by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 1 Comment

I don’t know how to put into words what I’m feeling as I see everything happening around the city and around the country. But I’ll try as being silent is far worse.

It is infuriating that it is 2020 and people are still being targeted and murdered for the crime of being black.

That we live in a country where the government has sat by complacent as it continues to happen.

A country where we pour money into our police and military and deny our communities of color the basic tools they require to thrive.

A country where we are more outraged by a black man kneeling in peaceful protest than a white man decked out in full military regalia screeching about his right to not wear a mask for the safety of others.

We live in a country that protects its second amendment right to bear arms better than its children dying at the hands of “misunderstood” shooters.

I understand that it is hard to watch destruction at the hands of rioters, but there comes a time where enough is enough. Where injustices need to be brought to attention through force and the collective cries of outrage from people who have decided no more.

There will be no more dead sons or dead daughters, at the hands of those who are meant to “serve and protect.”

SERVE.

AND.

PROTECT.

Not abuse their power and authority.

There will be no more men and women harassed and followed and threatened because their skin is black.

I do not condone mindless destruction and unnecessary looting. It makes me sad that we’ve reached this point.

But I stand in solidarity with my black brothers and sisters and I believe that at a certain point things need to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt.

NPM 2: Thirteen

NPM 2: Thirteen

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Super rough draft

You’re stuck in-between childish freedom and suddenly being too cool.

Why is it so hard to be yourself?

Why is it is so easy to tear others down?

All emotions bubble to the top and nothing seems to calm them down.

It won’t always be that way.

Listen to me, baby bunny, because hindsight is always 20/20, and presently you’re blind to all you have to offer.

Thirteen is just another year, and they only get better from here.

Thoughts in Spanish

Thoughts in Spanish

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.”

Unacceptably Fat

Unacceptably Fat

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 8 Comments

There are levels.

As with all things.

There are levels to fatness.

If you’ve ever been fat, if you are fat, if you’ve only ever been fat, you know that these levels exist. Skinny people don’t know. They don’t realize the differences. They see fat, and they think everyone is the same, like white people assuming that the every tan person speaking Spanish is Mexican. We’re all the same to them until we’re not.

I blame Instagram.

I blame the Rom-Com ™️.

I blame romance novels.

They have fed us the lie of the acceptable fatness, while society has told us that there is no such thing, but oh, they’re “body positive.”

We live in the extreme of poor Bridget Jones bemoaning her fatness at what I’m guessing is at maximum a size 14 (a size I haven’t been since I was in the 8th grade) and having to suffer through the indignity of My 600 Pound Life and the Biggest Loser. We live in the side-eyed whispers of “at least I’m not that fat,” or “kill me if I ever get that fat.”

But what is that fat? Where do we draw the line of acceptable fat and unacceptable fat?

It’s become a game of “I know it, when I see it.” I know it when I see pictures of body positive fat girls and I wish to myself that I was that kind of fat. I know it when I see pictures of bed-ridden people who have gained too much weight to move under their own power. I hope to never be that fat and at the same time, I hate being someone who looks at someone else and prays to never look like them.

It makes me wonder how many people have seen me walk by and prayed the same thing.

Acceptable fat is cute. Acceptable fat is extra weight in just the right places. It’s rounded hips and thick, dimple free thighs. It’s smooth, evenly toned skin and only the slightest of belly budge.

It is the true definition of a “tummy” and never ever a belly.

Bellies are disgusting.

Acceptable fat is having large breasts that don’t droop and without a fat back to accompany them.

Acceptable fat is still managing to have a smaller waist in comparison to your hips and bust.

Acceptable fat is using Marilyn Monroe as a Plus. Size. Icon.

“Marilyn Monroe was a size 14, love me, love my curves,” she says as she justifies eating another doughnut from the box in the office kitchen.”

This is the picture of acceptable fat and it’s a fucking lie.

In my life I have never been acceptable fat.

Even when I was much smaller than what I am now.

I am not acceptable fat, even after losing 100 lbs.

I am not acceptable fat even when I’ve taken n00ds and tried to imagine myself as a sexy, desirable woman.

And the scary thing is, that so many women and men have the same thoughts. Regardless of what size they are, how much they lose, and how much they gain.

Their body is unacceptable.

Our bodies are unacceptable.

How do we become acceptable?

I cannot envision the rest of my life compulsively counting my calories and yelling at myself for going above what is already an unhealthy limit.

If this were a smaller person, they would be yelled at and counseled for possibly being anorexic.

But because I am the weight that I am, the size that I am, no one would even question it.

No one should live on less than a thousand calories a day.

It’s unhealthy.

But I hate myself for reaching a thousand. I hate myself for being hungry. I hate myself for being hungrier when I work out. I want to be able to work out and not feel the need to eat more. I want to get through the day without feeling the need to eat at all.

And I’m scared that I cannot sustain this.

My greatest fear is that I completely break and I get to a point where I am fatter than I have ever been and I’ll never come back from it.

I think my greatest problem is that I don’t want to be acceptable fat; my problem is that I simply want to be, acceptable.