The world we live in is so unfair it’s really unbelievable. Starting with our healthcare, women are still fighting over their own reproductive rights and there’s people who can’t afford medicine they need to survive. These are just two examples of how messed up the system is. Why isn’t insulin free? Why isn’t chemotherapy free? Why do we have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for therapy? None of it really makes sense because other countries are able to make it work why aren’t we able to. I just feel like there are so many missing pieces because it really doesn’t make sense to me. Do you know how much an ambulance costs? A “basic life support transport” costs $500 and only goes up from there. I constantly question if they (on both sides) genuinely care about us or if they just pretend like they do.

I really want to highlight the cost of therapy because mental health is a big deal that is now finally getting the attention it needs. Mental health is finally gaining traction and it’s important for people to have an outlet. Therapy is an essential to someone who doesn’t even struggle with mental health. It’s important to have an unbiased voice coming from a non judgmental place. All coming back to the cost. It costs about $40+ an hour for therapy and to make matters worse insurance most likely won’t ever fully cover therapy. I feel like the system is rigged and made for us to never win. 

When I was around 12-13 years old, I planned to come out to my family that I was Bisexual, I was expecting that there was going to be a lot of shock and questioning me if I was sure or if it was a phase. I was expecting my brother to think that I was overthinking it and I was just curious. I thought my mother would say that I don’t know what I’m talking about and that I am just confused. I believed that my father would blame my friends and my interest groups for “turning” me into a “queer”.

Dear God was I so wrong…

When I finally came out to my family, it seemed like I was telling them old news, information that they already know. My Mother gave me this smug look saying “Oh? is that so? I’m glad you finally noticed.” and continued to watch Big Bang Theory. My brother stated, “Oh really? Cool, hey which of these 2 girls do you think is hotter?” as he showed me a pic of 2 models in bikinis. And when I told my Father, (it was when we were driving home) he was not shocked at all and then asked me “Neat, you want chicken nuggets with your cheeseburger when we get to Wendy’s?”.

I don’t know why but at the time, I was so confused why my family didn’t shame me and were so excepting of me “coming out” (even if the closet was apparently made of glass). Maybe it’s because I heard so many horror tales of “coming out” stories going wrong and children being shamed and ostracize from/by their families, that I had an unconscious fear yet, expectation that there would be a push back from my own family when I “came out”. Was it because I felt guilty since there were so many people who were shamed by their family when they “came out”, when my family was so excepting of who I was (even if they apparently knew I was Bisexual before I did)? Did I unconsciously, deep down, wanted to start drama in my family? I don’t know why I felt ashamed that my family loves me for who I am and that I don’t have to pretend and be someone else, and maybe I will never know.

How do you define success?

I have gone back and forth with this for quite some time but I finally feel as though I have an understanding of what it means to me to be successful. If you had asked me 5 years ago what “success” meant, I would have said having money. I used to think that the only way to be successful in my life was to have extreme amounts of money. Happiness didn’t matter to me because I thought it would just increase as my bank account did.

5 years ago I thought this way because the people I surrounded myself with. I was in an awfully abusive relationship and I would throw myself into my work to avoid being around my boyfriend. I thought if I worked a lot and had money, I could buy things that would make me happy and that would be my form of success. I had very ambitious goals for myself that would have forced me to be consumed with work for the rest of my life. I wanted people to aspire to be me and to have my level of success.

Fast forward to now: I am in an amazing relationship with the person I know I will spend the rest of my life with.

I now have a new definition of success; happiness. Those ambitious, crazy goals I had for myself? Out the window. I still of course have things I want to do in life, however, I have scaled down (in my opinion) my goals. Since I could remember, I wanted to be an doctor. I wanted to be a big fancy doctor that everyone envied. More recently I really thought about my career choice and how the rest of my life would look if I followed through with that choice. *disclaimer* There are countless doctors that have families and are able to devote so so much time to them, that is 100% not what I’m about to say. The specialty I wanted to go into was a very competitive and demanding one. One that needed my complete focus for at least the next 8 years. Was I ready to give the next 8 years up?

I finally had come to the decision that PA school would be better for me. (Of the PAs vs doctors I have talked to*) I have heard that PAs overall have a better life/work balance and their work is less demanding but still just as rewarding. I want to be able to start a family sooner because that was now #1 on my list. I of course got so much backlash from my family and even some friends, but it really didn’t matter to me. Now that I had met my perfect match, being happy mattered. I will still be successful, no matter what I do. Maybe not by my old standards, but I will be able to take care of those around me and that is all that matters.

For a while now, I have come to accept my body and all of its flaws and beauty. However, my constant body dysphoria and crippling anxiety/depression has made it difficult throughout my life to accept who I am. So, with the addition of environmental factors such as prejudice because of my skin color and the norms or role I must conform to because I am a woman, there is the question of whether or not it is okay to accept myself the way I am now or act in a way that conforms to societal expectations placed upon me. At a young age, I lived in a predominantly hispanic community, but around the time I attended high school my family moved to Maryland. The difference between where I had lived as a child and here was shocking: there were definitely noticeable differences between how minorities were treated and the way in which we had to perform in order to not be judged. At some point, it felt as if I was not even myself because of the crushing expectations thrust upon everything I knew. There were choices I didn’t know I had at the time due to my youth, therefore I most certainly did conform to the toxic norms that were forced on me, such as staying quiet and making myself have a small presence in the company of others. Now that I am older, reflecting on my behavior and attitude in the past has been enlightening; I’ve become stronger in the sense of knowing that my opinion matters and I can be confident in my opinions because they matter. Because of the strong support system surrounding me throughout the years, they have helped me built up the little confidence and self-love I had before, since they have consistently validated my beliefs and opinions. Thus, at the present moment I no longer care about toxic stereotypes nor roles I am ”supposed” to follow, and have found much autonomy and independence from the experiences I have gone through. On a side note, usually when I have these thought of myself and reflecting on life, they are kept within my mind and not expressed much since I do not really talk about myself so much. So, having an outlet such as this blog has been wonderful; being able to share my experiences and life with others, in the hopes of someone understanding or relating to what I’ve gone through, is my hope. If anyone does read this and would like to talk about experiencing similar events, feel free to comment!

A note to the reader: I use queer in this passage as a way to express that we are all different in our sexualities, but similar in our differences. I am not sure what I would label myself as in this part of my sexuality journey, and that word helps me to feel included and seen, while still allowing me the space to figure it out. I do not mean to offend anyone with the use of the term. I also use gay as an umbrella term in certain parts of the passage, mostly as an opposition to straightness, as that is how it is understood by my parents. However, neither of my siblings nor myself are necessarily by gay by definition, we’re just all not straight.

In my last post I shared the experience that caused me to face my Anxiety, I’ve never before acknowledged my Anxiety – I just thought it was a normal thing everyone had, or it was just my shyness or personality. Growing up I had Anxiety about things most kids shouldn’t have, anxiety about disappointing my parents with my grades or having to talk to other people. It’s way I am so silent, and why I remain silent to this day mostly. I’ve gotten a lot better at managing it though, and If you suffer from this disorder as I do I will teach you how to overcome it. It doesn’t have overnight, it takes dedication and patience.

We need Anxiety to survive, Anxiety triggers the fight or flight response which can really come in handy in some situations- but when Anxiety comes at the wrong times It can have a devastating and lasting impact on your health. The first thing I did was visualize my Anxiety, separate it from my mind. Your body is a temple with all different elements and each of them must be taken care of properly. I visualized my Anxiety as a Spider, a Spider that lives in my head and crawls along my brain, it constantly begs to be let in and more often then not it got its way. The spider would tell my rational mind things to scare it, to double check myself- these would come in the form of “What ifs”. What if I will never get better? What if I am a secret psychopath? What if I’m going crazy? These thoughts may seem like a joke, but after a bad drug trip your mind drifts to a crazy place.

Now that you’ve visualized the Anxiety, you can move to overcome it- now you just have to find a way to shut the Spider up, and you can do that through treating your body as a temple. If you give your body negative energy you will revolve around it, you must break free of the chains that keep your mind a slave. I’m talking about your diet, your health, your addictions, every human body has the power to overcome these vices whether it be Alcohol, Marijuana, Porn, Video Games, Social Media, etc. These 5 are the ones I used to suffer with until I grabbed them by the neck and overcame them, you must treat these things as pests. They are the pinnacle of human suffering. You will never reach your fullest potential if you succumb to these things, and many people don’t- they spend their lives drowning in addiction and never are able to be who they truly aspire to be. I’m not saying get rid of these things entirely, a phrase I often repeat to myself time and time again is “Everything in moderation” by Everything I don’t mean Meth or Heroin, just use your judgement on that part. I’ve bought Video Games into my life as a reward for a hard days work, and I do drink but strictly on social occasions or holidays.

Like I’ve said before, a good diet, good sleep hygiene, and exercise can do monumental wonders for your body. This positive energy motivates you to continue to do better and become more of who you meant to be. Do not tack these on altogether though, otherwise you will fail and spiral down again. Start slowly, build up one habit at a time and once you are comfortable with it move forward. For me making my bed everyday added structure and discipline to my life, it seems like a small thing but once you do it you are motivated to continue with completing tasks for the rest of the day. For your diet, smart small and be basic. For me I just cooked eggs, added some fruit and toast with some ham on the side for lunch, or some days I’d make a ham and cheese. Dinner would consist of a side of veggies, with rice and protein- nothing fancy. Waking up the same time everyday is very important as it controls your circadian rhythm. Exercise can be added into daily tasks such as taking the stairs or parking further from the store or taking your dog on a walk.

Mindfulness is another big part to recovery, I begun to meditate and noticed my thoughts constantly switching and changing, if you cannot turn your brain off then you do not have control of yourself. Remain in the present moment, enjoy it, stop and smell the air, notice the wind and the clouds, be grateful for your life. I used to be afraid of flying, thinking that the plane would crash and I’d die in a fiery wreck, and the weeks leading up to a trip I’d be sweating and when the thought came up I’d get chills down my spine, then one day I realized that if I don’t die in the plane crash all the time spent worrying about it is a waste of time, if it’s gonna happen it is gonna happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so just accept the risks in life and move forward.

Some other tips and tricks I’ve learned is this:

• When about to have a panic attack focus entirely on your breath, breathe out, hold, breathe in slowly, don’t focus on the seconds but just doing everything slow
• When you really need to get something done set a timer for 25 minutes, work entirely in that time frame and once it’s done you can stop or take a 5 minute break and repeat
• When you need to do something but have no motivation or are anxious simply count down from 5 out loud and physically move to do it, the physical part it important
• Meditate every day