy, shitballs. I’m actually lost for words. This is so honest and raw and vulnerable, I can feel the pain viscerally, and resonate with it an incredible amount. Thank you so much for sharing, I’m very grateful ♥️
love thaaat <3 who doesnt indulge in a good birthday cry