dying to escape (June 9 2011)

At the risk of looking like a fool, or unconsciously loosing ties to the few people who do not understand me. I feel like I can no longer further repress a lot of sentiments embedded within myself. These last couple of days I have been skirmishing myself for strength.  Though the quarter has been coming to an end, I felt like I failed to do something. There was an intolerable pain in my chest that I yearned to rid of. But that pain was not physical, not even mental. It’s strange. My inability to speak about a soul, a spirit, aches my heart because it suggests a split. A divide between soul and self. My soul is crying. And I, loosing myself.

I know why I have been very afraid of my own voice.

Because I am afraid of my own power.

The power to write, to speak, to hear my thoughts come to words and to actions.

The fear of my potential.

Because everyone has doubted in me.

Including myself.

I am tired. I am not sure were this is heading. But, I have an inclination to write. I write with no direction. That is how I feel. Lost and clueless. I need more than a slap into reality. I need to re-find myself. This academic year has been a struggle. I kept ignoring the symptoms. I assumed if I did not pay attention, then I did not have to deal with them.

My brother needs me, and I am stuck at a meeting defending my integrity.

My mom is crying and I am volunteering at a conference.

My dad is working most of the day, and I am spending my money carelessly.

My grandma is dying of hunger, and I keep throwing food away.

My closest friends keep calling me, but I have replaced them for people I do not understand.

I am not who I want to be. I am not what I ever thought I would become.

I am letting go of myself for something that is not worth it.

This is difficult. Finding the words to best match how I am currently feeling. It’s strange – surfing through my lexicon, searching in thesauruses, stumbling upon the perfect word.  Together, these words create sentences that follow a specific logic to complement my thoughts. But I challenge, daily, the formation of these sentences. Challenge, in essence, the structure of my life. This is how I have been feeling lately. Stuck, unable to breathe for a very long time.

Suffocating in my thoughts because I have lost a lot of faith. And now, I am crying.

I need to close this the proper way. I promise to search. Look for what is missing. It’s simple. The answer, that is.  Busca en el amor lo que no tienes en la mente. 

still awake

its one in the morning and lucy is still awake. i'm taking this opportunity to introduce the world to my hidden secret--this blog. its not really much of a secret or much to this blog, since i hardly use it.

it came in handy when i needed to re-collect a lot of thoughts throughout last summer. when i was falling into pieces.

can you believe it? that its almost going to be a year since the summer of drama.
and now, this year its going to be the summer of opportunity.

i dont know how to feel though: in one hand, i am super excited. on the other hand, really sad. just picturing myself in the other side of the world. can you believe it? its like me? this queer man of color from the lincoln heights barrio going to South Africa?

Sometimes, these things really amaze me. What I have become.

When I was younger, I never envisioned myself at UCLA. Deficit thinking, i'm sure. In fact, I never knew where I would envision myself. College was something everyone told us we had to do, but this world was (and to some extent continues to be) really new.

While in H.S. I  used to walk up Westwood Blvd to the UCLA campus for different reasons, sometimes we'd come for AP Readiness, other times I'd find myself at the LGBT Center, talking to QA Board Members about support for H.S youth. Anyway, I would walk up the street and see all these people, most of them White and a few Asian(-American) students, and I would get soo excited to see a Latino/a and an African-American/Black student. It used to remind me of the days in ELementary School when we would come to UCLA, and since then we knew -- that we were the minority at UCLA. My friends and I used to play "how many Latinos can you count" in one day. I would never get more than 10, once I remember my friend counted 20. We were all excited! So awkward how it worked: counting our reality.

I would walk up Yamatos, Baja Fresh, Corner Bakery -- and be in awe. But I knew I would never be there. I would never be able to afford it, even less get admitted.

Years later, eating there is like nothing. And tonight, I am sitting in my Westwood apartment carelessly typing this -- waiting for Lucy to wake up, so I can return to cleaning the room.

Leaving to the other side of the world.

thoughts about it

Although these thoughts are quite irrelevant to the literature—the core of my ideas are central to the theme of the class. I am not too sure if this biological or per social stratifications, but my associations look like me. My friends, my lovers, my coworkers, brown like me. There is an immediate sense of familiarity, being together thus becomes a breeze. Conversations then become intriguing-politics at the center of our thoughts.

I was asked to challenge my insecurities, and place myself in male-dominated spaces. It couldn’t be that difficult; I consciously chose a group of brown men with a historically progressive record. I was late of course. Walked into what was already a hot topic. There was only one seat available, all the way in the front. I am still unsure why guys like to sit in the back, my professor once disgustingly suggested that “they like to stare at girls’ thongs from the back of the classroom.” Desperate, I know. As I was taking my seat one guy added to the on-going conversation, “For those of you who are not graduating yet—take advantage! Because once you graduate, you will not have so many women available.” Did my father think that way of women before he married my mother? Was my mother one of the options on the menu? Because of my still heterosexist thinking, I wondered about that guy’s mother, “was she also on the menu? Did his dad choose her out of the many options?”  Sometime during the meeting, I was asked to introduce myself. Without finishing my complete introduction, some guy interrupted as soon as I said I was a women’s studies major—“he can give us pointers!” They laughed. My body stood uncomfortable.   

                Also, not too long ago my ex-boyfriend called my straight  best female friend/roommate a “bitch” for challenged his male privilege. In privacy, he expressed his inability to speak his mind (note: a male’s mind) in the apartment.  

lo mire en ti

Do you remember the day when we first met?

Was it sunny or cold?

I wish I could remember.

But all that comes to my head is how beautiful you looked.

el dolor de perder

You lost me at your whim, when you decided to flee my crying calls.

I have no idea how to start this. I do not even have the energy to write. I’d rather be on a flight, fleeing from this pain. I took an aspirin, but I knew it would not work. This pain is not one that can be ameliorated with drugs. There is only one person in the world who can make it right. But he lost me at his whim, when he decided to ignore my crying calls.

I say my goodbyes, knowing that all I want to do is be with you.

august 25, 2010

I really wish you would fucking care. But your actions these past two weeks have shown me otherwise. You partying and drinking like there is no tomorrow—it speaks highly of your character. Of what you have become. That is not a conscious activist, this is a person with some serious issues with a title to brag. Don’t you realize that alcohol has infiltrated and fucked with our communities? Don’t you realize alcohol has killed so many people? Now, I am not against drinking—but this is called binge drinking. Weed, like alcohol, was placed in hotpockets of activism to curtail the challenge that students posses. Now you are part of the plan. It is now a problem.

Don’t you realize who you are hurting? You are hurting the people you love the most. Don’t you realize that if you say you love me, you would be more careful with your actions as to not hurt me? partying, drinking, and ignoring me do not help your cause. It only aggravates those that are trying to help. You are not making yourself look any cooler or cuter if all you are doing is fucking with your life! You are being selfish and therefore disrespectful. Yet, you expect me to respect you?

Don’t you realize that when you fuck someone everyone knows, people will talk. Guess what? People are talking! Saying you did this with this guy, you did that with that guy. How do you think that makes me feel? That a week after you break up with me, you are already messing with other guys. Wait, but it didn’t take a whole week. Because according to speculation, rumors, and your texts—it happened the night you broke up with me. Don’t you have any respect or dignity? And you say you hate sluts. You are becoming one. Now, you know I’m not against people having sex with whomever they want whenever they want—but I know you verbally expressed you would never do that. You are doing that right now. Sucking his dick, licking his ass, eating him out, kissing his lips. You have become the slut you have always hated.

Further, the inconsiderate sexual desires and physical actions with other guys expands way before you breaking up with me.I am not sure why you would even lie to your own friends about this, perhaps you were just bragging and trying to make yourself look cool—but cheating is never cool. Why do I go to a conference to present my research, you know for program that paid for your rent at the apartment, and you cheat on me with some guy you meet that weekend in Santa Barbara?

While all these are just rumors--I have nothing else to believe or rely on because you have REFUSED to talk to me. By you refusing, you are admitting your own fault.

And you say you want a break to find yourself? How are you finding yourself in the midst of alcohol and sexual desires? Is that what you have become? Is that what you are fighting for? Is that why you wanted all those positions of power? To become this? How are you bettering your community? how are you bettering the lives of all those people that are depending on your leadership? Let me ask you what you asked leaders prior to you: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?” Remember that line? You would ask everyone that. Partying does not save the world. Fucking does not change the system. You acting like a fool is a sign that the system is working—to keep you fucked over!

You call yourself a leader, and say you represent a community beyond oppress. You blame for not understanding your struggle because ill never be in your shoes. One you deny the fact that I was in your shoes, and while I got out of that situation by strategic luck, now you are just alienating me from you. You are asking me to check my privilege, but at the same time, you are refusing to engage in dialogue with me. you are loosing your closest allies. But I don’t do this because of you, I will continue to fight for what I believe in. But you, you are no longer that tokenized model. Why? Because the fame, the power, as gotten to your head.

How many underprivileged students do you know who party every fucking day for the past two weeks? How many underprivileged students do you know who do not have to worry about finding a job? how many underprivileged students would not want a summer of not working or anything? you give the subaltern a voice, and he is no longer a subaltern. That is what has happened to you. You no longer speak from that community, because you have demonstrated that you are no longer a part of it. Now you are speaking on behalf of that community—because you have access to resources, power, knowledge, fame, and even less personal surviving responsibilities.

I am tired of keeping my voice silenced at the expense of protecting my community. We went through this once before. Mujeres and queers had to keep the dirty laundry at home, don’t expose it because you will make us look bad. I am tired of being that good self-sacrificing joto, so Raza can grow and move forward. But Raza cannot move forward and grow if we continue to protect our leaders who continue to abide by heteropatriarchal norms. Brown men, and now the few queer brown men in power, need to be held accountable for their masochist, misogynistic behavior.   

Note, this is supposed to be a revolution for and from love. But when you hurt the ones that love you the most, it becomes less about love and more about power and control. When you use the master’s tools, the ones that allow men to sleep with whomever they want, without feeling remorse or guilt, then you are downgrading the feminist intervention of love to the movement. You continue to uphold man’s traditional values, and deny the feminine aura of love a chance. We cannot and should not have men who abide by traditional repressive male values to lead. We tried it once before.

Then there are the many that say that the personal should be left at home, and should not interfear with the revolution, with the work we are trying to do at the community. While idealistic, the reality is that if we allow men who abide by these ideologies, without holding them accountable, they will remain unchallenged, and their ideologies will continue to permeate our communities. We already live in a world that locks love, but when we allow our leaders to perpetuate at the destruction of love, we cannot stay still and expect for change to happen, because nothing new will change. We can no longer allow the master’s tools of sexuality and power lead our communities. We will only see our defeat in the end. 

something, someone, somewhere (Dec 2, 2008)

No one ever touched me like you did: with that tender touch, with that genuine affection, with that sincere love. I will for sure miss the sex, our bodies next to each other, the passion steaming with radiating heat, our hearts beating at an indescribable rate, the pulse of the thrust, the moan yielding for sincerity, the screams demanding more. But there was more to you, than just that. There was that smile hidden in your face, the rough spots in your soft hands, the warmth of your body, and your eyes stealing a glimpse of me.

But with such beauty, came hardships. Stubborn by nature, not able to defy the values I established before I laid eyes on you. I could not let go of the thorn that was pricking at your heart, so you chose to walk the other direction. I cant blame you for thinking with your head, but that jealousy that eroded was untamed like a wild beast at the local zoo. In spite of what I did, who I did, when I did it, it was you who I whispered sweet things to. It was you who I missed, it was you who I wanted, but it was also you who I hurt.

I can't proclaim tears running down my face, for the rage infuriate me. The same jealousy that drove me to love you drove you to hate me. For here I am at a loss of words, but not just yet, because all I have left to say is that I love you and always will. It is undoubtedly love, with special conditions. Love that shines brighter than lust and jealousy, but dimmer than reality. For my reality is no longer you.