Monterrey.

 

Childhood.

It is dawn, pink and purple hues peak through the night sky, the sun slogging to rise from the hill backing our home. I eat breakfast, brush my teeth, button up my plaid dress uniform, and sluggishly drag myself into the family minivan. On the way, my mom plays her Julieta Venegas CD.

 

We head down the hill, pass the community church, curve around the mountain, and pull up towards the giant red brick building. We’re an hour earlier than other students — since mom is a teacher here we always arrive early. She drops my youngest sister off at the school’s daycare, my middle sister off at kindergarten, and then we both make our way to the first grade classrooms.

 

There is a cool breeze that carries the scent of fresh wet dirt, a reminder rain loves to leave behind so as to not forget her presence. Outside the first-grade classrooms are evenly spaced trees where I’d spend my time collecting acorns and chasing birds, until other students begin to show. The few memories left of this place aren’t nearly as nostalgic, I crave purple-pink hues and the smell of wet dirt.

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Miami.

 

Angsty Teen.

Once, in my all-girl private Catholic high school in North Cuba, otherwise known as Miami, we had a stupid seminar. All 89 of us were shoved into a small room adorned with maroon velvet pews and crucifixes strategically placed on the walls. 

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The frankincense and myrrh incense waltzed around, mingling with hints of Victoria’s Secret’s alcoholic Bombshell perfume. I forget what the point of this seminar was, but I do remember getting a chance to speak. I’m not sure what possessed me to do so, but nevertheless, I did. Long story short, I preached to my entire class about being kind to fulanito and fulanita, to try and look at the good qualities of an individual before judging them. Needless to say, I was bullied and ostracized more than I had originally been after this. It was a heartfelt plea more than a speech, but it touched all the wrong people. The nuns in charge of this seminar asked me to join their club as the rest of the class slowly poured out of this tiny sanctimonious room. I politely declined. 

I don’t remember a good amount of these girls, and I avoid Miami like the plague. Maybe it’s the ghosts of those maroon velvet pews, or the suffocating humidity that sticks to your skin like the expectations of the place. A place where books vanish from shelves and politicians mold history to fit their own fascist ideals. A place where elitism thrives behind pastel Art Deco and overpriced cocktails. Or maybe, I just hate the beach. 

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Chicago.

 

Lost Young Adult.

Chicago is my favorite city in the world. The wind here doesn’t just howl — it bites, slicing through layers of fabric, past skin, straight to the bone. I lost my Florida-sun-kissed pigment out here, left it behind like a shed skin. Now, I’m pale as a Chicago winter, the kind that turns the river into sheets of ice. 

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I’m free from the shackles of my absent father and his new mistress turned wife, and my overly-religious, cult-indoctrinated mother (not a joke, search up Opus Dei). Though I could’ve dedicated more time to my studies, my central nervous system was purging the years of fight-flight responses and accumulated cortisol, slowly returning to a state of neutrality. My body was in survival mode and all I fed it was drugs and espresso martinis.

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I wasn’t just rebelling; I wanted destruction. I was angry and I didn’t know why. I experienced my first heartbreak here, as well as my first and hopefully last psychosis. I lost myself in the search of healing, I devoured what I thought was love as a way to cope, until nothing else was left of me. Chicago is my favorite city in the world, because without her I would’ve remained stuck in the plasmapause, without her I would’ve never found myself again. 

 

Los Angeles.

 

Passionate (but still) Lost Young Adult.

I’ve risen from the dead once again. I’ve lived a thousand lives, and I will live a thousand more. My family’s voices: “You’re too angry, let it go,” clashing against my own: “You’re not just angry, you’re resilient, passionate, driven.” I was done being reduced to a state of emotion by people who never cared to know me. Simple minds require simple answers, I concluded. 

Work on this flaw, fix this personality trait, and then we will love you. You are sick, you are broken. So what if I am? What if I never reach those expected levels of perfection? I broke all the molds I was asked to fit into. I turned to books, believing that more knowledge would help others understand me, that I’d be able to explain myself more clearly. On the contrary, I was understood less, and everything that came afterwards came rapidly — like a wave crashing over me, salt-stinging, tide-ripping, pulling me under, only to spit me back out again. The first gasp of air after breaking through the surface was crisp and sharp, I’ve broken free from the mind constraints of tyranny, religion, and authoritarianism. 

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I swim against the current, ready to return to earth for the sake of future generations,  while the guppies I once tried to please are still swept away by the tide. I’ll never be perfect, and I don’t care to be.