Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

I hate to admit this about myself because it’s such a toxic trait I have, but I have a bad habit of playing the role of victim when things go wrong.

I might’ve alluded to this in the past, but when I was younger (and even throughout my 20’s) I found myself becoming very defensive in confrontations, and even in situations where I was in the wrong I played the victim.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I play(ed) the victim.

Maybe it was embedded in me at a young age; I thought I could never do any wrong or hurt anyone on purpose and therefore I blamed my actions on the people around me. “Well, you made me do that; if you weren’t so mean to me then maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did.” “You’re the reason I self-harmed that night; what you did to me was so hurtful.” My teenage years sound a lot like that, and even though no one else had control of my actions and my decisions, I made them. Sure, people can influence your actions and decisions, but no one put a gun to my head and made me do anything. I did it because I either wanted to at the time and I allowed for it to happen.

But my toxic trait– the one I’m learning to reflect on and resolve– is that when I owe up to something, I seem to link it to an event or a reason from an outcome. As I think back, a lot of my arguments in my last relationship where I tried to explain my reasoning for something seem to be because of something else instead of just openly saying “I did this and I said that because I wanted to and I take responsibility for it.”

Of course, it’s not always so black and white like that. A lot of my bad decisions came from being in a bad place and being hurt by other people’s actions in the past. I’m not a saint; I do things to hurt those who hurt me first, and only because it takes so much to legitimately hurt me to the point where I’m willing to throw everything away and say fuck it, I’m hurting you back. It’s so fucking toxic, I know, but it’s the truth. Will I ever be able to not do that anymore? Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe it’s a defensive mechanism in me too deep-rooted to fix right away. At least I’m aware of it, right?

These days, I don’t try to play the victim anymore because it’s just unrealistic for me to try to obtain this perfect image. I’m only human and I’m bound to do some bad things to myself, to other people; it’s just the cycle of life. Of course, I can’t help but think if the “playing victim” thing is so embedded in me, that I don’t even realize that I do it. I worry that every time I try to tell my story or my truth, I sound like a victim. I sound like I need saving. I sound like people should feel bad for me.

The truth is, I don’t want people’s sympathy for my past anymore. I don’t the validation that my actions were justified because they weren’t. I also don’t need people to read my story and my truth on these posts and go, “well, damn, does she want us to really know all this sad shit? Is there a hidden agenda in the words that she writes on her blog?”

I write it for me. I write it to diffuse the negative energy behind my journey, not for a pity party.

The past version of myself, the one who tried so hard to obtain a certain image and level of perfection, would not tell you that she did things without thinking first. She would brag that she had the upper hand in a situation where she knew she was losing in. Everything was a damn competition to her because she was worried the people she loved would forget her, and even to this day this version of myself is afraid of being forgotten, but that’s another story for another blog post.

But what the past version of myself would tell you is that she felt like her voice and feelings were never heard. She found herself not speaking up for herself and prioritizing her feelings and whenever she tried to, people then threw it in her face that she was self-centered, inconsiderate, and always plays the victim. 

So, it wasn’t a surprise when I began to get those comments again when I was finally practicing prioritization towards my feelings and speaking for myself in situations. And possibly that’s why I still feel like I’m always playing the victim when I spoke up and wrote down my stories.

It’s something I’m always worried about when telling my story to people who I meet and that I trust with my baggage. I have a really good friend, Anthony, that I pretty much get philosophical with every now and then, and sometimes when we discuss things like our past selves and our journeys, I’m always worried if I come off as playing the victim when telling my story. Either or, I just try to be honest with myself as much as possible and learn how to stick up for myself, but take responsibility for my own actions in the scenario.

You don’t gotta hate yourself for your toxic traits, just be aware and accept that you have them.

I’m nowhere being famous on the internet, even more so well-known on the internet. Prior to starting my blog in 2017, I was a closed book. I never shared anything about myself that was too explicit or that would tarnish my “good girl” image, but once I started to get comfortable with myself and starting to become self-aware of the things and habits I did/had, I started speaking out about them.

But that doesn’t mean you know everything I was, everything I believed, and the time I lived growing up in my younger years.

I lived during the generation where LGBT+, POC, and any other minoritized stereotype was pitted as a joke. It wasn’t looked at as wrong, it was looked at as a part of pop culture, and a lot of the things we believed and said as teenagers and children reflected on that time.

I will openly admit that I take accountability for writing the N-word with “uh” at the end as an early teen thinking that it wasn’t offensive just because the “a” wasn’t attached at the end. I will openly admit that I fat-shamed, slut-shamed, and body-shamed in those years of my life, and said disgusting things that would label my younger self ignorant. I will be the first to publicly say that my actions as a young teenager reflected from the times I grew up in; where there used to be entire shows of Maury dedicated to the audience guessing if the person dressed in drag was a man or woman and where women were depicted as whores and sluts on Jerry Springer right after. I grew up where our favorite TV shows alluded to insensitive jokes about gender & race & mental disorders and nobody batted an eye at them.

My younger self was a product of those times, but I believe people change. I changed.

With everything happening on social media (particularly YouTube) and everyone cancelling each other for the things they did and said in the past is toxic and extremely triggering to me, and not because of my own toxic past, but because as a society, we so desperately want the word to change, but don’t accept people changing.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I was once never forgiven for my past even though the person I am today isn’t a reflection of it anymore, and it still triggers me to this day.

Holding people accountable for their past is one thing, but to still know a person for their present selves and to still not accept those changes because of their pasts is, to some extent on a personal level, cancel culture. Sure, no one is not reading my content or not following me or “cancelling me” on a professional level, but on a personal level, with the people you love and care about and are able to let go of their past to see them for who they are and you don’t get that reciprocated back to you, feels like that person is completely cancelling you as a person completely, even when you’ve showed time and time again your past doesn’t define you.

I explained time and time again that I wasn’t the greatest person as a teenager, and I lost all of those years being a really shitty person. I manipulated people into believing my lies, I broke up relationships for my own personal gain and emotions involved, I played the victim and then victim-shamed other people; I was a horrible person, and a lot of those past demons I still deal with just because they influenced such a huge part of my life, but I never knew that even actively changing and knowing better and being better that it would ultimately affect some of my most important relationships in my life.

Cancel culture triggers me because I know how it feels to try to prove yourself time and time again to people that simply just can’t see you through their tinted glasses of you. Cancel culture does nothing but confirm that no matter what you do to become a better person and no matter how much self-awareness you have, there are still people who will cancel you, and to have someone quietly cancel you that you love is the hardest fucking thing to go to.

It’s so tiring trying to prove your innocence and to prove that you say what you mean and you mean what you say. It’s extremely frustrating to sit there and have the other person tell you over and over again that they can’t completely forgive you for starts to make you feel maybe you deserve not to be forgiven for your past. Maybe you’re not any better than what you thought you were.

It’s those thoughts that triggered my self-harming episode last year in August.

Again, I’m not looking for validation or for a pity party; this isn’t what this is about. If you only knew me for who I was in the past and not for me in this moment, you have every right to not like me because I was toxic and problematic but if you know me now, 2020 me, not even who I was this time last year but for me in this exact moment and you still decide to judge me for my past and make assumptions of my character even after seeing me grow up into this young adult, then you really don’t know me.

I had a really good talk with my friend Anthony (which by the way if you’re looking for new music, listen to his music on Spotify under the name Svndwn) that was about our unhealthy pasts and how when we meet new people as the versions of our present selves, we want to be judged for what we do now, not for the things we did when we were young, dumb, and naive. And it’s true; why would I judge him for the things he’s done prior to the moment we became friends and vice versa? Sure, we can talk about it and take accountability for all of the things we did in our pasts, but it’s not really our place to judge each other for our actions if we weren’t there to witness them ourselves. Yes, that scale is so much larger and bigger when you have a huge presence on social media like YouTubers who been on the platform for the last decade, but in personal situations, if you just met someone, you decided to become friends with them for the person they are in this very moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that cancel culture, to any degree, gives me a bad case of impostor syndrome. I constantly question my motives and how I do and say things and if there is any problematic behavior I engage in being this version of me and like I said before, it’s so easy to get sucked into those thoughts when you once had someone you loved with everything not completely forgive you for your past.

I still live my life struggling to believe that I’m a good person because for so many years, it was alluded that I was no better than the person I was in my past. Sure, I made mistakes, I made dumb decisions even being 26, but never to the degree where I was making the decisions I made as a teenager. To see just how big this cancel culture is getting, it’s becoming even harder to speak out their truth and to see them just take accountability for themselves without people immediately seeing it as an motive to appear as the “woke, sensitive, inclusive” person. Some of us really shed that shell of our past selves, and if you decide to “cancel” or never forgive a person for their past, then why are you making the effort to even try to get to know them as the person now if your mind is already made up about them?

Leave my life if you secretly judge me for my past. Your mind about me is already made up.

Sometimes, I believe that the kindest and nicest people hold the biggest and longest grudges ever.

Perhaps it’s because we’re not confrontational and we’re constantly shoving things under the rug when things bother us that they just turn into grudges. We think that if we just internalize our feelings towards problems and such, they would resolve on their own. What happens instead is they turn into grudges, and now it’s more than just a problem you have with a situation or another person. It’s now something that affects you on the psychological level.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I hold some really nasty grudges.

I’ve always been a person that felt all the emotions and there were always extreme. I love hard, I care hard, and I get angry just as hard, especially when the issue presents itself more than once in situations. Even though I’m human and I’m allowed to feel`emotions other than happiness and such, I never allowed myself to reflect on my anger and tell myself why I was even angry in the first place for a huge chunk of my life. Sadly, it’s resulted in a lot of grudge-holding in my life.

There are some people who can live perfectly fine with the grudges they keep; to them, their grudges are just something reminding them that the toxic and bad people that were once in their lives have no place in their lives in the present day. For me, they are constant reminders that I hold onto parts of my past self that I wish I didn’t, and any sight or thought of the person I hold a grudge with brings everything back and it’s not the healthiest thing to be doing at my age.

I mentioned many times before on the blog that 2020 was the year that I was going to forgive myself for my past, my actions, and the people who I may have hurt or hurt me to finally stop carrying it on my shoulders like baggage. In this first half of 2020, I’ve made some revelations, breakthroughs, and made some moves in order to forgive myself and the things that happened, and a lot of this work happened because of therapy. I learned ways to take responsibility and accept that it happened.

Within this process, I was able to recall in detail everything that happened within the last decade and be brutally honest about it, despite how I felt about anything that would “tarnish” my image. Just being open and honest to that extent helped me kickstart this journey of forgiveness, but half of that journey also meant that I had to deal with my grudges.

Once they latch onto you, they suck you dry until you’re too exhausted to want to deal with them anymore.

I have grudges I’ve held since I was in high-school. The people who hurt me the most are still some of the people that I hold the strongest grudges for. I don’t want to ever know how they are doing, or if they’re doing well, what they are up to, or how their own growth has transpired. These people who I hold grudges with are somewhat dead in my world; they don’t exist, and I try to erase every memory I ever had with them. To some extent, I hold some grudges about my last relationship. They were simply things I wish happened differently and that I spoke up about. In a sense, I hold a grudge towards the person I was in that relationship, and present me hates the fact that past me let so many things slide and left so many things unsaid. Will I ever let go of that grudge? Honestly, that relationship ended 10 months ago; yet it still feels like it was just yesterday that everything came crashing down.

Slowly but surely, I am letting the grudges of my 18-year-old self just eat those old parts of me and leave me for good. That girl, the one who was the second girl in two different relationships, the one where she almost got raped for trusting a boy too soon, the one that lived in fear for a year straight due to Facebook death threats, the one where she was so broken inside that she cried on the bathroom floor for nights on end and cut herself with her own sharp fingernails and countlessly wrote poetry about wanting to die – that girl. She’s dying inside of me, and the grudges towards the people in this time period are being let go for my own mental health. To the lover that kept me then swept me and then watched everyone turn against me, I forgive you. To the person who explicitly wrote the many ways they wanted to kill me and my family, I forgive you. To the guy that thought I was easy and tried to have sex with me when I continuously said no and you called it “stubbornness”, I forgive you. To the person I was, I’m forgiving you.

Getting over my past relationship is now a whole new thing I’m slowly trying to let go as well. To move on from the last 10 years of my life just an overnight job; it’s surely not a 10-month job as well. The grudges I hold within that situation are present and I’m trying my hardest to not let it become a decade long grudges like my others. I’m confident enough that I’m mature enough to not let it get to that point; to be as forgiving as possible but keeping a healthy level of resentment because I know what my self-worth finally is.

So, some of the nicest and kindest people are the ones who hold the longest grudges because they avoid confrontation and project their issues to themselves.

Too bad that’s not me anymore. I will tell you how shit is these days.

I started “Overexposed: A Self-Love Project” a year ago based on a lie I kept telling myself in order to make myself feel better about everything else in my life.

Let’s fucking do some exposing. 

This series came out to express myself in a new light that I never did before in my life. For a person who was a closed book, this series gave me an opportunity to call myself out on the bullshit I was accepting and really get a lesson on what it meant to practice self-love and accepting to your body.

The series started off documenting my journey of accepting me and my fatness. I’ve been fat my entire life, and although I’ve been prepping myself for the surgery which was supposed to happen in July/August, it’s now probably going to happen at the end of the year. Just because I’m taking the surgical route to weight-loss, it doesn’t mean that I don’t accept my body in its current state. I am more confident about my look than I’ve ever been in the 26 years I’ve been on this earth. I don’t have long hair hiding my double chin anymore, I now wear dresses without the “tummy tuck panties” underneath, and quite frankly – I’m okay with the way I look. It’s taken me years to get to this place in my life, but I’m here, and that inspiration for starting this series wasn’t a lie. The whole “I’m happy with my life” mantra I was spitting out last year was.

Hi, my name is Liz and my 2019 self lied to everyone, including to herself.

The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t happy. I felt like my mental health was getting worse and no one around me understood that I mentally checked out of my relationship months before it officially ended, I was occasionally suicidal and I even resorted to cutting myself after 6 years of not doing so.

I still think back to that Monday morning when I went to work and my whole upper arm was covered in cuts and I had to keep the sleeves of my t-shirt down because I was afraid someone was going to see them.

I wasn’t in the right headspace last year and I admit that and accept that I was going through a major transition in my life. Perhaps I needed to land this job and get a new routine going in my life. Perhaps my relationship had to end for me to start being self-aware and take the time to be by myself. Maybe everything had to happen the way they did in 2019 so that the 2020 version of me can sit here and write my truths down.

I faked happiness until faking it wasn’t an option anymore.

The 2019 version of myself tried so hard to believe the things I was writing and the advice I gave out here because it was the advice I needed to tell myself. I needed to tell myself to listen to my soul and understand what she was telling me. I needed to sacrifice something in my life because I needed to take care of myself before I ended up killing myself. I had unhealthy ways of coping with my last relationship towards the end, even having thoughts of hurting myself so badly to make my ex understand what I was truly going through mentally. It’s such a fucking toxic thing to think and want to do, and I’ve realized that if I was still in the same mindset where I was when I was thinking those things, God knows where I would’ve been right now.

But nobody knew that because I didn’t want people to know the full story. I didn’t want people to know that I wasn’t happy, that I wasn’t doing the things that I advocate for everybody else. I truly wasn’t myself for the majority of 2019, and I look back now and see that the person who wrote those posts and you guys read them wasn’t me.

It was my facade, it was my persona, it was the thought that if I wasn’t happy all the time or looked like I had my shit together, that I was a loser and I wasn’t shit.

Although I thank 2019 for being able to get out of that phase alive and well and being able to make me stronger and wiser as 2020 me, I still have to be honest about her and call her out on her bullshit. I apologize if I gave off this feeling that I was so put together, that possibly you looked up to me as inspiration for your own directions in life, or not – I apologize mostly to myself for being the way I was and being okay about lying to myself for so long.

As time went on and I continued writing for Overexposed, I started to see the true meaning of this series for me. I started to be honest in ways I never thought I would ever be. I admitted my sexuality changing, I spoke about my decision of sexual abstinence, and even when I started to admit to myself that I was bullshitting my happiness.

I wanted this series to showcase more than just my online persona. I wanted this series to let you guys know that I have ugly moments, that I have my toxicity to work on, and that I’m not always the right, nice, and kind person 24/7. I wanted this series to show others (especially writers) that you fucking write because it’s your voice, so be fucking honest with the words you write down in your blogs, journals, stories, whatever. 

Most importantly, I wanted this series to let the judgmental voice in my head that I’m in control, and even if it wants to tell me that I’m this and I’m that, I’m speaking it out already to the universe and I will not be ashamed of what comes out.

2019 Me would never.

So for those who’ve read some of this series’ chapter throughout the year, thank you. They are some of my proudest pieces on the blog, and they continue to help me with my self-love journey that is honestly never-ending. There’s no ending to self-love, and that’s why this series lives on.

This is a passion project that will grow with me.

I feared that I was a part of the small percentage of people that would never change.

I felt like everything that I did, no matter how much older and mature I got within my years, I always had the habits and traits that deemed me an unchangeable person. I could even take all the right turns to make the outcome different and prove the change within me, but nope – it would always come back to its roots. 

Maybe that thought process was the result of having someone in my life for a very long time point out the fact that my patterns, no matter how different they were, were always the same. They had me figured out every single time, and for a while, I thought their judgment on me was right.

Hi, my name is Liz, and it’s taking me a long time to realize that I am a chang(ed/ing) person.

If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I’m not the same person I was when I was a teenager. I am not my eighteen, I am not my twenty-one, and I’m not even my twenty-five. Hell, I’m not even the twenty-six I was a couple of months ago. I’m not the teenage girl that got in between people’s relationships and kissed two different people in one day. I am not the 21-year-old that was losing herself all in her family drama. I’m not the 25-year-old that was just getting out of her decade-long relationship. I am also not the 26-year-old that I was a couple of months ago. It’s not not I’m not staying true to myself, it’s the fact that we are constantly changing, and if it’s done properly, it’s typically for the better.

For years, I felt like I had to prove myself to people on the fact that I was a changed person. It made me adapt to this idea that who I was was a villian, that she was this horrible person that deserves the world to just shit on her. Because of my past mistakes, I I felt like I was never allowed to outgrow that part of my life; I was constantly reminded that because of those actions of my past, they would always affect parts of my present and future, which I look back now and wish I was able to tell myself that was simply not true.

The dumb things I did at eighteen just happened; I was just a dumb, young, and naive person and my actions reflected off of that. Who didn’t do dumb shit in their teenage years? Better then than later in life, right? The things that I did when I was eighteen were not the same things that I did when I was in my early 20’s; sure I was still young and had some growing up to do, but at that point in life, I knew better and had a better sense of my morals. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the beauty of changing coincides with the beauty of maturing. We change because we grow up.

Being 26, I never got the chance to allow myself to accept the fact that I grew up, I changed, and that it was okay that it was happening to me. Last year, it was okay that I grew out of the things and people that made me happy, it was okay that I wanted to start a new chapter in my life; it honestly just meant that I was changing, and a lot of that changing had to do with my soul.

My soul, despite me being ready or not, wanted me to recognize that I was a changed and changing person. I wasn’t the teenage girl anymore that tolerated a lot of things before. I wasn’t the shy, quiet girl in her early 20’s that had severe social anxiety. I was a person who was growing into her own, and learning about herself through the process. With therapy, a little bit of self-awareness, and just the uncontrollable change happening in my life, my changing was unavoidable. It was happening whether I wanted it to or not.

Even knowing that the person I am now wasn’t who and what I was in the past, I till had this inevitable fear that I will always be the bad things I hoped would change. That I was always going to sell myself short and find the love and support from people who will always put me second. I always feared that deep down within me, I was never a changed person, just someone who was good at hiding it.

Life tested me earlier this year when I met this guy while I was working at my job at the bookstore. This guy is one of our regulars; he would come in almost every day during his lunch break and we would engage in small talk. He had a good energy and vibe about him that I really liked, and for awhile I had a little crush on him. After putting my big girl pants on and gave him my Instagram to follow, we started to communicate on there. So whatever, I’m all giddy and I’m flirting like crazy, until he mentions that he has a serious girlfriend. Sure, that sucked for a quick moment, and in the back of my mind, I thought about the times I intervened in other people’s relationships despite knowing they were in them when I was younger. For a slight moment, I thought about that part of my life; I thought “how the hell am I supposed to be friends with a guy that I’m really into that’s in a relationship without being too flirty or open?” At first, that transition was hard. I found myself sharing a lot about myself and being flirty when I knew it was wrong, and it wasn’t until I reflected back on what I was doing that made me realize I was more than this. I deserved to be someone’s first. I deserved my own special kind of love. My self-worth is a lot more visible than it was when I was younger.

That’s when I knew I was a chang(ed/ing) person.

This guy and I are now really good friends. We have a shit ton in common and he’s someone I really enjoy talking about music with, passion projects, and just philosophical things about life. As time passed on, I now see him as a friend; it’s strange because I feared that my demiromantic side would fall for him once I got to know him better, but honestly I value the platonic aspect of our friendship. We support each other, we root for each other in our own individual crafts, and just have a normal ass friendship. I was able to change the narrative of a story that went down the same path one too many times. I was able to have control of my actions and do the right thing, in all honesty. It’s so easy to go back into old habits that were not healthy; the real challenge is to stop yourself from slipping into that old habit again.

I know it seems like it’s common sense, but doing something like that truly let me know that I’m capable of changing and being a changed person. I am able to recognize a pattern or behavior that I’m familiar with and just now know better. Doing what I did in this situation also helped me put some of my worries away; I will not let what happened 8 years ago come back around and happen again, because I grew up, and I am a changed person.

So here’s to always evolving in life. Here’s to looking back and see the changes you made in your life to make it better and to live it healthier. Here’s to the fact that it’s okay to always be constantly changing; as long as you remain true to who you are, that’s all that matters.

What remains true to me will always be the reason why I am forever changing.

I always challenge myself, possibly because I never think the work I do is enough for my satisfaction or because I know that I can do whatever I put myself through.

When I was a college student pursuing a BA degree, a Master’s degree seemed to be out of the equation. I wanted to further my studies, but I didn’t know if I ever would take that step towards going to graduate school. When I got accepted into the MA program within my college, I felt like it was meant to be; I was meant to go forward and continue my studies and get the MA degree that I always spoke about getting.

In 2016, I started grad school. In 2018, I finished and got my MA degree. I should feel accomplished. I should feel like I conquered the one thing that I wanted to do within my studies. I should feel like I’m qualified enough, that I know enough, that what I have and learned is enough to succeed within the field I want to be in.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m going through a hard, long conversation with myself about getting a Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition.

I’m fucking crazy, just say it. 

While in grad school, I told myself that I was going to move to get my Ph.D. after my Master’s, but with the exhaustion and poor mental health I experienced because of grad school, it told me otherwise. My Master’s was enough, and the experience I had as a grad student is something I will always feel good about because I did it, but I gained much more than just a new, shiny, degree. I gained a passion.

My mentor, Ro, and I have been working on writing a journal article this last month. It has been a project we discussed doing ever since I was a Teacher’s Assistant for her graduate class, and with the current COVID-19 circumstances, we decided to use this time to write and get something published. During the time I’m writing this, we are in the final stages of our official draft before we submit it to the journal we’ve been thinking of submitting it to! I don’t know if it was because we had all the time in the world to write this, but it took us literally a week to complete a full first rough draft, and for me – it was rewarding. Not only will the context of my thesis will be published in an actual academic journal, but this is ultimately the path I want to take in life! I want to be a part of the conversations happening in this field.

But, I still feel like I don’t belong.

I feel like my voice and my ideas are still so underdeveloped and immature; I still remain hopeful in a field that hasn’t really changed since it started. Sure, the ideas and the philosophies in this field have become more progressive and modern to fit its time, but it’s one thing to talk about it and then be about it, as Asao Inoue discussed in his CCCC 2019 Keynote Speech. In a field with so many voices speaking at once, I wonder where mine would even fit in. Is my register loud enough to be heard? Am I just living in a fantasy world where I fit in this field? I don’t know.

To some degree, I explained this to Ro during our phone conversation discussing about our article. One thing Ro does best is always reminds me that my voice matters, and my ideas are just as important as anyone else’s. Particularly in this article, she went on to say that my section of the article brings life to it because I’m new, I’m fresh, and I have something to say as someone who is new in this field. Ro is my mentor for a reason; she embodies where I want to be in my life career wise. Being as young as she is and as accomplished as she is, it’s definitely inspirational to see someone as successful and so driven in this field. Plus, she’s just an awesome person in general, and I’m grateful for her presence and professional guidance in my life.

It’s interesting (and motivational) to hear that I’m considered a new, fresh face in this community of writing studies. It surely doesn’t feel it, and I feel like I have a lot more reading and research to do on my side of things, but just hearing that to some degree, with some expertise, I know what this field of study is. Still, I’m not satisfied with what I know. I want to know more. I want to do more. I want to be more.

Pursing a PhD isn’t just something to take lightly, so I’m not writing this and applying for PhD programs as we speak. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about further down the road or when I feel like I’m ready. Maybe I’ll never be ready, maybe I’ll be ready sooner than later; who knows. If there’s anything that being in this space during quarantine has taught me, it’s that once my time at the bookstore is over (not anytime soon, but also I don’t plan to stay there forever), I know where my next step in my career is going.

Maybe I am enough. Maybe my Masters degree is enough to pursue a career in this field (or just a field where I’m helping college students… even teaching may be down the line), but maybe my voice and passion and drive to be in this field is enough.

Maybe me, in its purest form, is enough, despite how much I say I’m not.

I used to say sorry for the things I wasn’t even sorry for.

My worst nightmare was having confrontations with people I cared about the most only because I was always afraid of losing them for good. It was either I said sorry for having this confrontation in the place, or I was sorry for even having an opinion or say in the fighting subject at hand. I was always sorry, but the people I was saying sorry to never thought it was enough, and at every chance they had, they would make me feel bad enough to the point where I needed to say sorry.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’ve stopped saying sorry for the things I’m not sorry about.

A lot of my “saying sorry” habit developed a lot during my teenage years; there’s a lot of trauma I came to face during those important years of my life and the aftermath of all of that caused me to become extremely anxious around people. It later in life became social anxiety disorder and depression.

It wasn’t even the fact that I allowed people to step all over me when I was younger, it was the fact that I never had any self-confidence, and I always believed that if someone was mad or upset with me, it had to be my fault even when I knew I was in the right in some situations. I could name dozens of scenarios where I knew I was in the right in some arguments, and I still said sorry.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t my Capricorn stubbornness speaking and saying “I know I’m always right”, because I’m not – but I wasn’t always wrong either. The thing about saying sorry is that it takes a person to see past their own emotions and prides in order to make things right with the person you want to resolve things with. Of course, saying sorry too much loses its meaning, and because I was saying sorry even when I actually meant it, “sorry” began to become something that no one believed with me.

So, I stopped saying it whenever I didn’t have to say it.

And that’s how I started to see the weeds in my garden full of beautiful flowers.

With the help of my therapist and just simply being tired of the outcome of the relationships in my life, I started to challenge myself and those around me who always thought that they would get an apology out of me. No longer was I apologizing for causing the confrontation or being the stimulus of them, I was apologizing for the things I was able to control, which was the behavior I showcased during the confrontation and anything hurtful I said out of anger. Again, things that I’m able to control.

What I couldn’t control anymore was the feelings and behavior of the other people in these confrontations with me. I couldn’t help how people felt about me, and I couldn’t change their minds about me no matter how hard I wanted to.

And that’s been one of my toxic traits: wanting people to feel the same way about me the way I felt about them.

I’ve always wanted people to get past the confrontation and just move on from it because it was either something not fighting about, or it was something I couldn’t control or change. You could only say sorry so many times before you’re tired of doing so because getting the person’s forgiveness seems to become more difficult as time passes. So, I stopped and started to speak up for myself.

Not saying sorry all the time allowed me to prioritize my feelings and let the other person in the confrontation know how I felt. I started to call people on their bullshit because, well, people would call me out on mine and I’ve learned to adapt the fact that honesty is the best policy, even if things don’t always turn out in your favor. If you could be understanding of the other person’s feelings but that understanding isn’t reciprocated back, then that’s not a relationship you want to have in your life. 

One of the very last conversations I had with someone close to my heart was me not being sorry about how I felt. It was how I felt, and I wasn’t apologizing for my honesty. Because that’s the thing, one person’s honesty about something is another person’s answer. In this case, it was my honesty towards my previous relationship. I was sorry that it took me so long to take the rose-colored glasses off and be honest about how I was feeling about some of the issues we both put under the rug. I wasn’t sorry for being honest with my feelings, even if it resulted in a break-up. In the end, I believe we’re both in better places now in our lives, and just want nothing but the best for each other.

Sorry for once being your go-to sorry girl in the past. This woman ain’t having it though.

 

Identity is much more than just identity. It’s self-worth. It’s acceptance. It’s acknowledgment, It’s being loud enough to the point where you are heard and seen.

I’ve always been on the quiet side, and on the quiet side, your identity with the things that people don’t look at you for. You’re a female, you are a woman, you are heterosexual, you are “normal.”

As I got older, and as I started to feel and do things differently than I was supposed to, and even though I didn’t acknowledge these things until later on in life when I was now on my own, I am glad that I did.

Hi, my name is Liz, I came out as being demiromantic, and now I’m owning it.

Being demiromantic has still been something I haven’t vocally shared with people until just recently because, well, again I didn’t want to be judged. I didn’t want people to question my authenticity of the label, the sudden change in identity, and my “motive” into claiming it. The truth of the matter is is that things change, people evolve, and you start embracing parts of yourself you didn’t even know existed.

Like I mentioned in my “coming out” post, I feel a romantic attraction to people that I have a deep connection with; guy, girl, non-binary, no matter what sexuality you claim. It’s the human connection that drives my liking to you, but (and this is an important one) it doesn’t mean that I want to have sex with you or feel a sexual attraction to you. You can read about that in this particular post.

It’s still a part of my identity that I’m learning to embrace and get to know better. It’s something that I feel like it’s not such a huge change in my life because, well, I feel like I’ve always been this way without even knowing. I’ve always developed crushes on my best friends because, well, we had deep connections. As I got older, those crushes even carried on over with girls, but it’s never that “I’m sexually attracted to you, girl”. It’s the “your vibe is great, I like you a lot, and let’s be platonic as fuck, girl.”

So, I flirt with my girl-friends. I cautiously flirt with my cis guy friends (#boundaries). I flirt with my gay/lesbian friends. I’m the same with everyone; I’m also just the same me with everyone, and sometimes my mind just doesn’t know the difference between romantic love and platonic love because I value both so much.

I finally opened up about my demiromanticism at a happy hour gathering with two of my coworkers. Half of me believes that I was just feeling the vibes through the alcohol and announced it, but most of me believe that I’m just ready to share something like this to the people who I’m getting close to in my life. We were talking about each other’s romantic lives and when talking about “types” and just who we are into in general, I opened up and said that I’m demiromantic and “hoeing” wouldn’t necessarily work for me because my attraction in people requires more than just a “hey, how are you doing, you cute, let’s fuck” type of conversation. Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with that vibe for other people, but that isn’t just for me and that just speaks in how I identify as.

Of course, opening up about something so personal like that to my coworkers in a bar setting was nerve-wracking; you never know how people will take it, y’ know? But after saying what i had to say and let it be out in the open, they simply responded with, “I dig that.”

And that’s when I realized it’s about time I start embracing this part of my identity. Accepting it completely. Loving it completely. And the rest is history.

Owning my identity is just one of the many things that I intend to work on myself with. The core of my identity will always remain the same, but things beyond that will always be interchangeable. I may like this at one point, I may like that at another, but something like this has been such a hidden thing about me for such a long time, and I feel like this is one of those things where it’ll stay for quite some time.

This is me as of right now, at this moment, as I write this letter to you guys.

I am Liz.

I’ve fallen in love twice in my life.

My first love was a special one; I was a teenager and it was the love that I experienced all my firsts with: kiss, sex, relationship; truly everything. It was intoxicating and it was something I never thought I’d experienced because of my looks. I just never had someone like me as me and for the way that I looked, and it was amazing to experience the things my friends had in their own relationships and romantic lives. It lasted a decade, through many ups and downs, on and offs, good times and bad times, and through it all, it was a love that I couldn’t let go until I had to let go in order to find myself.

My second love was an unexpected one that still haunts me. It was a different type of love than my first one, it was vocal, it was romantic, it was too good to be true. Behind its beauty was an inferno of demons waiting to creep inside my soul and find a new home for years on end. It was toxic, it’s one I’ll never forget happened, and it will be something I’ll always work on in order to move on from all the guilt and shame I hold still from it.

I haven’t fallen in love for a third time yet, but I’m getting to know this girl a little more day by day and I know that she deserves to have love and be loved for who she is and what she represents in this world.

Hi, my name is Liz and I deserve love.

It’s the oldest form of advice in the book, yet it still feels like many of us in this world sell ourselves short and allow others to truly determine our level of worthiness. For years, I’ve allowed people to control how I saw myself; if someone thought I was annoying for being bubbly or energetic, I saw myself as annoying as well. If someone thought I was easy, too fat to be liked, self-centered, or stupid, I thought I was too. For years, I thought everything that happened to me was deserved; I thought I was such a horrible person and deserved to be punished for being such a bad person. I thought I deserved to be second best, the secret, the one that put those I loved first when in reality I wasn’t ever no one’s first priority. To this day, that still affects me; I meet new people and put everything into them because I simply don’t have “closer friends” back home, but the reality is not everyone sees me with the same priority, and that makes me stay introverted and closed in because why even bother trying to prove my importance in someone’s life? 

Despite everything I went through to get me to this point in my life, I still respected the ones that put me through all the bad things, because perhaps I put them through bad shit as well.

But what did that say about me? Why to this day do I still defend these people and not myself?

The truth is, I didn’t respect myself back then. I trusted people and their judgments instead of my own because I was told I was overthinking things, jumping to conclusions, stupid. I didn’t trust myself; to some extent, I still don’t, but I’m learning how to nowadays. I’m realizing that my life moving forward does not have to have the same narrative as my past, that I can do better, that I can love myself better. 

I go to therapy not to just handle my anxiety disorder and major depression, but as of lately I’ve been using my sessions to talk out some unresolved issues from my past and try to use that time to learn how to forgive myself and let go of the things that happened at that time. Last week, we began to talk about those things and it was the first time I honestly spoke about everything that happened. That meant that I didn’t leave anything out of the story, no matter how it made me look at the time, and no matter how it “tarnished my image”. My therapist was quite speechless to know that there was more to the story than I led on previously, but she simply looked at me and said I deserve love, and the things that happened to me in the past are not things that people who truly love you do. I take responsibility for my actions during that time in my life, but I was very much a victim of a lot of things: emotional abuse, mental abuse, controlling and manipulative behavior. It may not have been as bad as other people in this world, but it doesn’t mean my own personal trauma behind this didn’t affect me and the way I’ve lived my life. 

I walked out of that therapy session in tears. I felt extremely exposed, sad, ashamed, and embarrassed for things that happened nearly a decade ago. But, I felt just a little bit lighter than I have in a long time. It was okay that I was still angry and resentful over the things that happened, especially now that I’m learning and embracing the fact that I deserve respect, love, and worthiness not only from other people but from myself.

I deserve love just like any other human being in this world, and that’s all I’m aiming for in life.

Ten years ago, I lost my virginity. I was 16.

While being a teenager, and even being in my early twenties, I was very sexually active in my past relationship. I was quite confident when it came to my sexuality; it allowed me to become anyone I wanted to be, and that was the fun part of sex. You get worked up, you become this dominant sex kitten, and just have sex with someone you trust and honor with your body.

But then, something in me changed and ultimately stopped wanting to have sex.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I do not want to have sex with you.

I wanted to talk about this because I feel this is something I always mention in posts and say one day I’ll talk about; well today is that day. 

Let me put this disclaimer out there before anyone speculates otherwise: my decision to sexual abstinence isn’t because something horrible happened in my last relationship. In no way am I traumatized with sex, it’s just become something I’m not looking for, nor want in a really long time because, well, sex has become just another thing that I do not want in my life at this point.

This choice was a personal one, not because I’m now this single 26-year-old woman with no game, but because my preferences and sexuality have been questioned for quite some time. 

I started to feel this lack of wanting sex for over a year; sex was still fun on some occasions, but it used to take forever for me to finally get past the initial start of it. I was still enjoying it, but it started to become less and less fun for me because I started to feel repulsive about it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me; it was now becoming this thing that I started to get anxious about to the point that I even had anxiety attacks prior to having sex. It was a weird feeling and talking about this with the people who mattered was even harder to do.

When things got complicated and months passed by, I had to re-evaluate my thoughts and feelings and my behavior on the matter and well, a lot of things came from it.

I figured that I was a demiromantic. I found myself still being romantically attracted to people that I had deep connections with, and I knew I was still sexually attracted to guys but it still didn’t mean that I wanted to have sex with them. I realized that my relationship with sex needed some repair; that my mindset and my outlook on it needed some work in order to feel confident and willing to want to have it in the future. For a while, I thought maybe I was just strictly asexual, but it was just a label that didn’t completely right with me, because… I mean, I still feel things when looking at hot guys and by hot guys I mean Korean idols, but I just don’t want to have sex with anyone I don’t know!

It was just a decision that felt right for me at this moment. I just want to build meaningful platonic relationships with people, secretly admire cute guys from afar and want nothing from them, just living my damn life the way I want to, and that just doesn’t involve sex right now. I have work to do when it comes to accepting and embracing sex again and eventually I will! Right now, this is just my decision in life and I’m content with it.

At first, it was something I was quite ashamed of. It felt like something was wrong with me, I was feeling the same type of things that most sexually-traumatized people feel, yet  I wasn’t. It just felt like feeling the way I felt wasn’t normal, and for the longest time, I tried to ignore the feelings I was feeling. After accepting this was just the way I am as of now and started talking about it more with my therapist, I’m glad that I did.

I hope that other people who may feel the way that I do start to embrace this and not see it as a negative thing. It’s just one thing that I discovered about myself and it’s just the wave of life!

So yeah! I’ll talk to you, maybe laugh at your silly jokes, connect with you on a deeper level, but I’m not having sex with you. 

*Maureen from RENT’s voice* Take me for what I am!