Author: liz

Voiceless Rant: The Series

A Voiceless Rant: July 2019 Edition.

liz

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!

First and foremost, a new month means a new opportunity to make the best out of it, and create new memories, make new goals, and even have more opportunities for growth!

If you’re anything like me, you will know that today marks an important day of the year. Yes, it is July 2nd, which means that we have officially hit the halfway mark into the year.

Ladies and gentlemen of Letters Readers, here’s this monthly installment of:

voiceless rant

Happy 2 years since “A Voiceless Rant” was first published on the blog! During the month of July 2017, the first installment of the series — which was meant to just be a one-off — came to life! Now 2 years later, it’s still some of my favorite things to write for the blog. 

For this month, I wanted to talk about something that at this point of the year, people don’t think about it: those damn new year’s resolutions. I’ve expressed many times before on the blog that I necessarily don’t believe in new year’s resolutions because it seems as if they are everyone’s priority for the first few weeks of the new year, and once that fresh, new year feeling has long passed, people seem to be back on their bullshit.

So, let me ask this question to those who’ve made new year’s resolutions this year: how are they coming along?

If you lost sight in your resolutions, don’t feel ashamed, nor like a phony for believing in that whole “I have to stick to my resolutions as soon as I declare them” tale.

This year, I made a couple of resolutions that I forgot to check in with after a while because it’s life, and life isn’t really happening to us so linear. It takes us in different directions, our viewpoints are bound to change throughout the year, and yes, we do change within months! So, why would you remember a resolution you made before knowing what the year had in store for you?

Hell, let’s make some damn “middle of the year resolutions” since we’ve got a pretty good taste of how it’s going for us!

Although I didn’t make any new year’s resolutions personally this year, I always hope that a new year helps me become a better, happier, and more mature person than I was the year before. This year, in particular, I just wanted to be in a mentally better place than I was in last year and I’m thankful that at least that’s the one thing on my 2019 bucket list that’s actually going as planned.

So, for my middle-of-the-year resolutions, I want to continue to be on the path of self-discovery, self-growth, and still be accepting of who I am and what I am. Of course, I’m still looking to better myself, come in terms with some of my traumas and demons, and start getting myself to be more productive and active towards my career goal. I hope that I could end this year having to at least scratch the surface of these things, but nevertheless, still be proud that the overall year I’ve done some positive growth since making these resolutions for myself.

So, revamp those new year’s resolutions to now fit where you are at in life. Try to knock something off small, like going out more and socialize with people. Or even smaller, like getting out of bed before noon every single day. Do what feels right for you, challenge yourself if you’re up for it, it’s your damn life. 

I hope everyone has a good second half of the year! Enjoy the summer! Get excited for Halloween! Start singing some damn Christmas songs! Whatever floats your boat. 🙂

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Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

Overexposed: The “Water-Only” Diet.

liz

OVTF0187

In a time where being bone thin was considered beautiful, I read something online that pretty much said if you replace meals with water every once in a while, you would lose weight.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I tried the “Water-Only” diet when I was 12-years-old.

Sixth grade was a rough year for me. Being in the same class with boys hitting puberty and girls who became boy-crazy was a lot for me to take in. Needless to say, every day was an adventure in that class, whether that adventure was about someone else’s drama, or if it was me being bullied on my weight. Sometimes it would hurt me, sometimes I would fight back, and occasionally, I diverted the name calling back to them by pointing out a flaw of their own. One boy in particular constantly teased me for being fat. So, one day, I said he had girl lips. He was then known as “Girl Lips” for the rest of the year.

Towards the end of that school year, my self-confidence was at an all-time low. I really did hate the body I was in, and I wished that what I had was just “baby fat” and that it would go away as time went on. But the constant bullying, man the constant fights I had to battle, was tiresome at that point.

One night, I researched on the internet how to quickly lose weight. Thus, the “water-only” diet came to be. That following week, I came to school with a giant Polish Spring water bottle in my backpack.

Being an immature 12-year-old girl, I bragged about being on this water-only diet. I was determined that no one would make fun of me for my weight anymore and that I’d be just as pretty as the girls that the boys liked in our class. While everyone ate their school lunches, I was drinking water. The first couple of days I stood by the plan, hell, I even lost some water weight while doing it, but I was now beginning to feel weak. Being around all the good smelling food during lunch, my stubbornness didn’t allow me to listen to the cues my body were giving me to eat actual food. Instead, I drank my life away in water, until I literally couldn’t do it anymore.

My mother was concerned that I’d drink myself into water poisoning if I didn’t stop doing what I was doing. So, a couple of days later, I stopped.

I came to school the following week and began my routine of eating just bits and pieces of my school lunch, pretty much having all my friends laugh at me and saying “I told you that you couldn’t do it” throughout that day. Of course, like anything in middle school, people tend to move on and forget what was happening, and it was never really brought up again that at 12-years-old, I tried to get on a diet that consisted of replacing meals with water.

Maybe in hindsight, you could do that. Maybe you can control snack-bingeing by drinking water instead but in the mind of a 12-year-old, that method of “losing weight” was extremely unhealthy.

Maybe my body knew all along that it wasn’t going to last and maybe that’s why it only lasted a week. Who knows what would’ve happened if I continued to do that; maybe things would’ve gotten worse. Things would’ve gotten worse. 

I remember the water-only diet mainly for how ridiculous it was, yet how serious I was for losing weight by solely drinking water. To even put out there that you should be skipping meals is absolute bullshit. In 2019, you wouldn’t find anything like that on the internet, and if there is, nobody is even trying to go that far to lose some weight. In 2006, when the Paris Hilton’s and the Lindsay Lohan’s were icons for being extremely skinny and beautiful, things like the “water-only” diet were put out there for people to try it. Thirteen years ago, it was a joke to be fat. Fat, in some fuckin’ universe, meant you were dirty, ugly, stupid, and not classy. Skinny, on the other hand, was the polar opposite. So, imagine being a 12-year-old girl in 2006, being teased for her weight for the majority of the school year, hating her body?

Was 12-year-old Liz wrong for doing what she did? Of course. But, nobody would’ve stopped her.

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Creative Pieces

When History (Sorta) Repeats Itself: A Scene.

liz

Image result for father and son sitting

March 12th, 2007:

Milo walks home from the hospital, head down towards the sidewalk; his world has completely just crashed to the ground. He takes a deep breath in, closes his eyes, and the last year has flashed before his eyes: meeting Gwen, first kissing Gwen, first time making love to Gwen, Gwen tells him that she was pregnant, Gwen giving birth to their son, up until this morning when Gwen passed away. He had thought his world was complete when his son, Milo Jr, was born – not knowing that the rest of his life would come to the place where he is now. 

When he entered his house, it was empty. No noise. Peaceful. He just needed to sleep away the sadness for a bit, until he felt okay enough to start making the next moves in his life. Will he raise the kid by himself? Would her parents take custody of his son because he was only a 16-year old teenage boy? He didn’t know what route he was going to take, but at least he had some time to figure it out, or he thought he did. 

He entered his bedroom with his parents sitting on his bed, with two suitcases full of belongings, and his son. They found out about his son. His mother couldn’t even look at him; his father couldn’t stop yelling at him. He called him a “waste of life” while pointing at his weeks’ old son and calling him “the son of a bitch”. The kid was crying, his mother was crying, and he couldn’t take it anymore. When his father yelled, “get the fuck out of my house!”, he did not disobey. Milo took his son, the suitcases, and left.

June 25th, 2026 – Morning:

Milo straightens his navy blue tie in his bedroom. His wife, Jennifer, walks into the bedroom with her green dress on, barefoot, panicky putting things in a bag.

Milo: You’re okay, Pep?

Jennifer: *keeps looking in the closet* Yeah, I’m fine – I’m just trying to bring some extra things for the girls to keep them quiet and busy during Milo’s graduation.

Milo: They really don’t call it “terrible 2’s” for nothing.

Jennifer: Reagan and Dylan are the definitions of that saying, that’s for sure.

Milo laughs and helps Jennifer pack some things for their twin girls. Their 8-year old son, Micah, comes running in the bedroom.

Micah: Mom! Have you seen my game charger?

Jennifer: No, I haven’t, and you aren’t bringing that game thing anyway.

Micah: *whines* Why can’t I?!

Jennifer stops what she’s doing and takes a deep sigh. Milo looks at Jennifer, then at Micah.

Milo: It’s Milo’s high-school graduation, Micah. There’s going to be a lot of people there, and we don’t want you to lose this game again. Now go put your shoes on; we’re leaving in 15 minutes.

Micah turns around and huffs and puffs as he walks out of his parent’s bedroom.

Milo: *calls out* Keep stomping on the ground, Micah, and that game will be gone for a month!

Milo looks at Jennifer, who is now sitting on their bed, putting her heels on. She looks up at Milo when she’s done.

Milo: That’s your son.

Jennifer: *crosses her arms* Oh, so he’s only my son now?

Milo: Only when he acts like you.

He winks at his wife, and she rolls her eyes. Milo Jr. walks into the bedroom, with his graduation down on.

Milo Jr: How the hell is this little cap suppose to fit over my hair?

While Milo Jr. attempts to put on his cap without it falling off his head, Jennifer walks over to him to help him out.

Jennifer: *with bobby pins in her hands* I had the same problem with all my graduation caps. Thick curly hair wasn’t fitting in this little cap, so dreadlocks weren’t going to neither.

She secures the cap with bobby pins on Milo Jr’s head. Milo smiles at the sight of his wife and first-born together. He remembers when he first introduced Milo Jr. to Jennifer: it was when he frantically banged on her front door 18 years ago with two suitcases, crying to her that his parents kicked him out and he had nowhere else to go. He will forever be grateful for her family taken him in when he needed someone the most.

Jennifer pats Milo Jr. on the back when she’s done. She hears the twins being loud in the other room and walks over to see what they were up to.

Milo Jr. stares at the mirror in his parent’s bedroom.

Milo Jr: God, I’m nervous.

Milo walks over to his son and looks at them through the vanity mirror.

Milo: There’s no reason for you to be nervous. It’s high-school graduation, not a military draft.

Milo Jr: Funny, dad. I don’t know, I just can’t believe this is the end, y’know?

Milo: It may feel that way now, but you worked hard to get where you’re at. You’re going to a great college within the city, you have a supportive group of friends around you, you have a very nice girlfriend that cares about you; all of that isn’t going away.

Milo Jr: It’s still scary. Y’know, growing up.

Milo: Well, you’re 18. This chapter may be ending, but you’re still young and you have a lot of life to live still. Call me when you’re my age.

Milo Jr. smiles at his dad’s “dad joke”, then straights out his gown and the tassel ropes around his neck. Milo puts the finishing touches on his outfit as well.

Milo: You must be very proud of Sophie for being Valedictorian.

Milo notices the huge smile on his son’s face just by mentioning his girlfriend’s name.

Milo Jr: She so deserves it. I don’t know anyone else in that school who works as hard as she does. Barnard College doesn’t accept just anyone these days.

Milo listens to his son talk about his girlfriend with a beam in his eyes. He remembers being a teenager in love and having the same beam in his eyes for Gwen. He’s still glad that the beam in his eyes never left even after she was gone and his life-long childhood best friend, Jennifer, became his girlfriend, mother of his children, and wife when they were in their mid to late 20’s. Life took them through thick and thin, and the woman he was always in love with, even with Gwen all those years ago, was truly Jennifer. He smiles at his son as he continues to speak about Sophie. 

Milo Jr. looks at the time on the vanity clock and panics; it’s time to graduate! The Kamalani’s leave the house to attend the first-born’s high-school graduation. Truly a milestone in the making. 

June 25th, 2026 – Night:

Milo and Jennifer are both sitting in bed, cuddling, watching TV together. During one of the commercials, Jennifer gets up to stretch and take off her makeup for the day.

Jennifer: Congratulations, Mr. Kamalani – we raised a high-school graduate.

Milo: *puts his hands behind his head* What can I say? We make a good team, Mrs. Kamalani.

Jennifer looks at Milo through the mirror, smiling at his cheesy comeback. She continues to take off her makeup as Milo gets up out of the bed and walks over to his dresser.

Jennifer: Sophie’s speech was very touching today, wasn’t it? I know Milo was very proud of her.

Milo: I think the whole auditorium knew that by the way he yelled and cheered for her throughout it.

They both laugh.

Jennifer: You know he loves her, right?

Milo: *puts a shirt on* Of course he does.

Jennifer: That doesn’t scare you?

Milo: Why would it?

Jennifer turns around and faces Milo.

Jennifer: We are talking about an 18-year-old boy, Mi. I don’t know if you don’t see it, but he’s exactly how you were when you were a teenager: blindly in love. You fell hard.

Milo: Yeah, well Milo knows better. We’ve had these talks already. I told him the reality of it all. He knows about my teenage years, and I made it very clear to treat her right, be there for her, but still be smart. We can’t stop him from growing, Pep. We can only help him make the right decisions.

Jennifer: I guess you’re right.

Jennifer turns back around to face the vanity, and Milo walks to her and hugs her from behind. She stops what he’s doing.

Milo: We raised an amazing kid, babe, and we are raising even more amazing kids. I couldn’t have done this without you.

He turns her around and kisses her. The kiss breaks up when Jennifer looks at the time.

Jennifer: What time is Milo coming home from Sophie’s?

Milo: I told him before midnight.

He looks at the clock; it’s 10:30pm.

Milo: He’ll be home, don’t worry.

— LATER THAT NIGHT —

The lights are off in Milo and Jennifer’s bedroom. Jennifer is sleeping on the left side of the bed, and Milo turns over on the right side, ultimately waking up. He rubs his eyes and puts on his slippers to go use the bathroom. He walks out to the hallway and checks on the kids’ rooms: Micah is asleep, the twins are asleep, and Milo Jr is… not in his room. He looks around the house for his son, until he notices the basement light is on through the crack of the open door. 

He walks down the creaky staircase until he sees his son laying down on the hardwood floor, throwing a little ball up in the air. 

Milo: Milo?

Milo Jr looks towards his dad and gets up from the floor. He is still wearing the outfit he had on for his graduation, just now looking more worn in and stressed. 

Milo Jr: Hey, dad. I was just gonna go upstairs now.

Milo Jr. tries to walk past his father, but his father knows him best. Milo stops him by putting his hand on his shoulder and looks at Milo Jr. in the face.

Milo: What’s going on, Milo?

Milo Jr: I’m fine dad, really, I just have a lot of stuff going on in my head, nothing to be worried about.

Milo Jr. walks back down the stairs and plops himself on one of the beanbags in the basement. Milo isn’t buying it. Milo walks down the rest of the stairs and sits next to his son on the other beanbag chair. 

Milo: I know you may not hear it often, but you should know how proud I am of you.

Milo Jr: I know.

Milo: You think you may know, but I want you to understand, Mi. My dad didn’t come to my high-school graduation. Or my college one; none of them. I didn’t have someone tell me what to do during the hard times. I didn’t have another man in my life tell me that I was doing an okay job juggling everything. I don’t ever want you to think that I don’t support you, or you don’t feel the support I give for you. You’re my first-born, Milo. Today will always hold a special place in my heart.

Milo Jr: I do feel it, dad. Thank you.

Milo notices his son fidgeting with his fingers. He takes note of it.

Milo: Pep was very moved by Sophie’s speech.

Milo Jr: Yeah, she did an amazing job.

That beam in Milo Jr’s eyes isn’t there anymore.

Milo: Did you and Sophie break up?

Milo Jr: *looks at his dad* What? No, we didn’t break up, dad.

Milo: So what’s wrong?

Milo Jr: Nothing is wrong, dad.

Milo: Mi, I know you; clearly something is wrong–

Milo Jr: *annoyed* Will you just drop it already?!

Milo Jr gets up from the beanbag chair and tries to flee towards the stairs, but Milo gets up to block them.

Milo: I told you to be home by midnight, but clearly you didn’t hear me when I told you that.

They both look at each other intently.

Milo: You may be rebellious every now and then, Milo, but ever since that girl entered your life, it turned you around and made you better. You never missed curfew, you have never not checked in with us; come on, Milo. I know you. What’s going on?

Milo notices his son get teary-eyed; he is now concerned. Milo Jr. turns back around and walks away from his father.

Milo: You know you can tell me anything. I promise I won’t judge you. *takes a deep breath* What happened, Milo?

Milo Jr. doesn’t say anything. His father begins to get annoyed and impatient.

Milo: Clearly it has something to do with Sophie, Milo. You were fine after the graduation dinner, you were fine before you went over to hang out with her; what happened? She cheated on you or something? *sigh* Look I know it hurts now but it’s not the end of the–

Milo Jr. turns around to face his father.

Milo Jr: *yells* She didn’t cheat on me! She’s pregnant!

Both Milo and his son look at each other. Milo doesn’t know what to say. Half of him feels like the future he hoped for his son, the son he had to struggle with when he was just a teenager himself, was crashing down. He sees himself as the scared 16-year-old teenager again, holding his son with his own father screaming at him, calling him a waste of life and his son “the son of a bitch”. Milo comes back to reality to see his own son, now 18, with his hands on his face and his knees on the ground, as if his life is crashing down all at once. 

Milo walks over to his son, looks down, and sits right next to him on the floor. He grabs his son and hugs him. Milo Jr. sobs in his father’s lap.

Milo: It’s going to be okay.

— The End —

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Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

Overexposed: “No, I’m Not Hungry.”

liz

OVTF0187

I used to skip lunch in high-school because I convinced myself that I wasn’t hungry. I once threw up acid from my empty stomach, after not eating anything for 12+ hours.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I used to starve myself in public.

You hear skinny people, who think they are still fat, having an eating disorder more often than you’ll hear a fat person having one. If the standard for having an eating disorder is not eating/starving yourself, wouldn’t it apply to all types of bodies?

I am not saying I have an eating disorder whatsoever, but there were times in my life that I said “No, I’m not hungry” with a stomach growling.

I was never self-conscious about me eating in public. To this day, my sister and I talk about the many nostalgic school lunches we had in our public school years. Needless to say, I always ate lunch, and it was actually good. Once I started to get bullied in middle school, slowly but surely that stopped happening. I would eat just a couple of bites before ultimately throwing my tray away, and whenever I went over to a friend’s house, I would say that I wasn’t hungry, despite me really wanting to eat what their parents cooked for dinner.

As my self-hatred for my body began to grow, I started to binge eat in the privacy of my home, after hours of not eating in public.

Even before I knew I had anxiety, I had anxiety. I was afraid of eating in public because I didn’t want to be seen as “the fat girl who’s eating.” I mean, that’s your typical narrative: fat girl refuses to eat in public because she doesn’t want to look fat in public.

If I couldn’t eat actual meals in front of friends, it was even harder to eat in front of my partner for the first couple of years we knew each other. The first time he ever caught me eating was a Big Mac on a coach bus back from a performance we had, and although he didn’t make me feel bad about eating a Big Mac in public, I still was kicking myself for eating a Big Mac in public, in front of the guy I really liked. 

Even after he graduated high-school and we still hung out outside of school, I never ate in front of him. He would offer me a snack, a drink, and meals whenever we would hang out, and by this point in my journey, my response became second nature, like a reflex:

No, I’m not hungry.

After the many teenage years of getting away with eating nothing for hours on end, I was now entering my 20’s, with a freshly removed gallbladder after being in extreme pain for the latter of my 19th year. I still didn’t eat in public for a while, but I realized that now doing so came with more than just a growling stomach. It came with actual illness.

One afternoon during my sophomore year of college, I was on the bus, going home after being out of the house and on campus since 5:30 in the morning. I didn’t eat anything that morning, during the day, even up to this exact moment. One minute I was just listening to my music on my iPod Touch, the next thing you know my stomach is in a literal knot. I couldn’t feel my stomach; it had gone completely numb. I started to sweat profusely, my headache intensified, and I got dizzy. I thought I was going to pass out on a bus just stops away from mine. I did what my mother told me to do: take a Motrin I had in my bag. For the most part, it helped keep my focus, but the stomach pains, boy they are singlehandedly the most painful thing I’ve experienced in my life thus far.

I knew I couldn’t get away from not eating in public anymore. I didn’t get over my fear of eating in public because I wanted to, I had to for the sake of my health. Like, I would choose to eat in public than practically fainting from the pain my body induced when I didn’t.

“Yes, I would love to have something to eat.”

The more I had to accept that my health depended on me eating (even snacking) during the day, I started to care more about my body’s needs instead of my anxieties of eating in public. I accepted that all bodies deserve to be fed and that human beings, big or small, need to fuckin’ eat in order to survive. Slowly but surely, I ate whole meals in front of my partner, I eat in front of my friends, and I will murder a snack package of cookies and a bag of chips in public.

My self-image of not appearing hungry was unrealistic and just plain stupid. Although the removal of my gallbladder has caused a lot of my weight gain, I’m grateful that the removal of it literally made me more accepting to the fact that it’s okay to eat in public! If it’s 9 o’clock in the morning and I’m not going to be able to eat my first meal of the day until lunchtime, then you best to believe I’m eating a bag of chips just to hold me over until then. Of course, there are other healthy alternatives, but it’s whatever I have at that moment, I’m eating.

Just because I’m fat, doesn’t mean I don’t deserve the human right to eat.

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Voiceless Rant: The Series

A Voiceless Rant: June 2019 Edition.

liz

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!

How is everyone enjoying June so far? Schools almost out, vacations are around the corner, and Summer 2019 officially rings in this week!

With that being said: a new month means a new installment of…

voiceless rant

So, here’s a little backstory for the inspiration of this post: I was scrolling through my Instagram explore page and read a screenshot Twitter thread story (by TOBINSCO) about a man who decided to treat himself out one night to a five-star restaurant. He orders his meal but notices that the group of people that arrived before him ordered, and received their meals before he did. Wondering where his meal is, he asked the waiter that he’s been in the restaurant longer than the group in front of them have and hasn’t received his meal yet. The waiter responds, “Sir, your meal is being prepared by the top chef in the restaurant; your meal is special.” Not too long after, the top chef and 6 waiters come out with his meal, changed his simple order into a special one, and found out that the owner of the hotel that the restaurant was in was a long lost family member and was so happy to see this man’s face. He concludes the thread by stating:

Some people are ahead of you and are eating now, laughing at you and talking about how they are better, wiser, and smarter than you, how they are blessed, well connected, have money, and are enjoying life. You are waiting tirelessly wondering why it’s taking so long to break through. You endure mockery and humiliation. Maybe you have contemplated suicide, gone through depression, or suffered severe mental anxiety. Don’t worry! The owner of the world has seen you and doesn’t want you to be served a simple meal like those making a mockery of you. You are waiting long because yours is a special meal. It takes time to prepare. And, only chief chefs prepare them. Relax and wait for your meal.

Relax and wait for your meal. The owner of the world has seen you and doesn’t want you to be served a simple meal. You’re waiting long because yours is a special meal.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that just because yours hasn’t arrived yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t going to. It’s just taking more time to get to you, but at the end of the day, it will come. And I honestly have to keep telling myself that during this time in my life.

Personally, I’ve been really impatient about my “break-through” and quite frustrated about it for various reasons. A lot of it has to do with the fact that you see everyone you know living their “best lives” and growing into themselves, and it just feels like my “best life” is taking forever to come. Many of us may feel this way, shoot even the people who are portraying their lives on social media as “their best” may not feel that’s even their best in real life, and I know for a fact that there are people who look at me and may think I’m living my best life for the accomplishments I’ve made as a 25-year-old. In a nutshell, we all think other people are living their best lives and never believe that we are making any progress in our own lives. We are making progress even if we don’t see it, but we always want more, and we always want to feel like our hard work is paying off. 

So, when opportunities are guided towards our way, we tend to think that maybe, just maybe, this is the thing we need to feel that sense of accomplishment, or taking that big of risk could open another layer of our lives to the point of life-changing. Recently, I was guided towards an opportunity that I definitely had to think long and hard for: is this really what I want to do? Is this my big break? Is this just another lesson of life that will bring me closer to my break-through? Will it just be a big mistake? The questions are endless. And even then, I’m not even sure if this would be the right thing for me to do.

Not all opportunities are meant to be life-changing, but ALL opportunities are meant to help you grow and guide you towards the path where your “special meal” is.

Lemme explain.

A lot of the opportunities I’ve had in the past, whether or not I took them, helped me find out the things I’m now passionate about, connect me with some really awesome people to work with, and are even possibly leading me in the direction that I ultimately belong in. Long story short, if I didn’t take those two summer classes during my junior year of college, I wouldn’t have graduated on time; if I didn’t get rejected from the graduate film school I applied for AND if I didn’t take the opportunity to get my Master’s degree at my college, I wouldn’t have gotten my Master’s, I wouldn’t have learned what I did in those courses, I wouldn’t have written the MA Thesis that I did, and I now wouldn’t have gotten the chance to work on and publish my thesis in an academic journal. It’s the literal butterfly effect. 

Maybe all of this is leading me to my breakthrough. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe my breakthrough is hidden within a major life change I still have to make. Maybe it’s still a yearly process to get to my breakthrough. Honestly, who the hell knows, but always remember just because yours hasn’t come yet, doesn’t mean it never will. Don’t be so quick to give up on your dreams, talents, and passions because yours is taking a little longer than everyone else’s. Don’t be fooled by the fast-paces of this world, the coverups social media influences, and the constant competition. Screw everyone else’s process, you are on your own. 

And I really do try to live by my own mantras and advice because it’s a matter of simply practicing what I preach. It’s funny, because in one of my therapy sessions, my therapist summed up pretty quickly that I am able to see faith in those around me who are struggling and give them some insight that everything is going to be just fine, yet it feels like I can’t be my own cheerleader and tell myself the same exact thing, no matter how similar the situations may be. I pretty much responded with, “if you were to define me in a sentence, that would be it.” 

It’s honestly a matter of believing in yourself and believing that you are worthy of good things by putting in hard work, your determination, and everything else that you are confident about putting on the table. Hard work never really goes to waste in life, it’s only when you’ve stopped trying that it does.

So be patient with your special meal. It’s probably going to be the best meal of your life when it arrives at your table.

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Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

Overexposed: Being the Skinny Girl’s “Fat Friend.”

liz

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We’ve all seen it in the movies: two best friends, one skinny and the other one fat, and they have a pretty good relationship with one another. They’ve probably been friends since their childhood and they’ve been inseparable since.

The skinny one is usually the main character though, who probably falls in love with the popular guy at school (that’s actually dating the blonde-haired mean girl who’s captain of the cheerleading squad) and then there’s her fat friend, being the one depicted as the weird, quirky girl that would body slam anyone who messes with her skinny friend.

Where’s my friggin Academy Award. 

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m the “fat friend” in this narrative.

For most of my childhood and adolescence years, I had numerous best friends. All were pretty diverse if you ask me: Puerto Rican, Mexican, Chinese, Dominican, Pakistani, Jamaican, Irish – you name it. But, many of these friends had something in common: they were skinny. Sure, I’ve had a couple of chubby chicks as my best friends in the days, and we conquered whatever life handed to us at that moment, but ultimately, they were skinny. I was never envious of them being skinny; to be quite frank, that never even crossed my mind. Still, it doesn’t mean that our differences in our appearance didn’t feel like a burden.

Being the “fat friend”, I never got to experience the whole “can I borrow your sweater?” or the whole “I have a pair of pajamas you can wear for the night!” scenario. One skinny girl pant leg would probably stop at my shin, I kid you not. It was sort of frustrating to see a group of girls wear the same shirt or wear each other’s clothes, and I mean being skinny came in handy when your period came unexpectedly and now you have a big blood stain on the back of your jeans. 

I had to have numerous family members come to hand-deliver clothes to me, in the main office, in front of everyone, whenever I bled through a pair of jeans.

Also, being the “fat friend” also meant that you’d hear at least the words “fat bitch” come from your own friends if you guys were in an argument with one another. I had a friend in grade school tell another friend of ours that I was a “fat bitch” because I was giving her an attitude during lunchtime. I mean, what was I supposed to say? “Oh, get over it, you skinny bitch!”

Being the biggest girl in a group of girls was always discouraging because it constantly feels like you’re the ugliest one in the group and you feel like they only have you around to make themselves feel better. “Oh, I have such bad acne this week, but at least I’m not fat 24/7″…

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get where I’m coming from.

I think the hardest pill I had to swallow during those years was boys. Boy, I was a hopeless romantic and I had tons of crushes on boys. Boys were always a tricky thing with friends, and there were lots of times where both my friends and I had the same crush on a boy in our grade. There were also countless times that my friends dated the boy I had a crush on after openly knowing I liked them too, and there were times when I confessed to me liking a boy to that boy and getting the response of: “You’re not really my type, but can you give my AIM screenname to your friend?”

Being the “fat friend” in my younger years contributed to the self-hate I had for my body growing up, and it’s taken… what, a decade to stop hating the body that I have.

I don’t blame those skinny friends for the self-hatred of my body; I blame the society norms, the portrayal in the media, and the friendzone that we fat girls lived in for most of our adolescent years.

As a 25-year-old woman with not so many friends due to past trauma and the development of my social anxiety disorder, I’m learning to be my own damn fat friend. We’re both fat, we’re both gorgeous, and we’re both striving!

Plus, it’s 2019 – the fat friend in the movies is just as valid as everyone else too!

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Misc.

Is Learning a New Language Considered “Cultural Appropriation”?

liz

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!

So, my self-judgment has been speaking to me as of late. As a matter of fact, she’s been screaming at me for the last couple of weeks as I started to partake in a new hobby: learning a new skill. Although I try to not listen to her, I can’t help but see some truth in the things she says. I mean, a self-judgment side usually tries to twist some truth in your beliefs or make you change something that you’re doing, right?

She has accused me of engaging in “cultural appropriation.”

Lemme explain.

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For the last couple of weeks, I started to teach myself how to read and write in Korean. I decided that after being frustrated in waiting for English subtitles to be written and released for my favorite girl group variety shows and competition shows, I wanted to see if I could at least understand the characters, Hangul, that is used in Korean. So, I downloaded Duolingo (#notsponsored) and started to learn the Korean Alphabet. As of this moment of me writing this, I’ve learned the consonants, vowels, and native Korean numbers pretty well and currently learning some essential words and sentence structure, which is quite hard to learn on your own, in my opinion. 

As happy as I am learning a new skill and keeping my mind productive and busy, I do sometimes feel as if I’m engaging in cultural appropriation. Am I learning this new language for the right reasons? Am I now this “koreaboo”? Why am I so embarrassed to share the fact to my family and friends that I’m learning Korean?” It’s this weird, complex situation where I’m interested in learning the language due to my interests, but ultimately sticking by it to build a new skill and gain a new hobby to keep my mind productive and out of the places where my anxiety could heighten. But, I do understand what the self-judgment is coming from.

You see, in this Quora forum, the question exists, and many of the people in the forum talk about how ridiculous it is for people to possibly think that learning a new language (which in NYC is mandatory to take a language class in both high school and college), is now considered to be a form of cultural appropriation. The top answer to on this forum comes from a linguist actually, and he does an amazing job explaining how in certain cases, it could be seen as cultural appropriation.

He explains that in certain scenarios, learning a language can be seen as cultural appropriation. For example, a classroom full of anime lovers learning Japanese could be seen as cultural appropriation because the only thing they really know about the Japanese culture is its anime. Another example is learning an endangered language (one that is becoming extinct, like Hawaiian) just to “save” the language from dying out. Another interesting example (which I didn’t even consider) is learning a language for job-related purposes, like a translator or interpreter, ultimately taking the place meant for a native Korean speaker. He explains in cases where you are learning more universal languages (i.e. English) and other big languages (typically the ones you learn in high school/college courses) it isn’t considered cultural appropriation.

So, where do I personally stand?

To be quite honest with you, I think I’ll always believe I’m in the unfamiliar gray area of the scenario. While my interest in Kpop and Korean shows influenced me into specifically learning Korean, I’m also in no ways trying to appear more Korean or pass as being Korean, nor am I practicing their ideas, beliefs, or think their culture is superior to every other culture. As for the definition of cultural appropriation, it’s “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.”

I just simply want to learn the language and find the process to be really good for my mental health. That is all.

So, is learning a new language considered cultural appropriation? It’s crazy to think that in certain scenarios, it could be. To believe that wanting to learn a new language for the sake of learning a new language is now a part of the spectrum of cultural appropriation really does baffle me. Are we all really engaging in it in our language classes all these years?

What do you guys think?

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Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

Overexposed: Intervention with Pepsi.

liz

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Hello, my name is Liz, and I’m a Pepsiholic.

This is my intervention.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with Pepsi. Maybe it was even before I was born; you know how when mothers are pregnant with their children and they eat or drink something constantly through that pregnancy and the children come out loving that specific food/drink?

No? Maybe I just made that up to justify my unhealthy relationship with Pepsi.

My earliest memory with the beverage dates back to my childhood; my two front teeth were rotten due to the fact that I liked to drink Pepsi out of a baby bottle way later than I should have. I don’t understand how, nor why Pepsi is a literal addiction for me, but it was, it still is, and it’s honestly the #1 cause of me gaining weight all these years.

I’ve tried to kick the old habit for years now, and if quitting smoking feels the way that it feels quitting Pepsi, then I now understand why it’s almost impossible to quit smoking. Addiction is addiction no matter what it is, and mine so happens to be the sugary concoction that is Pepsi.

The first time I quit Pepsi for good, I didn’t drink it for almost a year. Then I turned 20 years old and decided to have a celebratory drink of Pepsi and bam, back at it again with the constant soda drinking.

Like an addiction, I have a love/hate relationship with the beverage. For starters, it tastes so good after a long day of whatever you were doing, yet I know how bad it is for me and is probably the #1 cause of why I’m now considered pre-diabetic at the age of 25.

Maybe I should’ve listened to my father when he told me at the age of 12 that I’ll get diabetes if I don’t lose weight…

Anyway, it’s something I’m not proud of, but I acknowledge that it’s a problem. No matter how many times I try to quit cold turkey, it’s never a good time.

But, at least I’m trying.

Instead of hating myself and blaming my body for not being able to just pee the goddamn drink out like the skinny consumers of Pepsi probably do, I’m learning that with time, I’ll drink less and less until I just don’t feel like it. Of course, in hindsight, that sounds ridiculous, that’s like telling an alcoholic they can only drink in moderation, but quite frankly this is Pepsi we’re talking about. I know that drinking more water will help me feel way more hydrated and full, and yeah, maybe a glass of soda with my dinner could be the reward I get for staying away from it!

As you can see, this is still an ongoing problem of mine, but I will not link the disgust of my growing fat to my Pepsi addiction. I simply can’t; cutting out Pepsi isn’t going to automatically make me 100 pounds lighter. And that’s the problem I encountered in the past: thinking that Pepsi was causing me to gain so much weight. 

Cutting out Pepsi from my life will probably only help me stay diabetes-free for longer, and that’s what I need to focus on when trying to quit drinking Pepsi. This idea that it’ll make me lose weight simply isn’t true; sure it will stop me from gaining more weight, but cutting one thing out of my diet isn’t going to do it.

So, after all of this, what am I really going to do with this Pepsi addiction?

Well, a couple of things:

  • Stop linking the idea of cutting out Pepsi with this automatic weight-loss; it simply isn’t going to happen.
  • Drink it in moderation to train myself that I don’t really need to drink it 24/7.
  • Lastly, stop punishing myself for gaining weight because once again, drinking Pepsi is not the only thing that is causing weight gain, nor I stop drinking it will solve my weight problem.

But what do I know, maybe I’m just justifying my addiction like any other addict.

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Misc.

SAD: One Year Later.

liz

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz.

It’s crazy to believe that we are already in month six of 2019, and about to start the summer season in a couple of weeks. It just comes to show just how fast time goes, and the same is true reflecting back on this time last year.

On June 6th, 2018, I was officially diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety is probably one of the biggest disorders people have nowadays for many different reasons. While social anxiety can be “cured”, there are some cases where it can’t be; it’s chronic. My social anxiety is chronic.

I wasn’t surprised when I first got the diagnosis; a part of me always knew that I had some form of social anxiety, and as the years went on, it just got worse. To finally get the diagnosis didn’t really change how I felt, it just made a lot of things more clear – especially the things I was confused about.

It doesn’t mean that life got easier.

To be quite honest, the diagnosis made things a lot worse for me because it was hard for me to adjust to the fact that this wasn’t just “anxiety everyone deals with”, I experience anxiety on a clinical level, and adjusting to that while trying to explain to my loved ones what was happening was a difficult transition.

After many confusing nights and days where I felt misunderstood, I started to regret even getting the diagnosis. You got the diagnosis and just ran with it, Liz.

In simpler words, I didn’t know how to live with this new information and accept it for what it was. It took me getting on medication and some intense therapy sessions to finally realize and ultimately tell myself that I am not my anxiety, I just have it, and it’s going to take a long time to adjust being more aware of my own unique patterns and behaviors regarding my anxiety.

A year later, and I’m definitely doing a lot better, and I really have to thank the process of going to therapy and taking my medication. I say this, in all honesty: yeah, I’m going to have my episodes where I don’t want to do anything but lay in bed and escape the stressors of the world, but those days don’t last as long as they used to.

Quick story about the epiphany I had about my progress: Last week in therapy, I explained to my therapist that the day before my partner’s birthday, he had a couple of family and friends come over to ring in his birthday with him at midnight and although being in a social setting like that with a handful of people would normally be overwhelming for me, that night my anxiety didn’t even cross my mind. Talking about it made it more real for me, and before even speaking about it it didn’t register as progress, but I left her office feeling so proud of myself for being able to socially interact with other people without feeling any sort of anxiety. It’s definitely moments like that where I feel like I made the right decision to seek therapy a year ago.

Of course, I am far from the end. My mental health journey does not end once I conquer just one aspect of my anxiety. I’m still a working progress, and I hope that with the months to come in 2019 that I am able to conquer those other aspects, and truly see the growth from now, until then.

Of course, my experience with therapy isn’t the ideal experience for therapy; it’s uniquely my own. Not everyone is going to have a positive outlook on therapy and maybe therapy isn’t in the plan of their own healing. I still do believe, though, that everyone who is going through a hardship in their life that they can’t get through on their own should at least try therapy to see how it feels for them. Some will be successful, and others may not. It’s about how the process works for every single individual.

Personally speaking, it’s been some of the hardest work I’ve done, yet some of the greatest work I’ve done in my life.

I really do have to thank my sibling, Megan, for continuously telling me I should seek out therapy for the issues I was having late 2017 into 2018 due to grad school. Of course, I wish I took their advice earlier when I was actually in grad school, but things happen for a reason, and I believe I had to go through what I went through in grad school to get where I’m at now.

I also want to thank my therapist, Cathy, or getting to know me as a person and telling me without a doubt the truth to the situations and behaviors I was experiencing. She taught me a lot on how to fight my inner demons and I’ve told her some of my darkest trauma secrets, yet she is still there to help me get through them along the way. Although she is now on maternity leave for the season, I really cannot wait to show (and tell her) the progress I’ve made since she’s been away.

I also wanted to thank my temporary therapist, for the time being, Andrea, for taking the time to get to know me and try to pick up where I last left off. Although it took some time to get comfortable with her and allow her into my “world”, as I say, she’s has been a major help and always keeps the atmosphere lively and energetic. I’m definitely in the right hands until I return back to my regular therapist.

And the support I’ve gotten from my family and my partner: it means the world to me that I have people in my life willing to understand my SAD, depression, and not judge me for it. I appreciate the efforts that you guys go through to understanding and support.

So, with that being said, here’s to going on year two of bettering myself and my mental health.

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Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

Overexposed: The Foundation.

liz

It could be hard loving yourself, especially being a size 26 knowing that you were a size 20 when you were out of high-school. Sometimes, looking at yourself in old pictures isn’t about missing the memories behind them, you look at them because you think you were prettier back then and now you’re just this “fat blob of a woman.”

But then I remember that I was thinking the same thing even when taking this picture. The deal is: weight doesn’t define self-love.

Hello. I’m Liz, and I am a fat girl with some deep-rooted issues.

Welcome to my world.

I come from a family of Italians and Puerto Rican’s. While my Puerto Rican family is not fat, my Italian side is, and I guess my sister and I just got that “fat gene” in the family. When we were younger, nobody cared if little Liz was chubby; she was a baby, and being a chubby baby met that you were the cutest thing in the world. But then you get older and that same family tells you that you’re getting bigger. “You should lose some weight”. “She’s gotten heavier since I last saw her.” And my personal favorite: “I’ll pay you $100 if you lose 100 pounds.” I’m not joking, that’s a true story.

We have this idea that fat is ugly, fat is bad, and fat is something that you shouldn’t want to have a lot of. We get fed these bullshit ideas that you can lose 16 pounds in 4 weeks (right, Jenny Craig advertisement in Bay Ridge?) and hear other people’s bullshit stories on how they are so much happier being “skinny” and “a couple of dress sizes smaller.”

And I fell for it time after time, thinking I was ugly, that my depression or sadness stemmed from a place of being fat, thinking that skipping meals and drinking only water in middle school would help me get skinny and stop being bullied by my own friends, and thinking that being skinny would stop making me be everyone’s second choice.

So as I got older and as I got fatter, I stopped caring, in all honesty. I stopped holding my body accountable for growing in the way that it does. Could I eat healthier? Of course. Could I be more active? Sure. But those things aren’t going to ultimately help me lose the 100+ pounds that won’t consider me “obese” on the “average height and weight chart.”

My body can’t even get to be that small even if it’s the ideal “weight for my height”, and I learned that from witnessing a family member of mine battle anorexia a couple of years ago.

Yeah, who would’ve thought that projecting this idea of “I’m happy being skinner” could cause eating disorders?

As of this moment, I am focused on loving my body in the skin that it’s in, whether it’s in a size 20, size 26, or in the baggier size 30.

This isn’t just a fat girl story learning to love her body. This is a story on how a fat girl learned that her self-worth isn’t measured in dress sizes, real romance isn’t just a skinny person’s privilege, and that respect, power, and confidence could walk in a body like mine.

This a project about self-love.

To build yourself up after years of abandonment is challenging; you don’t know where to start, you have to clean up the mess that’s gathered over the years, and ultimately you have to create the foundation in order to start building things up strong and tall.

And this is the story of how it began.

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