Thoughts in Spanish

January 10, 2020January 11, 2020 by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 4 Comments

I want to write about Mexico.

About what it was like to return somewhere after 22 years and feel like you’d always been there.

I want to write about Mexico, but my thoughts are scattered among mountains, and cactus. They are running rampant with stray dogs along winding roads lined with palm trees and pop up food stands.

How do I make sense of everything that happened in the two weeks that stretched out like an eternity.

Things run slower in the motherland. There is an urgency, and need for immediate gratification that doesn’t exist there. Time has slowed down. Or maybe it’s that time is just running along at the right pace and we’re running too fast in the States?
Either way I came home tired.

And that title is misleading.

My thoughts have always been a jumble that predominantly exists in English. A place where Spanish shows up like a fond friend who’s mostly traveling and cannot be tied down.

No pos guau.

When I close my eyes and think of Mexico all I see is color.

Mexico is the brightest blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.

It is dark green mountains rising up towards it.

Red dusty earth.

The golden tan skin of people who rarely have the sun hidden from them.

When I close my eyes and think of Mexico, all I can think of are ghost stories, bygone times, and memories that don’t belong to me.
I think of blood that is a stranger to me and a longing to know who they were.

The family gathered, their aunt had come home. The baby of the family, who’d been away for so long had come back for a visit.

Naturally a pig was slaughtered and there was feasting and drinking and singing.

I watched my cousins clasp her hands and ask her one by one if she remembered them, if she knew their names. She nodded until she was overwhelmed by the amount of people, and questions.

I watched a cousin break down and cry as he tried to reconcile his memory of my mother– strong, vibrant, full of life, with the fragile, quiet, woman that stood in front of him.

I sat with her, holding her hand as the tears slid down her cheeks, for reasons I don’t think she understood.

When I think of this trip, I think of a loved one saying, “goodbye.”

Sunday School

September 5, 2018 by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 6 Comments

In its former life, my church was an auto body shop.

It’s a huge warehouse of a building right in the heart of Humboldt Park. We’re right in front of the eastern metal Puerto Rican flag that spans across Division street.

There’s a large freight elevator inside the building that used to take cars from the first floor to the second but for the past 40 or so years has carried the congregants that we’re either too old or too young to go up and down the stairs easily.

Every service someone is stationed at the elevator to ferry to people up into the sanctuary.

For a large part of my teenage years and early 20s an older man named, Juan, manned the elevator. He was a kind man who always had a smile and a candy for you.

Usually they were Werther’s hard candies, or sometimes the ones with a chewy center.

At some point he started to forget. Where he was. Where he lived. Who people were.

He stopped coming to church. It was just him and his wife, and it was too hard for her to care for him.

My sister handed me a werther’s on Sunday and I immediately thought of him. And I remembered his small act of kindness that he offered everyone he came across; words of encouragement, a smile, and a small candy.

And I hope he at least remembered he was loved.

Shave it Off

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 11 Comments

In January of 2014 I went to the doctor because I have was having issues with my period. I was bleeding heavily already for two weeks straight and I was scared that I was having the same issue I’d faced a few years prior where I bled heavily for two months and ended up needing a blood transfusion.

I had insurance finally and could go to the doctor freely without having to worry about the high cost of gynecological care.

The doctor took some samples and would give me a call when she had the results.

When the call came I panicked. She told me she had my results and told me they weren’t the kind you give over the phone. She asked me to come back to her office so she could speak to me in person.

I was living with a couple of my friends at the time and my best friend had the day off. I asked her if she would mind accompanying me to the doctor because I was scared.

We took the train downtown and she sat in the waiting room while I went into the examination room. After a few minutes the doctor came in and sat down.

On a chilly afternoon in January of 2014 I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer.

I was in shock.

She started to explain to me what that meant and what steps we needed to take, but I started crying.

I mean really crying.

Ugly, soggy, guttural, crying.

She asked me if someone had come with me to my appointment and I nodded. She asked me if she wanted her to go get this person and I nodded again.

I continued crying. Shaking as I repeated the word “cancer” over and over again in my head.

The door opened and Melissa walked in. She saw me there, a wet mess with make up smeared around my eyes, and wrapped her arms around me. I leaned into her and continued to cry, the black of my mascara and eyeliner leaving two black crescent moons on her stark white hoodie.

I remember the doctor trying to comfort me by telling me that of all the cancers to get, I got the best one.

I stopped crying and started laughing. I laughed a wild crazy laugh at the absurdity of her statement. The best kind of cancer to get. As if that was such a thing. But it turns out, she was right.

With Melissa holding my hand, I listened to the doctor explain the two treatment options I had ahead of me. They could, remove my uterus, thus completely eliminating the cancer, or they could put me on hormonal treatments and I would have to come in for biopsies every few months.

I think to myself that had this happened ten years ago I might have only had a hysterectomy as an option.

For the past few years I’ve treated my cancer with hormones and quarterly biopsies. At last check, the cancer was completely gone.

And I consider myself lucky. Lucky because I was able to survive cancer without any major surgery, without chemotherapy, without losing my hair, without any outward sign of what my body was going through, which is why I’ve decided to donate my hair and shave my head.

Because there are women and children who are not as fortunate as I am.

Because hopefully my hair can help a little girl or a woman feel like themselves again.

Because we live in an age of medical breakthrough and it’s time to find a cure.

So I ask you, reader, friend, to support me as I raise money and take part in the St. Baldrick’s Challenge.

I’ll be shaving my head on March 9th.

Click the link below if you want to donate to this organization and help me reach my fundraiser goal.

Thank you.

Jenny’s Shaving it Off!

Love is a Four Letter Word

November 17, 2017 by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 10 Comments

I’m very open with my feelings.

I love my friends and my family vehemently.

I say “I love you” with ease, and I always mean it.

However, with him I’ve been cautious. I’ve held my tongue. I’ve kept my “I love yous” to myself. Guarded and restrained. These cannot be shared. There is a certain protocol for this kind of thing.

Rules to be followed.

So I stayed quiet. Good nights and good byes left pregnant with the I love yous I could not share but could only feel.

It’s our anniversary. One year together.

One year isn’t much.

But for me it is a milestone.

One year. A man has stayed with me for one year. A man has remained attracted to me for one year. A man has put up with my mood swings and my jealousy for one year.

I wrote him a card. I didn’t have time for a present. I hadn’t remembered. Life has been busy and hectic. I hadn’t even realized September was ending. But I wrote him a card and I put it in there. I snuck in my I love you, and I waited for him to read it. For him to react.

I gave it to him and watched as he read it. He laughed at the part about our first date coinciding with the purchase of my IKEA couch and he smiled and hugged me.

I looked at him waiting for his response. He kissed me.

“‘Your princess.’ I like that. Thank you.”

It wasn’t what I expected.

But I let it slide.

It hurt. But I know better than to force someone.

I put it out there. It was on the table. I was not afraid. He could say it. I was ready to hear it.

We went to dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date. We even sat at the same table. On our first date I was able to get him to try new food– Cuban cuisine. This time I got him to try my favorite Cuban dish.

It was a good date.

We went for ice cream and then came home. he walked the dog while I got ready for bed and I wondered if I should say anything.

He came to bed and wrapped me in his arms.

There in the darkness together, because only in the quiet could I bear to ask, only without having to look him in the eyes could I even muster the courage, yet still I barely whispered, “Do you love me?”

Silence.

And immediate regret.

I was stupid. I knew better. If you have to ask, the answer is not what you want to hear.

“Do you love me?” I ask again. I did not learn my lesson. I never learn my lesson. I ask and I pry, because I have to know, because I cannot be content by simply not knowing. This was important information.

Desperation made me stupid.

There was an intake of breathe, “Jem,” he whispered.

With my name I was broken.

Quietly I sobbed in his arms as he held me. I shook with the pain of knowledge.

What are three words?

They are a vast desert when you are lost, barefoot in the sand. They are the impossible.

“I’m sorry.” I heard the tremble in his voice. “Baby, I’m sorry.” I turned to face him. I held his face in my hands. How strange it was to see the face of a man who was crying because of me.

“Don’t cry.” I whispered. Hushing him like a baby. Wiping his tears while my own were still hot on my face. “Don’t cry.” I repeated. Kissing his cheeks. “Don’t cry.”

His eyes pleading for my understanding.

I rested my head on his chest. He stroked my hair. I cried as we fell asleep.

What is love?

Love is enduring. Love is understanding. Love is. Love is…

There in my bedroom, quiet, save for the white noise of the trains rattling by and fluffy dog snoring in the corner, we were two broken people trying to answer that question and holding onto the hope that maybe we could find it together.

Cosplay and Body Positivity

August 28, 2017 by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 7 Comments

I love to cosplay.

I love bringing to life a character in my own special way and getting to see the way others do as well.

I am also fat.

*please note my phone didn’t wasn’t to accept me calling myself fat, it kept correcting the word to “day.”

Oh God. Being fat in cosplay sucks. It just really sucks.

Costumes are harder to find, most female comic book characters spend a majority of their time in tiny, revealing costumes, and society says that as a fatty I need to work on covering up instead of showing more.

But this year I’ve decided to be positive about my body which isn’t perfect, or toned. It’s just mine.

So here are a few pics from this weekend’s Wizard World comic convention.