Popping And Drinking: Ode To The Family

[Guest Esperanza Xochitl]

The sting of a drink

It numbs the state I am

I'm caught on the brink

No pulse last night but with more milligrams

I watch my past disappear

Burning the mistake

My existence so unclear

I burn in the bed I make

My head was starting to spin

I find my birth to be the sin

I wished it all to stop and die

My focus aims at the sky

With no rainbow I shed tears

I've learned more about me

This week than the previous years

And question if I should be

All I find is more questions to ask

The only answer is another

Until the brick wall where I collapse

I'm the only mistake of my mother

I want to be gone and undone

But this tragedy sets like the sun

Maybe that will unshackle my family

Removing the hurt that is me

So let the toxins into me

As your burden lightens

These sins will cease to be

And their little world brightens

Another swig, another step

A step out the door of their world

They can have a self-inflicted pat on the back

They ended the curse of their girl

So they'll fake their tears

And hide their cheers

One day, when I do it right

Tell them don't dress in black but white

[Sally]

A beautiful poem but why is it that the people we should be able to count on that seldom are.

I am so sorry,

Sally

[Guest Esperanza Xochitl]

Well, S.O.S.!

This is how my life and existence is: a mistake.

I wonder why I keep going usually. I've seen my body and I hated it. My family sees me and sees a "choice", a "phase", "the wrong path", "subhuman", a "intercourse up", a maricon, a boy in make up and girl clothing, someone they don't want to deal with, etc.

I wish I hadn't been born.

[Guest Alex Blitzen]

I know the feeling, certain people in my life have treated me the same way. I decided not to let them dictate who I should be. I will be myself in spite of them and their feelings. They may call me selfish, but sometimes you just have to be. Aren't they just as selfish asking us not to be ourselves?

It is great writing. *hugs*

[Guest moonrise]

I love your poem! I see you for who you are and know your struggle. Heck, with my family I can't do anything right even as a guy! As a girl I don't even think they would speak with me. Please do not give up. Our struggles are what adds depth to personality. And you sound like you have plenty of personality to share with the world!

[Guest Evan_J]

You're wrong. You're not a mistake she's made. She's a mistake that she's making. I've been notin you around here. Just cus I don't directly say this or that to peeps doesn't mean I don't notice that they exist and you seem like a pretty cool person to me. If you let the folks around you convince you that no one in the world sees you as a person worthy of knowing you 'll be making a great mistake.

[Guest Esperanza Xochitl]

My mom has stayed out of this entire mess in affect a neutral neither here nor there. My dad has been one who says the most hurtful things. My sister recently started talking to me again but still doesn't want my nephew to see me as Esperanza. I recently did something unusual for me these days and went on a xani-bar and alcohol binge for over three days straight. Somewhere deep down I was praying that the mix would kill me but I live. I remain an emotional mess just more sober.

I can't not be affected by what my family says to me or how they treat me. Mexican culture makes that difficult. I was raised on certain values including ones that make this difficult: Familia primero (family first) just I feel like its a double standard lately.

I feel trapped between who I am and who my family wants me to be.

what we have here is

Identity part one Vs. Identity part two

I risk being a casualty of this unless I do something. I just wish they'd accept me as the girl I am.

[Guest Evan_J]

I can't not be affected by what my family says to me or how they treat me. Mexican culture makes that difficult. I was raised on certain values including ones that make this difficult: Familia primero (family first) just I feel like its a double standard lately.

I feel you. I even wrote about/touched on some of that here: http://www.lauras-playground.com/forums/in...t=0&start=0 , with regard to being a black person. The relevant bits:

African American culture tends to be highly cryptomatriarcal in that way. For a black male to displease/break the heart of his mother is one of the lowest things he can do. He can be the worst butthole in the universe, but this same guy will talk to his mother like he's 3 and "shut up" for what she says.

Cuz it tells you that conflicts/problems with this with my mother are not just conflicts with this with my mother, it potentially is a problem that will affect me culturally and have huge problems in my race group because her acceptance or not acceptance tells other black people and especially family members whether or not she feels they ought to.

Then there's this bit:

But it is true about homosexuality. It is not condoned in the community at all.

And as far as they're concerned, much like you are getting , transgendered and gay "are the same thing". If it doesn't end in you with somebody you can make a baby with it is wrong. Very primative. Very animistic. And they aren't apologizing.

Maybe that actually is why I "liked" you even when I didn't say anything. Not real hard to hard to have an idea of your ethnic background cuz thats a helluva user name ( ) and I could just imagine, knowing my own culture b.s. , what yours must've been like. So I "noted" you.

"All" of the things about each one of us play into not just how hard but in what ways this is difficult for all of us. Culture and ethnicity are HUGE elements causing a LOT of problems for some people. For some folks its religion. For some folks it their "social world". And for some folks its all of the above

In any case, just wanted you to know someone thinks about you. And for all of that crap you listen to.

[Guest Esperanza Xochitl]

Maybe that actually is why I "liked" you even when I didn't say anything. Not real hard to hard to have an idea of your ethnic background cuz thats a helluva user name ( ) and I could just imagine, knowing my own culture b.s. , what yours must've been like. So I "noted" you.

I find culture to be both negative and positive. I cannot separate myself from my Mexican heritage. I remains inside of me. I see myself as just a Mexican woman. What hurts is the machismo. Throughout my life the biases against me, biases founded in machismo, has causes my own bias that I have to confront too. I fear masculinity. I have my own double standards.

But I digress, I wrote this poem in a drunken depressed state after another phone call from my dad. I wrote it directly onto here and waking up in the the morning at all alive was not what I expected. Headache and cigarette burns on my arms with some minor tummy ache seemed the only change. Lesson learned drinking to escape is like jumping out a window only to find yourself in the same room.

This morning after taking something for the headache I looked at the statistics and realized that last night I very well could have been in 31% I held back and only the future will tell if it was worth stopping myself.

I forgot where I was going...

[Guest Evan_J]

I forgot where I was going...

Hopefully where you were going was realizing that doing those things wasn't helpful? "Jumping out of a window only to find yourself in the same room " sounds like thats what that says. And you are right. Culture is double edged. It gives you a lot of what makes you great/ wonderful/ you and at the same time can be the source of a lot of pains going through this.

Of course I want to ask why you "fear" masculinity (guessing because someone masculine hurt you?) but I won't pry. I don't think that would be right of me. And actually you sound like you could stand a little more tenderness than that. Double standard? Hmm that sounds interesting too. But maybe because I do a little double standarding myself. Maybe not the same way though. Still, its private and I won't get into it.

What I WILL say is you sound considerably more sound. And as if you're looking at where you were more clearheadedly and for that I'm glad.

Don't burn yourself with cigarettes. Pretty girls shouldn't burn themselves and in the end all girls are pretty unless they're evil in their action

[Guest Esperanza Xochitl]

Evil? Not one hundred percent. The Mexican culture in me says I was born good and evil, hence duality.

Also I am slowing down on my drinking a little. I am not popping benzodiazopines (however you spell that) tonight.