Category: life update

I Am Not Okay; I Will Be Okay – An Admission

1 Comment

I have been sitting with some stories on my heart for the past few months, but I haven’t known how to share them with you.

I guess to start off, I have to make a confession: I’m not doing so great. I’m okay. Some days, I’m not okay. Many days, I am. I’ve been pretty emotionally overwhelmed for the past few months. Like, the -water-is-exactly-at-my-head kinda overwhelmed. I’m not pulled under the tide yet, but the current is strong.

And that’s a terrifying thing to write, if I’m honest. Much of my work is predicated on the idea that I’ve got it together– or at least that I can present that face well-enough, especially online where much of my work is done. I’m still not sure how this will turn out, but admitting this here is something I’ve wavered on a lot.

Still, I was reminded by the lesson I learned from Luis Alfaro: we can either run from the things that hurt us, or we can name and eventually own them instead.

So, let me tell you a few stories. Mostly about my anxiety.

K is the only reason I was able to write this.

K is a 14-year-old freshman in my English class. Sweet kid– hyper, athletic, hilarious, exuberant– and a great kid. He’s been dealing with ADHD since I had him as a 7th grader, and has been pretty good about managing it and being upfront with it (it helps that he has an awesome family supporting).

So, this year, I asked all my 9th graders to tell me a story about them. It was pretty broad, but K shuffled over to my desk in his Longs-Jesus-Slippers all the kids are wearing at my school.

“So, uh, Ms. Torres?” He starts out shyly.

“Yes, sir. What can I help you with?”

“Um, I want…can I talk to you about my paper? I want to write, um…” He looks back at his classmates, back at me, “I want to write about, like, um, seeing my ADHD not like, always a bad thing.”

I was silent for a moment. Here was this teenage boy in all his embarassed-awkward-teenage-boyness, opening up about his own stuff. I was also a little surprised. I’m all for framing things positively, but normally we don’t associate ADHD with anything positive, just an obstacle to get around.

“Okay,” I nodded, “That sounds great. What’s the story?”

He smiled.

K’s words stick with me as I drive up the Pali to my first day teaching Sunday yoga for Crossfit. I’m nervous and excited to take over the class from an excellent teacher who I consider a mentor.

Then, my car feels funny. Bump. Bump. Bumpbumpbumpbump. 

Then comes the smoke.

Fortunately, I’m able to pull to the side of the road. I hop out of my car and see my front tire. Completely shredded, flaps of rubber jagged and hanging off like they had a play-date with some very aggressive cats. I sigh, thank God it wasn’t worse, then turn to get the spare in the trunk. That’s when I see THE SECOND FLAT TIRE.

I sigh, again, and feel my heart race. I’m baffled. What will I do? The logistics of letting the studio know what happened, getting the tow truck, explaining what’s happening to my parents, figuring out where to get the weird tires that no one EVER has on island and I have to wait three weeks for Costco to have shipped and how am I ever going to manage that when I only get one tow with my insurance so I’d have to pay for the others out of pocket and I won’t have a car for weeks and seriously what the fuck now am I going to do?

The tow truck guy shows up, a late-forties local with a bit of a beer belly. I ask if he can do patches, and he gruffly replies, “Nah, sis. That ain’t my job.”

I nod and understand, still no idea what I’m going to do. He begins to set up my car on the dolly. Midway through, he stops and walks over to me. “So, where am I taking you?”

I look at him. My eyes burn. “I…uh…” I feel my heart rate rising. I feel my ears start to ring. “Um…” My head gets flooded with a million thoughts at once and my lungs can’t hold onto air for very long. “I have… no idea.” I admit. It becomes harder to breathe.

He’s on the precipice of perturbed, but something stops him and he looks at me. I don’t know what he sees– late-twenties, brown, bougie, yoga girl freaking out in front of him?– but somehow it brings him to some place of compassion.

“Okay,” he says. “You don’t know where you’re gonna get tires?”

Heart rate rises. Throat chokes.

“That’s okay,” he says, “have a seat in my office.” He leads me to the bed of his truck and we lean against it. He cautiously places a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Just catch your breath. I’m here. We’ll figure it out. I think I gotta guy anyway.”

Heart rate drops. Lungs open a little. Eyes sting with tears.

“Thank you,” I mutter back, humbled by this in-the-moment grace sent to me in the middle of my morning.

I don’t know how I end up at the foot of the bed, but I do.

It’s a week or so before, and something has awakened me. I have no idea what– but it’s all-consuming. I can’t breathe, and it feels like there’s this weird fog between my brain and my eyes. Like I’m seeing the world, but not really processing it. It’s dark, though, because it’s two in the morning, so it doesn’t matter. But I’m distinctly aware I’m operating on two different levels.

One level is telling me to calm down. To get back to bed. To settle down and get it together.

The other, though, is the one wrapped around my head like a filmy gauze coloring everything I can see. I can’t do this, the voice whispers at me again and again. I  can’t do this. I feel my ears start ringing. I have no idea what the “it” is. No, no, I can’t do this.

I move to the floor sit with my back to the bed, a steadying presence. I desperately want to deflect my emotional blast from my partner with the mattress. I cover my ears, put my head between my knees, and try to breathe.

But the voice gets louder, so loud that I even bring voice to it, “I can’t do this.”

I start to cry, hard now. Sob, really– nose running, mouth open, tears and snot and saliva spilling onto the floor. I’m drowning in myself, and I don’t know how to pull myself up.

At some point (honestly, I have no idea how long), I feel the bed stir. No no no no,  I try to muffle myself with my hand, but the ringing in my ears is loud again and I cover my head.

“Baby?” I hear Chase say, looking for me in his half-sleep. I say nothing. I cover my ears tighter. I hear him ask something, but I can’t hear or see him through the fog of my own panic and just tremble on the floor.

He doesn’t fly down, trying to shake me out of myself. He doesn’t freak out and ask why I always have so many feelings.

He slowly climbs to the end of the bed where I’m sitting. He leans over and gently kisses the top of my head, a silent call for me to come home now.

I take a breath.

He tucks his chin into the crook of my neck, nuzzling my hair, saying nothing. He just breathes next to me.

I pause and take another big, shuddering, breath.

“There you go,” he whispers, and I can hear him smiling.

He sits there with me, quietly, for however long it takes. He does not drag me, kicking and screaming. He merely shines the light into my own darkness and stays beside me while I find a way to return to myself.

I don’t know if I will ever see Panic as more than the monster that sits on my shoulder.

I’ll give it this, though. While I have been intensely overwhelmed, these past few months, I have also been placed in the way of grace more times than I can count.

I have tried to handle it alone. I have failed spectacularly sometimes. Yet in the moments where I have been most broken, most vulnerable and so sure in the overwhelming knowledge that I was alone, I have been met time and time again with an equally overwhelming amount of kindness. These moments have not been happy, but they have been full of joy and, yes, an astounding amount of grace that I don’t know I deserve.

So, as scary as it is right now, I can admit that I am not okay.

Still, I am filled with the small, glowing voice that reminds me that, somehow, I will be okay.

And, for now, I think that can be enough.

Pick Up Your Mat and Walk: On Running for Office

Leave a comment

My family has been having a quiet love affair with politics since I was a kid.

Growing up, the only shows I remember watching as a family were Hardball with Chris Matthews, The West Wing, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. We are the descendants of veterans and my parents were both politically active in their youth.

For a while, I thought it would be my older brother who would carry on that torch. After graduating from Stanford, he’s his way to eventually become the legislative director for Sabring Cervantes, a state assemblywoman from Riverside, CA. Paco was the one running campaigns, who could potentially run for office some day. I was too afraid of confrontation, too emotional, and frankly a little frightened of the responsibility.

With all the current political climate, however, both Chase and I have talked about the need to get involved and be active. The current world is scary and upsetting sometimes.

There’s a passage (John 5:8), where Jesus tells a crippled man that, to be healed, he need only to “pick up his mat and walk.” I think of this often, when I want to get out of a spiral of self-pity and get moving towards action and change.

I am finally at a place in my life where I feel supported enough and strong enough to throw my hat in the ring. And, after years of telling kids that our job was to be civically engaged– now was the time to put my money where my mouth was.

So, when some folks at LEE reached out to me about running, I thought: if not now, when? 

I have no idea what comes next. Right now, I’ve just been so grateful for the support of my family and loved ones. Plus, Chase sings Hamilton lyrics at me all the time now, which is also my favorite.

I know, it’s a neighborhood board seat, not the White House. BUT, I think that Margaret Mead had it right when she talked about the power of a small group of committed citizens.

As far as what I believe? Well, that a whole long list. Here are some quick thoughts on what I’d like to help handle at the neighborhood:

  •  Keeping Mānoa as a place that provides an excellent education and public resources to our residents– including increased attendance and awareness of resources available.
  • Supporting small, local businesses that make the University and Puck’s Alley areas as vibrant places, both accessible for younger residents as well as family-friendly and safe.
  • Finding compassionate and effective ways to help handle our homeless situation, as well as ensuring the safety and well-being of our residents. 
  • Dealing with the traffic problem. Seriously. Particularly in the morning. There are FOUR K-12 schools located in the area (ULS, Sacred Hearts, Punahou, and Voyager), not to mention the University itself. As an educator at one of those schools, I know how stressful it is to try and get kids to school in the morning (and how many come in late with their tardy slips marked “traffic”). We must find innovative and effective ways to attempt to manage traffic control.
  •  Partnering more with the University. Having a public University in the area can be a huge benefit for students and families. Resources and opportunities available there provide a huge privilege many do not have. We must find ways to partner with the University as residents to use their resources to support the community, and hopefully support them as well.
  • Finally, and most importantly, be accessible, intrigued, and determined to listen and be responsive to the concerns of my neighbors.

I am excited to see what happens and eager to jump in with both feet. Like I said, I’m mostly excited to hear from others.  So:

giphy

The Audience

1 Comment

I’ve been looking through old writing, and I found this. In a desperate attempt to stay fresh, I did some editing, because writing is rewriting and repurposing, yes?

It starts by willing yourself out of bed.

I’m not trying to trivialize that. It took what seems like years to get here. You have spent hours wrapped in sheets, unable to get up from the crushing weight of yourself. When you flip onto your back– the first movement you’ve made that hints that, just maybe, you will sit up this time– a rolling pain starts behind your eyes and down your back. It hurts. It paralyzes you for a moment, as you try and breathe past what, rationally, you know is not there.

The expanding of your rib cage hurts. The balloon of your stomach hurts. Blinking hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts enough for you to consider rolling back into the fetal position. You are tempted to throw an arm over your face like a boxer in a losing match– please, please, just stop hitting me— closing your eyes and trying to make the world disappear.

The thing is, depression is the quieter cousin of anxiety, and you’ve been dealing with this pair for years. They have been slipping into your bedsheets and sliding next to you in bus seats since you were an adolescent. They have wrapped your hand around razors and your body in blankets. They have convinced you that the world outside the life raft of your bed has waters far too dangerous to explore and watched as you did not eat, nor sleep, nor talk to anyone for days in fear of it. They have made you think that sitting with them in the darkness while they silently hold your hands is your only option.

And, years later, you have learned that this is a lie. You know, deep down, that staying with them only begets nights much darker than the one you are in right now. Wisdom teaches you that you have to get up. The rational part of yourself– a minority voice in the chorus of your aching mind– grasps desperately at that wisdom: You have to get up now. You have to get up.

You take a deep inhale, and sit up, a body rising from the grave.

I haven’t been able to stop writing in second person lately. It’s a bad habit of style, I have no doubt. We always teach against the second person; the constant use of “you” can come across as preachy or pedantic, and no audience likes to be told what they feel. It is difficult to do well, and I am no Junot Diaz.

I’ve been desperately trying to break out of the pattern. I start pieces with “I,” feverishly forcing myself to read down a mental list of the feelings I could tell you about, the dynamic verbs my body could be doing, or the thesaurus-long list of words that better describe how I could “say” any of this (‘I mutter,’ ‘I gasp,’ ‘I scream’).

Then, I realize that I have no idea how I feel. I have no idea what I’ve been doing. I am secretly in crisis mode, my brain the burnt out rubble of a war zone at the end of a long battle. I am glassy-eyed and shaken, triaging each moment like a trauma nurse on the field. I am figuring out what needs to happen so I can take the next breath. Sometimes it is stumbling through the motions because it feels like there is nothing else left to do.

And I see myself doing that. I see myself wander through the wreckage of my own being, unsure how to rebuild. At times, I can convince myself that the destruction will warrant whatever new creation I put together.

Sometimes, though, I am so paralyzed with fear that I can’t think through what comes next. Trying to figure it out hurts. Instead, I see myself go glassy-eyed and back away.

So, sure, I am partially writing like this in a desperate attempt to help you understand what I’m feeling. I am trying to unstitch and open myself, let you slip into this world for a moment by narrating what it feels like.

I understand now, though, that my audience isn’t just the reader anymore. My audience is myself, wandering that wreckage shaken and unsure. I am watching this version of myself try and figure her way out of the rubble. I see her sit down and bury her head in her hands, wondering what she should do next. I slam my hands against the screen, desperately trying to get her to hear me. I am writing her letters and stories, telling her that I understand, that it’s okay, that it won’t be this way forever. I want to jump in next to her, throw my arms around her, and then shake her by the shoulders.

You have to get up now. You have to get up. 

Perpetually Broken, Perpetually Healing

Leave a comment

First, you have to acknowledge the lies.

Panic is good at lying to you. It’s a tricky bitch. It will wait till your defenses are already down– you are already tired from long nights of insomnia, exhausted from trying to parse through the millions of thoughts that won’t stop racing through your head. Then, Panic will slip under your covers like the tenderest bedfellow. It will wrap its arms around your stomach and chest and hold you close and validate everything bad you’re feeling. Then, it will begin whispering lies to you.

I will never go away.

You look around, shake your head and readjust yourself body, ignoring the voice because you know everything must end and you’re sure this will too.

But Panic knows your weak spots. It knows how to make a bad thing worse.

I will never go away. And no one is ever going to put up with that.

Panic feels your stomach clench under its hands and smiles.

Yeah, you know it’s true. You’re so fucking annoying when you’re like this. You don’t even like yourself. Why would anyone put up with you?

Normally, when I storm and rage through an anxiety attack, it’s a solo adventure.

It hits me in cars or on runs. Sometimes in the quiet of my room. I’ve normally sensed an attack coming from miles away, and when the time comes, there’s nothing to do but wait for it to pass.

This time, however, was different. I thought I was fine. I thought I had gotten it out of my system a few days ago. I had a crying jag on the bathroom floor while my boyfriend was asleep, wiped my eyes, nodded my head and shook out my shoulders. Yeah, okay. I’m good now.

This night, though, I should’ve seen it coming. The inability to sleep. The desire to drink (nothing crazy, but when I go from drinking once a week to having a drink a day with dinner, I can tell something is up). The fatigue. It hadn’t really gone away. I was moody and tired and picking unnecessary fights, but I was so caught up in my own head that Panic blindsided me, that bitch.

Here’s the thing I don’t talk a lot about: While I have acknowledged my own struggles with anxiety, the shame hasn’t fully gone away. Even years later, I still feel incredibly judgmental of myself about my anxiety sometimes. Poor spoiled you, my brain snarls at me, What gives you the right to cry about anything? Why are you being such a whiny bitch? Who would ever put up with this? You’re pathetic.

So, I sit there, sniveling and helpless and hating myself. I sit there until it passes. But normally I sit there alone so that I can wallow in my own self-loathing without witnesses. When Panic rips you down the back and makes you crumple to your lowest self, you’re not looking for spectators.

Like I said, I’ve been dealing with Panic for a large portion of my life. I’m not scared of naming. I can identify the signs. I know I will live through an attack.

I guess I’m starting to see where the work begins now. I won’t always be alone when I have an attack. I can’t always get in my car and try and drive away from the problem. Sometimes, Panic will show up and I won’t be able to throw myself down the dark well where no one can see me.

The thing is, shame is a choice. Guilt is a choice. While the initial feelings can’t be controlled, whether or not we wallow in those emotions is inherently up to us.

We can listen to Panic’s lies that we are unlovable and unworthy. We can see our struggles as all the ways that we are “broken” and hide those flaws, ashamed that we are not as “strong” or “complete” as we think we need to be.

Or, we can realize that broken and healing are two sides of the same coin. They are different perspectives on the same state of being, really. What matters is which side we want to focus on. We can focus on the frustration that we are perpetually broken, or see the grace that comes with knowing we are perpetually healing, stronger than we were before.

After you acknowledge the lies, you have to beat Panic at its own game.

When it slips next to you, wrap its arms around your chest and neck, take a breath. Remind yourself that you can’t make it go away, but you can reframe the way you see its presence in your life.

And when it whispers, gently, into your ear, I will never go away.

Turn around, look it right in the eye, and say, “I know. And I don’t really care. I’m stronger than you, anyway.”

Redefining Measurements

2 Comments

Recently, I  asked my students to write about something that had recently begun or ended in their life.

Their ears perked up immediately, and I have to say the prompt got me thinking too.  What  had I given up in my life recently? What have I learned to let go of, in order to make space for new things?

Now, there are a whole lot of emotional things I could bring up, or relationships that I’ve moved past. But a few weeks ago on my birthday, I was reminded of one have it I had recently given up without even meaning to.

I looked in the mirror on the morning that  I turned 29, smiled, and realize that it had been weeks since I’ve measured myself.

Whenever I’ve written about fitness, I’ve tried to be honest and that I’m nowhere near perfect when it comes to self-love are having a positive body image. I struggle like anyone else. While I had learned to let go of the scale, I still measured my body every day. Bust, waist, hips, thighs. Every morning, sometimes even multiple times a day, I would take stock of how much “progress” my body had made. How much I ate or whether I worked out were anchored to that  daily act of measurement.

In the past few months, something has changed. I’ve implemented so many different things– CrossFit, Muay Thai, Yoga–  into my routine with running, but I frankly just lost the ability to focus on these a static measurements. I have regularly found myself working out 2 to 3 times a day, and having the occasional private yoga session with my boyfriend in the evening to try and recover from it all.

Here’s what I know I’ve learned before, and will probably keep learning for the rest of my life: the more I focus on my body’s ability to perform rather act rather than just be seen, the better I am able to redefine how I perceive success.  Instead of using a measuring tape to figure out exactly how much I would let myself eat that day, I’d see three different work outs in my calendar, listen to the growling in my stomach, and stop leaving the meal I had brought in my lunch bag untouched. It is impossible to perform at the level I want if my body doesn’t have fuel, so I’d set that as a higher priority than what the tape might say. Frankly, at a certain point, I just sort of forgot to measure my waist and just measured my ability to be moving at the end of three hard sessions.

A few days ago, I decided to check in with both my weight and my measurements, just to see if my actions have created any noticeable change.

My waist and hips had generally stayed the same. But I’ve gained about a solid inch of muscle in my arms. I can also with more, run faster, and throw a better punch that I could a few months ago. Those seem like successes to be happy with.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think you need to spend hours in the gym to attain some level of happiness, worth,  or pride in your body. I don’t think the change happened when I started spending more time working out, I think the change happened when I had new, exciting goals for my body.  The ability to run faster and focus on that was why I had dropped the scale in the first place. The ability to do new, crazy things with my body is, but I hope, has let me get rid of the measuring tape too.

So,  with my marathon season about a month away from the end, it’s time to start rethinking what’s next. Here’s what I’m sure of: it definitely won’t be boring, and I’m excited to measure how successful I am by how much fun I’m having along the way.

img_1063

 

Everything Ends: Bold Moves at 29

3 Comments

9/28, 11:30 P.M.

So, over the past few weeks the intensity of which I live my life has ramped up quite a bit. And that’s normal for September, I suppose. I’ve written before that I often enter my birthday season feeling spent, and this year seems to be no exception.

The main different, however, is that I’m a bit more of a writer-for-hire this year (I really want to say, “hired gun,” but I googled the actual history of the term and realize that, no, I am not doing anything illegal for anyone). Before, anything that floated across my mind ended up here or in previous tumblrs, completely for myself. Now, much of my time is spent writing for other people– which I love. I am immensely grateful that EdWeek or Sevenzo, among others, care about my words. 

Still, it means that the majority of my written-self ends up focused on other topics or other people. So, I’m trying to implement a little space to myself tonight. Yes, it means putting another piece on hold, but I think it’s important. 

Later

I’m turning 29 in about a week. Normally, I spend my birthday trying to think about what I want to accomplish in the next year, how I can grow and change as a human, I reflect on what I need to do better.

This year, I’m sitting looking at the blank screen, and I got nothing.

Not that I don’t think I have things I need to do better in, just that the fact that I made it here in one piece is still so baffling that moving beyond that hasn’t even crossed my mind. When I try to divine what’s in the future, it’s a misty haze of exhaustion, a to-do list, and the ever-present wondering if I’ve eaten today or not.

Last year around my birthday, I clicked a link on Faceboook to read my horoscope. I don’t particularly follow horoscopes– I find them amusing as the next girl and do feel like I embody the general qualities of a Libra. For 2016, it talked about “major life changes.”

Excellent! I thought. I was so sure I knew exactly what that meant. While I was trying to “read the waves” and “go with the flow” last year, I had a clear trajectory for what my life would look like for at least the next few years. I didn’t just have an idea, I knew it. I saw the life I would live over the next few years, and all the salient details– the who and where, the things we would build and create– were there.

And now, I got nothing.

No, I jest for the sake of narrative rhythm. What I mean is that, instead of the life plan, a few months later, I walked away. I looked at the map I had made for myself and realized it wasn’t going where I wanted it to. So, I set it down and started to make a new one.

And now I’m entering 29 and I no longer have that same life plan. While there are elements of stability in my life, I don’t have clear cut answers to questions like, “Are you staying in Hawaii forever?” or “So, what’s next for you?”

I. have. no idea.

And, frankly, I’m so caught up jumping from one project to the next that I haven’t even had time to be upset about that, which is probably okay.

Here’s the thing I realized while running the Kauai marathon earlier this month: everything ends. The hill you are struggling to climb over eventually ends. The pain you feel when we grieve for what was lost eventually ends.

That said, even most good things come to an end. My high school English teacher once reminded us (with a cynical but loving gleam in his eye– he loved antagonizing my ‘Pollyana-esque’ optimism) that even every relationship you are ever in but one (theoretically) will eventually end. We will have to leave jobs we love. We lose people.

In some ways, that used to freak me out. It wasn’t simply the fact that every ended, but the fact that I didn’t know when it would end. The end would hit me like a ton of bricks, and I wouldn’t be ready. I tried to course-correct by doing everything I could do figure out my end, to try and tell the story myself so that I could craft the exact correct ending at exactly the right time.

That’s not how the world works, though. We don’t get executive producer credits or final edits on our life’s script. All we can do is handle each page we’re given with grace and work through it the best we can.

The thing is, there’s something beautiful about that. Once you surrender to the  fact that you cannot control the outcome, you are free to relish what you have now. The end will come, you know it will come, you know it might hurt– but what is there to do about it? You can either worry about the end or enjoy the present moment for what it is.

There is also something to be said about making space for new things. I wrote last year:

…My exhaustion, my emptiness, isn’t a sign of lacking. This year, and hopefully from now on, it is a sign of preparation for the new. We cannot fill a cup that is already full.

I come to a new year of life completely spent: I have tried to give my words, my voice, my work to my classroom and loved ones. I have tried to ensure that I don’t refuse new lessons because I am so full of old ones that may no longer serve me. Instead of  feeling full and satisfied, I quite like the idea of coming into a new year on earth empty and open: there is a hunger in my belly that is still not satisfied. I am excited to spend another year filling it again.

Things are no different this year. It’s a terrifying thought sometimes, but I now see that this concept may begin to apply to my life plans too.

Recently, my father made an exciting new life decision. When he was on the fence about it, he mused, “You know, it was a bold move for your grandparents to move from the Philippines and Mexico to here. It was a bold move for them to come to LA, and a bold move when we brought you guys to Orange County.” He smiled, “It was a bold move when you came to Hawai‘i.” He was thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “We’re a family of bold moves. Maybe it’s time for another one.”

I smiled, because I was so proud of my dad for having the bravery and strength to change his plans and adapt. I was inspired, too. Yes, it’s great to plan for life goals, and I never want to stop doing that. But I never want to be so married to the plan that I don’t make space for bold, exciting moves in my life. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that it is never too late to scrap the map and do it better than you ever dreamed.

So, as 29 looms near (which I’m sure I’ll write more about), I’m excited to watch as my twenties come to an end. Is it a little scary? Sure. But it’s exhilarating that accept that the end will come no matter what, so my only job is to enjoy it while I can before making the next big, bold move.

 

Intersecting Stories

1 Comment

There are two stories I want to tell you.

The first isn’t really a single story, but a collection of them. It’s from the first three days of my classroom, and of being in the fifth-year of my teaching.

There’s the story I want to tell you about what it felt like to hit my stride. There is a moment where body, spirit, and mind connect and there’s a momentary, explosive bloom, like watching stars explode in space— it’s not violent, but graceful.

I turned towards my students on a too-warm August morning this Monday, started talking with them and thought, Oh, this is it. This is what I’m meant to do. My chest opened and the tension of uncertainty that summer brought melted away. This is it.

There are the students, who are already making me laugh harder than I have in weeks, whose stories are already burning so brilliantly inside them that I see sparks of them a few days in. It is the pop-crack of first flame at the campfire; it is the first rumbles of thunder in the storm waiting to break for hours. It is wild and unfettered.

It is perfect.

There’s another story I could tell you.

It’s about the fact that Panic is a sneaky bitch.

I think I’ve outrun him— taken every self-care precaution, immersed myself in joyful work— or kept him at bay. I’m so sure that I can sense his arrival, I let my guard down. Oh, I know he’ll show up, but I figure I’ll hear his footsteps down the hall, see the flashes of his fingers at the corners of my mind.

So, when Panic hits on King St. late on a weekday night, on a day where, for all intents and purposes, things are fine, it’s a little jarring. Panic does all the normal things he does— squeezes my chest; makes me cry; reaches down my throat and plays my vocal chords like a harp so I make squeaky, whimpering animal noises while I try to keep him at bay. I grip the steering wheel hard and grit my teeth, trying to ride the wave of his terror out, playing the scared bystander-under-desk to his Godzilla-rage.

I finally make it home and sob in my car harder than I have in months. There is no reason to it. The detailed inventory of my life is, at least, joyful. You’re fine. You’re fine, I think to myself, desperate to use that as an anchor to some kind of rational-self.

There is no logic to it, though.  There is just loud, unabashed wailing, each cry letting some of Panic’s power out of my system. I let myself weep in hopes that the more I let this wild rumpus continue, the longer I will be free from it.

The two stories seem juxtaposing, but they are not parallel universes. They intersect within me. They are consistently warring, forcing me to walk a tight-rope, a knife’s-edge worth of stable ground amidst two worlds that, if I am not careful, could swallow me whole.

Where Have You Been; Where Are You Going

1 Comment

Without warning, I gulp in a sharp breath, as though I’ve just emerged from hours underwater. My hands immediately go to my eyes, shielding me from… something. A known-yet-unnamed darkness that has haunted me for years. There are some nights when it drowns me and I wake up gasping for air.

My boyfriend stirs and begins to slip his arm around me. Instinctively, the touch makes my body jump. “Hey,” he whispers, “it’s okay.”

I blink my eyes open to early morning sun. My hair– long and barely manageable this summer– curtains over my eyes, the black streaks making a strange, abstract patchwork of the white ceiling.

My monster sits, waiting to see what I’ll do next. The adrenaline that flooded me during the dream and when I woke up begins to dissipate, leaving me feeling tingly, raw, and unbearably sad. Hot tears spring to my eyes and I almost lie down at its feet, ready to surrender momentarily to the darkness.

Then, I begin to breathe. I hear my own voice, steady and sure, in my mind. “Walk back towards yourself.”

I slowly inhale another breath. I count the seconds I can take to bring in air, filling my  once gasping lungs. I count the same number of seconds to let it go. I remind my body I am not drowning now. My feet are on solid ground. I’m ok.

“Walk towards yourself. You need to walk back to yourself now.”

I let my muscles melt back into the bed. I let myself be held.

“Walk back to yourself.”

I guess I’ve been pretty quiet for a while.

I shared with EdWeek that, to be frank, I sort of got kicked in the teeth this semester. Not by my students– who are wonderful, magic unicorns of joy in a ridiculous world– but just by the nature of being a 28-year-old who is trying to adult and often failing miserably.

Between my own personal shenanigans (there is no better word. I’ve checked.), deciding to act in three shows back-to-back, attempting to ensure I still meet writing deadlines and trying to restabilize myself, I guess something had to drop. So, I’ve been a little quiet– at least in the digital space. Trying to keep up with the world at home made it hard to stay informed of the world abroad.

I’d be lying if I said I regretted any of it, though. As much as I’ve missed engaging in intense educational discussion, I feel like I’m finally starting to get back into my own skin. Or maybe I’m running away from the images of what I was. Anyway, I have more in-person connections with people I care about. I am writing and reading more. I am trying new things physically (namely CrossFit). I am quiet with myself more often.

So, what’s next?

For the first summer in years, I don’t have a job. With the exception of shows and rehearsals, I am sort of a dirtbag who has been going to the gym and reading books and writing.

Slowly, though, I think I am finally beginning to creep, to crawl, to walk back towards myself. It’s a strange feeling. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. But I’m happy that I finally get to try.

 

IMG_8260

Some favorite photos of me– no make up, frizzy hair, taken without preparation– from the yearbook students this year.

 

 

Are You Any Better Off?

2 Comments

Stop. Breathe. Again.

Good.

I am looking out on the ocean at Diamond Head, wiggling my toes in the sand. It is near sunset, and the tide has come up to my ankles. I look down towards surfers leaving the water and couples taking sunset-selfies. This is a nice beach. I think to myself.

Four years ago to the day, I stood on a beach one bright May morning not far from Diamond Head and thought the exact same thing, this is a nice beach. It was my first morning in Hawai‘i, and I had woken up early to go for a run. I explored my new surroundings, amazed that I had actually made the jump and moved here.

When I came to Honolulu in 2012, I had a whole host of reasons why I chose to leave Southern California:

  • I had never lived more than an hour from where I grew up, now was the time to leave.
  • I had never “adventured” after college the way I had wanted to.
  • I was young and figured,”if not now, when?”
  • It was time to ~let go of my stuff~

All of these things were true, in some form or another. Still, none of them were at the true root of why I left: at the time, I hated who I had become.

I don’t mean that in a terribly self-deprecating way, but I had made choices that were actively against the kind of woman I wanted to be. I stayed in relationships that left me feeling hurt, disrespected and jealous. I was selfish and deceitful, with the justification that I “deserved” certain moments of happiness in my life. I drank too much. I partied too hard. I was reacting moment-to-moment only seeking the next high of happiness or excitement because I was a “twentysomething” and that was my right, dammit.

So, I ran. It’s what I’m best at, after all. I didn’t ghost; I found a job and made plans and tried to make a place for myself, but I packed up my life and ran as far as I could. I stood on that beach, the morning of May 1st, 2012, hoping– as cheesy as it was– that it was also the dawn of some, elusive, better version of myself.

Four years later, to the day,  I am standing on a beach looking out at the ocean, facing that question head-on: Am I better off now than I was four years ago?

The tide tickles my calves as it comes up further. A breeze wraps itself around me and reminds me of the mantra I used a moment ago. I close my eyes.

Stop.

I think about the girl I was at twenty-four. I moved here and grew. What I didn’t fully realize was how much growth can and will sting. That it still involved choices I would come to shake my head at. Becoming “better” doesn’t protect you from getting hurt sometimes. It also doesn’t prevent you from hurting others. What I see now is that the depth we can hurt each other is matched only by our depth to love each other as well.

Breathe.

Four years later, I have a longer lens with which to look back on my life. Amid the tense and exciting moments, I take stock of the pauses, the silence. Sometimes all we need is a moment to move past our initial, irrational response.

On the cusp of reactionary implosion, our brain can kick in if we let it. It can read the situation, triage, and clarify what needs to happen next to move past this. The silence isn’t complacency. It’s the time where our mind took a moment to cement in the lesson or the story or the power we would need. It stores it deep inside ourselves, a reserve of strength and wisdom saved for the next time we need it.

Again.

The way we learn is cyclical. We come to understand something, we face it in a different context, and all we can hope is that we handle it with a little more grace than we did before

If anything, the scars we had from the last time should serve as a map we can read as we navigate through this current struggle. ‘I have been here before,’ we remind ourselves, ‘I will come out on the other side. I know what I need to do to get through this.’ We begin the familiar rituals we do to heal. We try to learn. We try to get better. We don’t always succeed, but maybe, just maybe, this time, it’s a little easier.

Good. 

I open my eyes. I look back at the ocean. I have run Diamond Head many times, but rarely stop to come down to the beach and take a moment to breathe. I look at my legs and feet in the water.

I see the scars on my body, I see the parts of myself that have already stretched like new skin over healing hurts. I see where I have grown. I see the wounds and the dark parts of myself that still need to heal. Maybe the difference, now, is that I see the shape and color of the work that will go into that growth.

In some ways, not much has changed. And yet, everything has changed.

An initial version of this included the following passage from Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and I felt compelled to share it still. It’s one of my favorite books. I highly recommend it. 

But as I wrote his name now, I knew I was doing it for the last time. I didn’t want to hurt for him anymore, to wonder whether in leaving him I’d made a mistake, to torment myself with all the ways I’d wronged him.

What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t  have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

– Strayed, Cheryl (2012-03-20). Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 1) (p. 258). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The Lies I Unlearned When I Chose Love

2 Comments

Little known fact about me: my parents and older brother call me “baby,” ensuring I will be some Filipina child’s “Tita Baby” some day. 

Anyway, this is a letter to myself– now, myself in the past, and myself going forward.

Baby,

The world will tell you that you need to guard  your heart and only give love to people  that “deserve” it.

Maybe they’re right.

And they wouldn’t be the first. “If love be rough with you,” a poetic but hot-headed man once said, “then be rough with love.”

Another man once wrote, though, that if you lead a loving life, it is natural— if not essential— that you will fall in love. You will tumble head first into vats of it. Love will be gooey, messy and unpredictable. It will get in your eyes and under your nails, and you will find it dried behind your ears days after you thought you had finally scrubbed yourself clean of it.

And that’s beautiful, but it’s terrifying. It will scald you. It will go up your nose and make you cough in that painful way that rips open your throat. It screws up your clothes, staining in a way and no amount of bleach will get it out. This love shit will seriously fuck you up.

But stop running from it, baby. Stop running from love because you’re scared that you’ll never be able to scrub it away. You’re right. You won’t. It will leave a permanent mark. It’ll burn you in ways you weren’t ready for.

But stop running.

Here’s the lie you must let go: the belief that love only looks like one thing. To choose love is to understand that love comes to us in so many forms.

Love is not just kisses and rainbows. Love is bigger than presents and the person who holds you when you cry. Love is not only the arms of someone else. It is not always soft. It is not always simple. It is not always laid out and easy to reach. Sometimes you think you’re there only to learn that love is at the top of an impossibly long, climb.

Sometimes, love is the brutal, honest truth laid out on the table, looking at all the parts of that truth and making the choice. It sees all the shaky, scary bits and says, “Yes. I’m in.

Sometimes you have that conversation with a partner.

Sometimes with a friend.

Sometimes with yourself.

Still, that’s not the only way love manifests. It’s the text chain with a friend reminding you of your own strength. It’s the head tilt and the quiet question, “Are you okay? What do you need?” It’s the kid who puts everything on the field for you and for them. It’s the moment you hear your own heartbeat and feel joy.

Here’s the other lie: they have been trying to convince you that your heart will only produce so much love. They are convinced that you will meet your quota. That someone will see your secret stash of it and steal it and not give you any in return. That will happen. It will fucking hurt like hell. It will make you feel frustrated and sad.

But it won’t mean you don’t have any more love to give.

So, even when it’s difficult, choose love. Even when you know you might get hurt, run towards love.

Well, don’t run. Walk. Stroll. Take your time. Know what it really means to give and receive it. Sit with the knowledge that you will hurt other people. Love doesn’t guarantee constant happiness, but it does create joy.

But choose love. Walk towards it even when it annoys the shit out of you. Choose love even when it is ripping you at the seams. There is a fine line between DEconstruction and REconstruction, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

You will get burnt. You will be betrayed. You will realize that what you thought was love was actually something else, or that it became something else. You will cry and feel sadness and be hurt.

But you are no fool. Don’t believe that choosing love makes you naive or a dupe. You are not unworthy. Just because love transforms or leaves or isn’t enough doesn’t mean you were weak or wrong. Your ability to give love was never a weakness. In reality, it’s the greatest strength you possess.

So, stop running FROM something, and move towards love. When you see it at the top of an impossibly long rope, climb it and ring the bell for youself. Even if you fall after, you got there in the first place, the echoed ringing a reminder of how powerful you really are.

2016-01-19 10.25.47-1.jpg