a late night contemplation of pitbull’s discography, nostalgia, and growing old

I Feel Good Sticker by Pitbull for iOS & Android | GIPHY

Content Warning: While this post is a mostly humorous description of how music can be a very nostalgic experience, I do talk about thoughts of mortality and fear of aging, so please take note if that affects you!

Now that I’m on the brink of 20, growing old has become such a terrifying feeling…Woah woah, before you click off this post, scoffing at how someone so young could possibly be feeling something as aging so profoundly, hear me out!!  Please?  

Luckily, my joints aren’t failing me yet, but every now and then I’m struck by a sinking feeling that my childhood is coming to an end, if it hasn’t already.  A year like 2012, which feels like yesterday in my mind, was actually ages ago.  Back then, ten-year old me was distressed over some cataclysmic end of the world prophesied by an ancient Mayan calendar and ingrained into my mind by the science-fiction movie 2012.  Nine years later, I’d argue that I am living during the beginning of the end of the world: routinely chipping away at Blackboard response posts and humanities readings while my country is crumbling, my community is dying, and the climate is rapidly atrophying.  And you’re telling me that once I graduate, I’m expected to live out the rest of my days spent working for the privilege to rest and retire?  My inner child yearns for more.   

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A Shaky Start to the New Year

I don’t think my hands have stopped trembling since move-in day.  I’ve always had hand tremors, yet the neuroscientist my concerned mother urged me to visit assured me that it’s merely one of many cases she has seen of physiological tremors.  Surprisingly, it’s a phenomenon that is surprisingly very common and one that isn’t dangerous.  True, while this isn’t a condition that severely interferes with my life in the day-to-day, it’s often a channel through which emotions manifest in my body.  This is where my problem begins.  

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What do I look like? Superhero vs. Monster

My mind was wandering the other day, as it usually does, about what the difference is between why a hero is accepted for their differences and why a freak/monster/alien/other is not. It came from reading a research article by Susan Stryker titled “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above The Village of Chamounix.” Stryker raises points about the negative social implications expressed toward people who have a different gender identity that is not their assigned-at-birth identity. Stryker likens society’s feelings about it to how the Frankenstein “monster” was treated. Continue reading

Bodies in Motion

Bodies in Motion

This is my last semester of college and I am now going to transition from being a body in academia to a body in the workforce. This is a terrifying new concept because I honestly never became comfortable in academia and now I get to go be uncomfortable in a whole new arena.  Continue reading

Intersex Bodies and Patient Care: Who Chooses ?

I had never heard of the term, “Intersex” or never really knew that people could be born with both male and female genitalia. It wasn’t until when I took a human sexuality course that I got to learn about the intersex bodies. Intersex bodies seems to be this secret that people are too afraid to talk about, due to the gender identity gap that is associated with it. A lot of people who are intersex find it very difficult to speak about their body, because from an early age they were told not to talk about their body. Continue reading