Ode to November...

november is my least favorite month of the year. i don’t know how to explain it, but i often see the year as opposite of the first 6 months. my highest highs were in august and may. i had so much hope for life then. may was just warming up and thrusting me into a full summer of friendship and exploration. august was the culmination of all this. i met a cute boy who i fell for deeply and i was myself completely.

my birth month is february and usually i follow the cliche of crying. this year was different, but not quite. i spent the weekend down in miami with my family. i went to the beach with my godmother and i went shopping with my aunt. i was fighting with my roommates back at home and applying for a second job to make ends meet up north. it wasn’t rock bottom. i’ve hit rock bottoms in february before, but as far as months go february and november suck.

i haven’t always believed this. if you asked me two years ago i think i would’ve said they were the best months. my birth month and the month of love. my favorite holiday is valentine’s day. i love an any excuse to be extra and do too much. i love chocolates and pinks and reds. i love love. last year though changed a lot for me. i went no contact with my mother and this year if i wasn’t going in circles with my toxic roommates i was hiding in my room in a new city. maybe next year i’ll change my mind about february and november, but this november swept all the hope out from under my feet. it’s stripped me of some belief in others and in my country.

on november 1st, i voted for the first time. proudly for what i at the time believed would be the first woman in office. of mixed indian and jamaican descent with policies that i could support even if i didn’t agree with all her views. to me there was a hope that whoever was in office would be someone willing to compromise, willing to work with the american people. instead we have a narcissistic idiot with no experience, empathy, or values outside of greed set to take office for another term.

in the days after the election i vowed to get out, or at very least get my sister out. i do not want her to come of age in this country. i can suffer and bear the brunt as long as i can get as many people in my family as far as possible, but where do they go? where do you go when you’re from a super power that the global economy is reliant on. where do you send the most vulnerable when so many other countries are falling off the same deep end solidified by our own descent into chaos? i’m not sure right now. i can’t find the right answer, but hopefully i will before its too late.

this month i started working two jobs. after two months of job searching i finally got a job. i made jokes to my family who insist on calling me gringa, “i have two jobs now! i’m a real mexican!” they roll their eyes at me. working two retail jobs is nothing compared to the sacrifices they’ve made. waking up at 3 in the morning before school to go work in fields and then coming straight home to work again until dark. spending entire summers trying to take classes so they wouldn’t have to work all day.

so i started working at a houseware store, a 45min drive or 2hrs on public transportation away from my family’s house, just so i can use my discount to buy for my aunt. my second job was at a popular athlesiure store. i preferred the latter. the first job however gave me access to a community that i wouldn’t have otherwise. it gave me a reason to take workout classes in the city and to dress up. i do my makeup semi-religiously now and wear all the nice clothes that i needed excuses to wear before.

i read more than before. you have to fill two hours with something that won’t kill your phones battery. in boston, because i lived so close to my job and constantly had something going on it took me a week or a month to finish books that i’m finishing in days now. i’ve read through so many shitty mafia romance series on kindle unlimited. i had to put the phone down and pick up the few physical books i brought down here with me.

‘a certain hunger’ by chelsea g summers was phenomenal. a truly delectable novel, pun intended. it was funny and sarcastic. i lived for how unapologetic the main character is. so much of the book felt like a call to action, a dissection of feminism through the viewpoint of a woman who watched the culture shift over the past 40 years. as i mentioned earlier i put on makeup semi-religiously and i get all dolled up. the characters outside view of these norms made me question my own habits and complacency in patriarchy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

i finally bleached my roots. it took forever. one round of bleach left my roots a burnt orange. i know, i’ve heard it all a million times before, “don’t touch the box dye!” i was fed up though and if i didn’t bleach it i was gonna box dye my blonde hair black and that would’ve never gotten out my hair. i took the more rational choice, imho. the more rational choice for me though is rarely rational. i exist in extremes. the darkest roots and the blondest ends.

the second round of bleach done at nearly midnight was a journey. my assistant, my younger cousin who i forced to help me, was exhausted by the end and i’m sure wanted to disown me.  here lies my hairdresser taking a brief nap while i rinsed the bleach out and let the toner, a blue tinted conditioner that came with the box dye, sit in my hair. it was 1 am at this point on a sunday. i had work early the next morning and she was going to church. whatever christmas gift i get her will not make up for her willingness to help me with literally any task i set out to accomplish. from clothing minimalism, to box dying my hair brown, and now to bleaching my roots she is one of my greatest confidant and ally.

now scratch almost everything i just said about her being great. i’m kidding! (i’m not…) randomly she had monday off school and i off work so we ventured to our local target to window shop. somehow i convinced her to buy board games with me and we bought ‘life’ and ‘clue’. after checking out then heading back to the grocery aisle to grab a 2L of diet soda we walked a mile back home.

nearly getting hit by cars and pausing songs every couple seconds because the wire headphones kept falling out of one our ears we were free. it felt like one of those days our parents and older cousins talked about. how back in their days they had the freedom to walk around the block and use their allowance to buy 25¢ sodas and candies. the walk home felt like the end of good movie and the four rounds i won felt like stealing candy from a baby.

it’s one of those accomplishments that feels good until you have to tell someone smarter or older how you won and you have to skip the part where neither of your opponent’s really understood how to play. is it cheating? maybe so, but i’d do it again (i have and i did win again 😌).

i’m not 100% a victim of the sassy man apocalypse, but it’s not for not trying. playful banter is fun until you look back and think, i can’t believe i let this white man be right sometimes. i’m forsaking my ancestors, but also my father is white passing and my great grandfather was literally from Spain. I like pretending to be upset. pretending that i’m pouty because i’m wrong, but really I want an excuse to be babied or ask for attention. its refreshing to have a conversation with someone far more intelligent than me.

being from the south with immigrant parents means that i have a myriad of religious beliefs. i was an atheist for three years in middle school, i was agnostic in high school, i tried converting to islam on my first gap year, and now im somewhere on the christianity scale. i say somewhere on the scale because controversially i think there is some merit in astrology, in islam, and in indigenous religions.

i don’t know if i believe there’s a wrong way to worship. i think we all find god and meaning through various means. there’s no right way to live life so why would there be only one set way to believe or worship. relationships with God and the universe are personal and the same way health advice can’t be given broadly i believe that neither can religion.

too often are the very people who claim to worship God, the same ones who go against his and his sons teachings. love thy neighbor means all thy neighbors. turn the other cheek means putting faith in God to handle all problems that come to you. I don’t believe that this means doing nothing and waiting on the spirit though. i think faiths without works is meaningless. you can’t say give to charity and ignore the homeless on the street. you can’t pray for peace and ignore suffering abroad. you can’t pray and not take action. sometimes the answers that we seek lie in the work that we must do.

so i take advice and guidance from the bible and the universe, and i connect all the signs they give me to the right path. someone is disastrously in love with me and maybe that person is me, or it’s a sign about the boy i met in august, or maybe i don’t know yet who because i’m not meant to know. only God knows.

i have taken great pleasure in having a routine. i love getting all dressed up to head into the city like a corporate girlie or something. i’ve tested out all my shoes  for long shifts, found what outfits do and don’t work. i’ve gotten more into neutrals again, which might be a sign i’m losing my mind again. i’ve burnt through a pair of new balances and air force ones, i’ve decided to buy a pair of hokas to see if they last the longest days of my life.

my favorite shoes that honestly get me through more of the day than my new balances are my my vans mary jane’s and my low top converse. something about these shoes gets me all the way into the city and halfway through my second job before i feel the need to tap out unlike the new balances that i can barely make it through my first shift in. the new balances rubbed my foot raw a couple days ago and i can barely look them in the eye. it makes me kinda sad bc they’re my only wide shoe so i had so much hope in them, but maybe it’s bc i’ve worn them literally every day since this march when i first bought them.

i love upper middle class stores. i do want a red polo dress for christmas. i do want gaudy pink jewel toned glasses. i have aspirations for more in life, but i also want to live a life where im content with what i have. evil is want, want is evil. maybe someday i’ll be content with all that i have but for today what drives me is the desire for more that one day i’ll get where i want to be and get the things that i want that no one else cares about.

i want to be a mother. it doesn’t seem a realistic dream these days. it seems more selfish than ever, but maybe in another life, in another world it won’t be. i still hope for a child. yearn for the fulfillment motherhood would give me. it wouldn’t fill the whole in me, only therapy and a personal accomplishments can fill that. i don’t think achievements will save me from never feeling good enough.

Part of wanting to be a mother is so I can relieve my own childhood pour my soul into someone who deserves the world. It’s a redo on my own tragic childhood. How can I say im neglected when ive been put on a pedestal my entire life. How can I say I feel arrested in my youth if I’ve been parentified my entire life. I think the way most women fight back against their youth and upbringing is deciding not to live a traditional life, but the wonder of the world don’t bring me the same joy that my chosen family do. The parties and the dancing and the adventures are only worth it because of who I do them with.

I feel lonely so often even when surrounded by people, but the wholeness of being seen of being understood there’s no drug in the world that can replicate it. I want a child, but I recognize that right now it wouldn’t be the smartest idea. It’s selfish enough to bring life into this world, but to do it before im fully ready would be just cruel. To do it without a plan or stability would be a little evil of me. So I wonder and dream. When they come, someday I will be ready, and I will fill their lives with so much joy and peace.

we will have februarys filled with love and novembers filled with peace. they will have their own highs and lows and I will be there to guide them through them all. so when the warmth of summer gets too hot and the first breeze of winter creeps in they’ll be okay to get through all the longest days.