Candid.

I met up with my friend Kweeny (pseudonym) a few days ago. We caught up on two years of life. We gave each other the extended abridged version of each year. Through struggle, with support, and with much love, Kweeny got through two years of her master’s program at UCLA. I’m proud of her. 

We’d met through a research program the summer before our senior year of college. Immediately, I saw and felt her light--she works hard, has a beautiful heart, and embraces the strength of her mother.

As the daughter of Peruvian migrants, I asked her about her recent trip to Peru. After detailing how she and her family were sick to their stomachs (typical? It is for me at least), we had the chance to talk about Venezuelan migrants arriving to Peru. With some embarrassment and lots of curiosity, she shared that the Venezuelan migration crisis has worsened. “They are everywhere,” she shared. Her family shared anti-immigrant sentiments very similar to those that White Americans have of Latin American migrants in the US--she recognized this. 

This summer I’ve been watching documentaries, reading the news, watching youtube videos about the historical political and economic violence in all of Latin America. As a US citizen who resides in the US, I recognize the privileges I have as a student here. This is especially true when I read the news and see faces like mine being killed and disappeared by oppressive governments within Latin America--Belize, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Mexico. 

I also recognize my privilege as a member of the majority within a minority group--Mexicans within the Latinx population. I’m not 100% sure how to use this privilege to have a positive impact on spaces I occupy, but a few things are certain for me:

- I must support my Central American and South American brothers and sisters.

- I must use my privilege to start conversations about the pitfalls of Mexican centrality in conversations and research on Latinx communities. 

- I must practice the above while I teach my students in Chicanx Latinx studies courses. 

“Here today, gone tomorrow.”

Do we all live our lives in transit? We can live today, but face death tomorrow. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Everyday we wake up and are alive it is a day worth living, a day worth being present to love those who are still with us and those who have passed. 

To embrace transit, is to embrace uncertainty and to live an empowered life where we do not fear the uncertainty of tomorrow or the uncertainty of plans we’ve made for ourselves, but are unsure we will be able to accomplish. We can be anxious about planning our futures, our goals, but plans themselves are transitory. Living in the present allows us to remain loving and live life consciously. 

How are you doing?

I want to tell you that all I wanted was your warmth, a smile, or a hug. How are you doing? That’s a loaded question when the day started heavy--so heavy that getting out of bed was a near accomplishment. How are you doing? Not great and I’m too nervous to tell you.

I woke up feeling a little heavy today. Most of the weight was on my chest. My anxiety resurged beneath my chest two days ago and it’s still here. I am anxious for what is to come tomorrow--the email I need to send and don’t know what to expect. 

I’ve reconsidered recalibrating--rethinking my choice of being in my PhD program. It’s not been easy and I don’t think it is for many, but my body and mind need a break and I need time for myself to figure things out. 

I tried reminding myself, “Asbeidy you’re only 23, you have your whole life ahead of you. It’s okay if you don’t want to recommit to this program. You’ll figure it out. You’ll be okay.” A piece of me still wants in...

I was excited for my postmates burger when I got home from a pretty tiring day. I presented my research to the department today and I had to choose to walk up to the podium peacefully. 

I know I have been struggling in this process, but I also knew that I was in a better place than I was a year ago--two years ago. For me, today was a win even though it was not for my advisor and for people in the audience. I refuse to think that this was not a win for me. 

Two years ago, I wrote my senior thesis alone without the support of anyone. In that process, I had lost my sense of purpose and on some days, it felt like I had lost myself. 

Last year around this time, I was standing after having crawled on all fours for two quarters. In my first quarter of my PhD program, my brother was incarcerated for the third time. I had to come to terms with it by the end of December of that year. In my second quarter, I was healing and mourning the loss of a living, breathing, and ever-present person in my life. I was resentful. 

Today, I am taking care of myself by choosing to put myself first. I’m not consistent, but at the very least I am aware. On some days, I am completely reminded that I still have a lot of work on myself to do. 

Today during dinner with my postmates burger, I remembered that there’s much work to be done. I stared at my fast food on my lap and started crying. I was crying because remembered that I am currently in a place where I am not taking good enough care of my body and my mind. 

Still feeling like I’m 16 and 21 all while going on to 24. Internalized feelings of “you’re not good enough” and constant negotiation of whether I belong in a place like academia. 

Few moments have carried me this way and several people have supported me and pushed me along the way telling me exactly the opposite of what I am trying so hard to believe: I am good enough and I can do it. 

I feel this oppression even among my so called peers--people who have also experienced disadvantage and through exclusion or perceived competition, deepen these feelings. 

It’s NOT imposter syndrome. It’s internalized oppression. Imposter syndrome feels as though it still has a layer of privilege that I and several of my peers of color, queer, undocumented, and female friends don’t seem to have. 

I hesitate to call it internalized as it is essentializing to my being. But how do I justify these feelings and these thoughts and these fears? I am trying to fight it and being here in the first place seems like a good start. 

As I try to finish my last paper of the academic year, I reflect on my growth as an academic and how that’s been shaped by my lived experiences as a Latina, second generation immigrant. I admit that when I’m in need of inspiration or when I’m just too anxious to get myself to work, I look back at my graduate school application. I reread my personal statement and my statement of purpose to remind myself that I am worthy of being in this PhD program. I am reminded that I’ve had a lot of support and love from my community, but I’m also reminded how I’ve sacrificed my mental health for all of this. 

This year I finally went to counseling. It’s not that I didn’t want to go before or that I didn’t have time. I literally did not know that I had anxiety and that I was on the verge of depression. I didn’t know and that was terrifying to me because I had thought of myself as reflective, thoughtful, and self-aware. Counseling has helped a bunch and I feel much more capable of managing my rarely, but sometimes crippling anxiety. There’s days when it feels omnipresent and then there’s days when I can imagine a life without it. 

I was speaking to one of my good friends and we shared our deeply internalized insecurities of being Latinas navigating institutions that were not made for us. They were made to push us out and discard us. They deploy a quiet violence on our souls.

Somehow, though, we’re still here and somehow we still find the strength within us to say that we are going to stay. Because we are standing on the backs of our ancestors who mined for silver, crossed national borders, and picked the fields of Delano, we are here to stay.