no-meconozco

[no-meconozco]

I’m trying to remember my first good memory of my dad. I have flashes of my brother and I in the living room. It’s night and my dad comes home with a large plastic bag with all of these stuffed animals inside. And I remember having this feeling of overwhelming joy and wonder. He hadn’t been home in days; maybe a week because he’s a truck driver and a teamster. This is also an age before cell phones so nobody knew that he was coming home and it was this huge surprise. Our dad is like Santa Claus. He’s so full of joy everything feels right and surprising and exciting and I remember because I jumped so hard off of the couch, this like old antique couch with golden upholstery, and the frame cracks audibly, but no one really pays attention to it because of this electric distraction. But I remember the panic I felt and I hoped to god no one heard. 

There’s a lot of flashbulb moments like that. Where the emotion is so vibrant that the details are seemingly so defined.

My first memory however, is much darker and has only gotten darker overtime. I was three years old and in preschool. It was early in the morning we’re already had breakfast and my mom is probably trying to get me ready for preschool so I wasn’t late. I was wearing A Rugrats T-shirt and probably a diaper but I honestly only remember the T-shirt. Like every mom in the 90s there were multiple Danish cookie containers that never had cookies in them. This one however it was for my crowns and I was coloring and my mom asked me too get dressed but my dad screaming at me to clean up my crayons. So logically I go to get changed first with the intention of cleaning up my crayons afterwards because that’s the order of commands I was given. He grabbed me by the neck first And I struggle to get away. I’m trying to think of the best way to describe this but it’s as if he has the front of my throat and with it bunched up the collar of my shirt with the skin underneath. He throws me into the nearby cabinet that stored our cookie sheets, cereal, and dog milk bones and I remember because the door opens and the box of bones falls out.

I still go to preschool that day. Miss Cathy is there, standing so much taller than me, with long stringy straight hair down to her chest. I loved her but that day she scares me. She looks looming and ominous. There are red marks like fingers on one side and a sharp red line on the others from how the shirt collar rubbed my skin. I’m quiet. She asks me what happened & I don’t utter a sound. She asks me who did this to you. And I say “daddy.” According to family that remember this moment, I didn’t act sad. I just moved on and played with the other kids. It was that reaction, like I had normalized it, that made Miss Cathy’s antennae twitch. This has happened before. What surprises me today, looking back on it, is that Their response was to call my mom and have me sent home. But she couldn’t pick me up. So, My dad did. And they sent me home with him. I will never understand that. It burned into me that he was right to do those things to me, that he could, and it was my fault. Which he said repeatedly and often. That I broke up the family, that I almost made my parents get a divorce. The list goes on.

It wouldn’t be until I was 29 that I would bring this memory up to my Aunt and she told tell me, “we all thought he did it.” A little dumbfounded I replied with “Did what?” Because ya, of course he did that, there was no question. “I don’t know if you remember, but you were alone in the backyard with him, and you came running into the house to wake up your mom because ‘your arm hurt.’ We all thought he broke your arm.”

My whole body went cold because I remember that day, and I remember running into the house to wake her up and I was crying. I remember going to the hospital, the ex rays that were taken, I fought and screamed because the technician or nurse was taking off my clothes and I didn’t want her to see my chest.

I had no idea that was the same day. I remember those incidents so clearly. But what did he do to me? I couldn’t tell anyone. The doctors, family, all asked me what happened and I just said over and over again, panicking, “I don’t remember.” I was erratic. Flailing, screaming, crying.

I think that was the first time he sexually abused me.

And he broke my arm in the process.

I wouldn’t remember the second time until I was 28, the night after a protest in Brooklyn, where I, a photographer and documentarian, was the the first to be taken, followed by medics and legal observers, bound and thrown into a riot truck and left alone for what felt like hours. So many people screamed for my release. I was the last to be processed, the arresting officer had failed to return to the precinct and “claim his collar” and I was passed around until i landed into a riot cop’s hands who already had someone they wanted to process. I remember being alone, the last one there, & leaning against the walls at the edge of the back door. Outside the door was Delgado, the terror of Brooklyn, and on either side of him two or three cops. They’re boasting about their conquest and his machismo, arrogance, viciousness, and large gut reminds me so much of my dad. There’s a riot truck behind Thurman and they’re leaning on it. There’s about 5 ft of distance between the number of my cage and the plume of his cigar and he leans forward, through it and examines me, deciding what to do with me and which block to put me in, the men or the women’s.

FYI, the charges were dropped. This was routine. This act. It didn’t phase me. I was more annoyed than anything. But I would have horrible night terrors following this event. Vivid, sometimes surreal and fantastical, of performing fellatio on my father. In one dream he’s this goat like demon, in another he looks normal, but reveals himself and there’s multiple phalli. Every time, though, I’m outside his work truck and the passenger door is open. Then I’m inside and on makeshift bed in the space behind the front seats where I guess my dad would sleep on the road. I’m asleep in this space, in this dream, but I wake up and I’m confused because “the stars stopped moving.” I blink and he’s looming over me and I can’t see the stars anymore. I’m crying in my sleep and my screams wake up my husband. He’s holding me and trying to soothe me back to sleep. That happens at least once a month and much more frequently at the beginning. I never tell him what the dreams are about.

I used to forgive my dad so much & for so much worse. Because throughout my life & before I remembered this horrible event and started putting these pieces together, I thought I had an equal hand in all of this. In every argument. In every literal fight. I really did think that he wanted to be a good dad, but I was the thing in the room he couldn’t understand. Or want to. We were and are so much alike and that kills me and empowers me. I think he saw himself in me and took out all of his anger and stress on me and it took me a long time to understand that none of this is my fault. I saw myself as an adult. Sometimes wise and calm, often highly anxious and erratic without any foundation to communicate what was really happening. It forced me to account for the ways I “misbehaved.” And I forgave him before I really understood. I was just a kid. Only a kid. Alone. Desperate for help.

I also think he wanted this easy fantasy life. He was in love with the idea of having a family, and I think he stuck around because my mom, although an underpaid school teacher in LA, still had more means than him. He sees my grandfather’s house and froths at the mouth to take it. He see the stability of my mom’s teaching career and clings onto her, siphoning until he bankrupts us and we feed ourselves from a church pantry. My mom was a life raft and he a sinking ship and if it that house didn’t exist, or the career, he would’ve left. Just like he did my his first wife. And his second. I know next to nothing about my half sisters, but I have to believe they are better off without him. I don’t know my dad’s side of the family. His blood relatives and his adopted are to this day, a mystery to me. My first and last interaction with my oldest sister would be during a medical crisis. I was 21 and he was in the hospital, having had 7 or so aneurysms with a dismal prognosis. my mom had her number and asked me to call. So, I did. I called just to tell her. Her first and last words to me were “I can’t talk to him, I can’t do this. It makes me sad cause, you know… because you’re my blood, you’re my kin, but you have no idea what he’s put me through all of these years.” I think I have an idea.

[no-meconozco]

Dear mom,

It’s 11:23pm. It’s my friend’s birthday and I’m at a bar. Sorry. But also, KARAOKE. This KJ doesn’t have most of the songs I like to sing, but that’s ok. I still get to sing with my friend for her birthday and that’s the whole point. I regret so much not recording myself singing for you when you asked. I have a couple videos now from last month, but I’m still scared to be that vulnerable with you. I don’t know how to get over it… I should just get over it. I wish you would remember it if I did. Did you miss me today? You’ve only been asking for Joey and low key I’m trying not to be jealous. It’s one thing to be confused, and another to only be in distress in your confusion. Maybe it’s because he’s younger? Or because you think he’s still in high school? Maybe it’s because he’s not much of a fighter. I mean let’s be honest, we were pretty sheltered. Neither of us was prepared for the real world. Maybe you knew that I would survive. Maybe Joey’s passivity made you anxious. Maybe you see more of yourself in him than dad. I do. I see so much of you in him. I see so much of dad in me and I hate it. I should be more engaged. Velma just checked in on me because I’m sitting at table away from the group and I’m sucked into my phone. She asks me if I want a drink. Again. It’s been one month today and I have no intention of drinking. Especially at a bar. Especially around strangers… I’m down the street from you you know. If it wasn’t so late I’d wave from your window. Not the same as the last rehab. Can’t just walk-in through the back door unnoticed. I hope you were ok today. I hope you healed a little more. Keep going mom.

[no-meconozco]

Dear mom,

It’s really hard for me to get up today. I am looking at the clock and the time is passing quickly but I’m still not moving. I can’t I want to but I can’t. And I know I’m letting you down today. I don’t want to let you down But I don’t know how to pick myself up and my heart just hurts so much and I don’t want to move from the comfort of the couch, or the weight of this weighted blanket which will be the only hug I get today. I’m trying to get up. Today feels like a never ending fog and I am lost in it and I don’t care to get out of it because it hurts more when I’m out. I wish I could’ve told you these things because it’s not the first time I felt like this. I wish you knew and maybe one day you will, but for now I will swallow this lump in my throat and I will rub my chest until The pain dulls a little bit more. My feet are swimming anxiously as I try to wrestle the only amount of comfort I have today and I wonder if you have any at all.

[no-meconozco]

My aunt told me last week that the first part to writing a book is writing it that’s right. The hardest part with editing peer review framing publicity I mean if you are trying to go that route. And I am not in any kind of therapy, and I haven’t told Day specialist four state certify health professional anything. I’m just trying anything two shield, and buy anything I mean if it comes into my head I just do it I don’t say no and I just try because I think that it might help and it’s not going to affect or hurt someone else then I’m gonna do it. This is a letter to my father.

Who exactly are you trying to erase? Is it Dee? Is it actually just you? Do you know what you’ve done to me? And is it because you know exactly what you did? I want to know why I wanna know why you choked me and through me, I want to know why you called me faggot and why you wish to rape on me. And the more that I think about it the more I realize it’s because you’re also a faggot and you raped me. I want to know why I lost time as a kid. It’s not that I have holes in my memories like everybody else. Because my memories as a kid or that of not remembering what happened for hours at a time. Why did I lose so much time and why did no one seems to care do you just have all of the answers? Will you ever truly understand how you have utterly destroyed me? I hold my breath every time I pass a truck on the freeway and if you can imagine I’m not breathing I’m just holding my brush the entire time I’m passing the truck now. I’ve had nightmares, I Terrace so visceral and so tangible.  can I just say that I am the luckiest person in the world because if I didn’t have someone at good as pure and as loving as my mother I could’ve become a real monster like you. But instead I wake up every day trying to convince myself to not to listen to your voice in my head that tells me I’m worthless but I am a problem but everything is my fault I am the cause of all your problems. You are the cause of your own problem and unfortunately you’re the cause of a lot of hours.

Speaking of mom what exactly happened that day? Why did you wait two hours because you did didn’t you? You have stated how eloquently and continuously on your social media soapbox that’s mom died at 4 PM and the paramedics were called until 545 so what the hell where are you waiting for and why didn’t you do anything? And of course the answer is obvious it’s about money it’s always been about money it’s never been about love or about your marriage. Why did you delete messages off her phone? Why did you use her phone to tell all of her friends and family that she was dead when, no she died and was resuscitated and was very much alive even the two days following while you continued to tell people she was dead. That’s not normal. No one does that. Unless they just want it to be true. And you do. It’s clear to literally everyone.

What are you hiding?

Truthfully I think you’re hiding your medical diagnosis. Because I cannot believe that you can ask this way and the doctor has not seen that this is a

possibility that this is a pattern that what you do and what you say or so polarizing and then when your actions do align with your words they are at the extreme and they harm everyone. And speaking of a medical diagnosis why did we suddenly stop going to therapy. Why was it that months after you took me into your truck and you did those things to me that I needed to see a therapist? Why was it that Way we had group therapy it was fine but when the therapist wanted to talk to me alone suddenly we didn’t have therapy anymore and I never went to therapy again?

What did you want me to say? Why did you try to enter my room while I was naked? And why didn’t the police believe me when mom called the police? Who was it that hurt you so badly that you would treat your own kids in some of the most vile ways a human can treat another human being there is no act thicker than this and I am forever changed. I’m traumatized. And my body remember that my brain now remember that I’ve always remembered it and never known it and I love who I am because I don’t know anyone else’s story but mine and every decision I’ve made husband to take control of my story whatever you have undermined by autonomy violated by body my mind my heart. Honestly I feel like a fucking superhero but that’s because I was thrown into a vat of toxic waste and killed and brought back to life and bitten by that radioactive spider before I could ever truly know myself. I will never know who I could’ve been without this trauma there’s nothing for me to look back on because my earliest memory is of you throwing me into a wall because I wouldn’t pick up my crayons fast enough. Three years old. That’s how long I had for someone I love betrayed me violently.

[no-meconozco]

Dear mom,

It’s September 22, the first day of Autumn. The sheer yellow curtains cast a golden glow in the room. Your roommate is closest to the light and the warmth compliments her dark skin skin. Her name is Anna. Like royalty, her hand hangs down as she lifts her wrist to drop her knuckle onto her phone to type out “Good Morning, JP.” She’s the only one that calls me that here. She’s tired today though, like you, and uncomfortable. I often hear the one sided conversations between her and the nurses. She’s in pain, too. Her muscles are so atrophied, her skin clings to her bones. Her wrists are still bandaged and I wonder why they haven’t been removed in the weeks you’ve been here. What is time like for the two of you? Do days fly by & do minutes feel like years? There’s no clock. Maybe that’s a good thing. I found the picture dad brought at the center of your gaze & wedged between the painting I put up and the wall, as if to make sure you only focused on that image. He is desperate. And I don’t blame him, not for his desperation anyway. He understands what’s happening. He wants to make sure he’s always on your mind, only looking at the golden hour of wedding when “things were so much better.” I wonder if he remembers breaking up with you on Christmas Eve, just months before. Or cheating on you months before that. Let me push that aside. Think happier thoughts. Today I went through one of the only stacks of photos left. I found images of me and grandpa on the ATV, both mine and Joey’s graduation with you, Aunt Heidi, & Grandma Mary, me and my best friend. I wish you were awake so I could thank you for taking the time to print those photos, for keeping them hidden & safe. They’re about all I have from those days. I wish I knew what was on your mind.

The chimes of respirators from other patients fill the hallway. Pumps of air and whirs of machines hiss and rumble lowly in the room. The TVs are not so loud anymore. Anna seems like she’s struggling today. I’m going to ask if she needs anything when she’s more alert. Earlier I messaged your feet, your calves, and your hands. I bent your knees and stretched your arms. The apricot lotion is from Rita. Do you remember? The aroma still lingers, even through my N-95. You slept through most of that too. Please don’t lose hope. I can’t imagine how helpless you must feel; how upset, depressed. Your light has dimmed so much since you first came. I miss your soft chuckles and goofy grins. I have half a mind to tickle your toes to induce just a “Mona Lisa” of a smile. But I’ll sit with you. I’ll let you rest. And I hope you dream well and fly away for a little bit. Come back when you can. I’ll be here.

[no-meconozco]

Dear mom, it’s been one month and one week since you’re heart attack. I wish we knew what induced it. I wish I knew what happened that day. I wish I had the strength to stay with you the last time you went into the hospital. So much has happened since then. I wish I had the 911 call. I wish I had the paramedic report. There are so many unanswered questions. It’s been four weeks since you woke up from your coma and nurses saw the look of fear in your eyes as dad approached through the halls and you told them to keep him away. It’s been 30 years that you’ve been trying to find love and family in someone that doesn’t know how to give that to you, or us. I wish you had the strength to say no so much sooner. I wish you had the stamina to keep saying no because no one will listen the first time.

Sometimes forcing A dream just forges a nightmare.

I yesterday I tried to see you. I was working all day, documenting the protest and building community at the Queer Mercado. I called to see if there was room in the schedule to see you, but the woman at the desk wouldn’t let me because of an outdated policy that only she forces and it’s not fair. None of this is fair.

But it’s warm today and I wish that I could put you in a wheelchair and take you out to the sun so it can hug your skin... When did I embrace the sun? It’s funny how we grow up to be the complete opposite of who we were when we were younger not knowing that this is who we were all along. The shadows were a different kind of comfort, at the tome they seemed safer somehow. I think we both grew up hidden away and little by little we tried to stop hiding. I don’t think people like what they saw. I wish there was someone to tell me that it didn’t matter if they didn’t like what they saw not because it’s about how you see yourself But simply because people are just wrong sometimes, and sometimes you’re right! There’s just not enough people that see it yet and you’re just ahead of your time. 

Maybe that’s why I feel like I can’t give up on you because I feel like everyone gave up on me. We both needed someone to advocate for us and we needed even more people to validate that advocacy.

Or maybe what we needed was each other.

Can we stop hiding away? Can we face the sun, together?

And Talk.

I wish we talked.

[no-meconozco]

Today I am a unicorn.

Ch

No really. I put on a unicorn suit.

I pushed 20 pounds of clothing in a cart through the subways of NY until a reached the people of NYC mutual aid station by Larry’s (19yo local activist) old shelter.

I love Unity. That’s her name, or my name? When I put on the suit. She’s able to excite children, boost morale for the people, de-escalate cops, and build bridges in general. She’s easy to love. It’s hard to hate a big bouncy unicorn.

I’m able to dance more freely. I’m able to reach a guarded part of people and plant joy with minimal interaction.

Or maybe I’m just a big unicorn.

All the clothes I brought were handed out. I didn’t think that would happen but it did! I fed two houseless neighbors. I was in community. And all was livable until I got a call from my Aunt.

My mother’s husband had threatened to call the police on my mom’s caregiver because she was in possession of a family car. The one I was using while visiting. Which he also threatened the police against my usage. Everyday he inches closer into my mother’s ear. He nestles in her fear and sews hatred. Everyone is at a loss. My mother has suffered. Unless someone can get him away from her, she will die. She will be discharged in two days from her fourth stint in rehab. I’m afraid. She’ll fall and die. And to a degree I think she knows that. I think a part of her wants that. I think apart of me wants that too. The last three years have been some of the darkest for us. We feel trapped. Helpless. Defiled.

Biggs said they admire me today. That I’m a warrior.

I don’t feel like a warrior. Or maybe I do. No one said the warrior was also the victor. And so the warrior keeps fighting even after a win. Despite the win. Knowing mostly loss.

Today feels like hell. Everyday feels like hell.

-

I don’t give enough love. Yollotzinzin has been a force of healing for me and I know she needs love back. It’s hard… and selfish, but it’s also valid. The trauma is real, tangible, and stunts me. I want to give every part of myself and maybe I do…. Maybe I just want to give more. I wonder where that comes from: To give beyond my means, or my capacity. Do i do that on purpose? Some sort of self sabotage? To absolve myself of focus? I just… wish I felt like anything I do amounted to anything. Maybe then I would quench this insatiable thirst. If I could bleed myself dry just to feel the weight of myself, I would because I feel like I amount to nothing. Which… isn’t true.

-

[no-meconozco]

I wasn’t meant to survive this world.

[no-meconozco]

I’m sitting in my shaded apartment darkened by the tree outside. Correction I’m laying on my sofa. It’s almost noon and I don’t have pants on. My black cat, meatloaf, lounges on top of my stomach and I stare at the shadows dancing on my window as the cars pass by. Husband is on a walk alone. Why didn’t I go with him?

It feels like, no it is like, it is that I am a new person I’ve evolved and I am not the same. Everything I’ve learned in the wilderness and experienced in contra la policía allá… yo no se. What is the point? Every action in New York feels like showboating now.  scrambling like mice in a bowl surrounded by a few big cats.

I got work to do. 

[no-meconozco]

I’ve only been away for one month and I can’t find my place here. I’m jealous. I want recognition that my peers are getting that I haven’t gotten when I know I’ve put in so much more work and risk so much more. Why can’t I just be happy for them?

Sometimes I can be so selfish. 

[no-meconozco]

Soooo it’s been like feel like a year since I’ve been on the reservation it’s only been a day. I miss the crickets and the frogs the way they better keep me up at night. Much less the mosquitoes and their infectious bite. I miss the torment of children the ridicule and the laughter and their unique and rambunctious love.

I know the water will be there I know the people will be there but I don’t think this will last. it’s only a matter of time right? What we’re working towards is where I came from and where I came from is so much better than this. the lonely concrete compared to the welcoming woods, nephariius nature and all. When will this be home?

[no-meconozco]

If I cut my hair, straighten it.

If I shave my face.

If I wear the right clothes.

No one will know.

•

Do I wish to be brown? Or to be browner?

Do I wish to know myself? Or to be known?

Who am I? Who are my ancestors?

I wish to know you. I wish to learn from you.

The US took you from me. A whole half.

Half of the whole, owned.

The whole of the half, unknown.

What’s known is only half whole.

I am not whole.

[no-meconozco]

The difference between feeling Mexican in LA vs Mexican in NY is how much more I’ll be criminalized in LA vs NY.

No. That’s not right. The difference is how much I’m willing to display it. And that’s my privilege.

If I cut my hair, straighten it.

If I shave my face.

If I wear the right clothes.

No one will know.

Do I wish to be brown? Or to be browner?

That, I suppose, depends on the definition of brown-ness and who’s defining it.

Who am I?

[no-meconozco]

My eyes hurt today. I’m so tired. My chest is heavy, my head is low, my boots are muddy, but still I go.

On & on & on & on & on anon.

[no-meconozco]

I just want my people FUCKING FREE

[no-meconozco]

I can’t hear Adam Toledo’s name without crying.

[no-meconozco]

I’m in Minneapolis today. After nearly a year of activism and police violence against the people in response... Derek Chauvin is convicted of all 3 charges.

I feel numb. I want to be happy. I want to feel relief.