Permite tus Sueños Matarte
“You could be brilliant, but you’re a coward.” - Thomas from Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan
Everyone has some level of creativity in them, as I am learning from The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron, a book I’ve put off for far too long. The trick is tapping into it. I’m not sure if everyone has a level of brilliance– maybe that is elitist of me, but too many seem content with mediocrity. Does professional, creative, or otherwise unspecified brilliance exist in the general population? I don’t know. Maybe everyone has brilliance, but not everyone wants it. What I do know, however, is that there are things we all want to do with our lives– dreams we all have– and we don’t always do them. Why? We’re all adults here, a line I love to use at work. No one is telling us what we can and can’t do. Something is holding us back, clawing at our inner soul, telling us we can’t. I’ll use myself as an example.
From the time I can remember, all those times carted around to psychiatrists and therapists, my parents begging them to “fix” me, I have learned the value of fitting in. I don’t think I am naturally inclined to be that way. My parents fostered my love of writing and reading, and I learned about art, history– everything. But when the time came to choose a college major, I remember thinking, what am I going to do with this? What will pay the bills? Things people who “fit in” think. I first wanted to do journalism, then later, Spanish and international studies. But the goal? Law school. Practical, and I’m a great writer, right?
Over the course of my ins and outs of dropping out and re-enrolling due to my waxing and waning mental health, I lost sight of the artistry of not just what I create, but the artistry of who I am. I forgot about my first psychiatrist, the late Dr. Minirth, who called me brilliant. “And,” he would say, “you’re on enough medicine for a chicken.” Over the course of these early years of my twenties I stopped writing. I stopped creating. I was focused on survival, and fitting in. Paying the bills I knew would come. Normal people don’t have panic attacks at the mall, right? Normal people dress this way, right? Normal people don’t cut themselves. Normal people say these certain things, right? I downplayed my emotions. Learned to suck it up. Stop the train of endless words and oversharing. I think in a lot of ways this grew my confidence. I may not be normal, but I can fit in.
As my confidence grew, I found my way back to words two years ago. Found my way back to language one year ago. My confidence in those areas is still growing. There’s my Spanish exam– for which I write affirmations on my window in black expo marker. No hay fracasos. Hablo español. Hogar está acá. Some of those are harder to believe than others. This idea that I could fail, that I could bomb, is a farce. I know that to be true. The very fact that I am obsessing over this– talking to death my friends and family– avoiding reading Antonio Machado which will make me cry– shows how much I love this language and how I can succeed– if only I get out of my head. Lose myself. Something I am notoriously bad at doing and good at feigning. There is no way to speak Spanish– truly embody it– without losing yourself. It is an intensely beautiful and emotional language that demands your attention and your adoration. All in. Just ordering at a taqueria can be an emotional act. Just reading Antonio Machado– one poem per night. Just breathing and dreaming all your daydreams in this other language, one that is not so foreign but more strangely familiar, like you saw it in another life. I see now why my friend Theo from Australia felt he had lived in Texas in another life. We have these other existences– these other selves– that we stumble upon helter-skelter if we start digging. Things we never thought we would do; places we never thought we would see. If we commit, those other selves can become ours. It is only when we let go of our current self, the disembodied, that we can become our true self. But it takes an act of courage only few do. We must allow our dreams to kill us. It is only when I allow myself to let go of “fitting in”, “paying the bills”, and “speaking perfectly”, that I can lose myself and find myself in a new state of being with this language I adore. I can lose myself and find myself in LATAM. I can fulfill the potential Dr. Minirth saw in me when I was at my most vulnerable.
We speak to children the way we believe they need to be spoken to. We try to help. I am not angry with my parents. They did the best they could to ensure their bipolar daughter had a shot at a normal life. But it is a rare gift to identify a child’s true need and speak to that in a way the child can understand. I wish Dr. Minirth were alive today. He had that gift.
It is my true wish to write in a way that speaks to the true needs of my community. I’m still figuring out even what “my community” means. But I believe that every human being longs for a sense of belonging. We long for home. For some, it is where they were born. For others, it was someone they married. For others, it is far away, in one of those other existences or perhaps in another country. For others, it is a friend who understands them. However we define home, it is an idea that exists which I want to empower you to pursue. Ultimately I can’t say what your home looks like. For me, it is a language. And I wish to use both of my languages to show you what it looks like to take that step of courage toward the unknown. It’s not crazy, and it’s not unattainable. It is uncomfortable. It’s messy. But it is endlessly beautiful.
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