Category: Voiceless Rant: The Series

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz.

In the time I’m writing this, I’m going though some type of insecurity that I haven’t felt ever in my life. In some way, it’s a new insecurity of mine; it’s something that I couldn’t do in my past due to my circumstances and quite frankly this post alone contradicts the whole damn point of this month’s installment of:

I say this because as I’m about to write how much I want to hide myself from the world, here I am exposing myself to it and here I am writing my feeling about me not wanting to be an open book anymore.

June was a really weird month for me. I found myself going through a new wave of depression that usually comes around this time of year naturally. I get bad seasonal depression, and that season is the summer for me. It started to creep up on me once June hit and the hot weather was constant throughout the weeks, and for still being out of work during out due to the pandemic (I work at a college), I didn’t have that distraction that usually helps me focus on other things besides the things that I overthink about.

The constant thing that kept me happy was Kpop, specifically building my album and photocard collection. During this time to myself, I decided that I wanted to collect photocards (mainly Victon’s) and open my trading account to connect with other traders and sellers in this community. As I’m writing this, it’s been a week since I opened up the account and I’ve made more connections with people than I’ve done in last couple of months. It’s refreshing to talk to people about things that you like and that they also like and just building a connection off of that (of course, with selling and trading in the mix!) At first, I felt embarrassed wanting to be so involved in collecting; I was constantly being judged by those around me for “having a teenage hobby” and liking Kpop music, and I just began to feel that shame I felt about something that makes me happy all over again, like it was 2019 all over again.

And because of that, I more than ever want to stop sharing myself on here and on the internet because I’m tired of thinking what other people think of me and my interests and quite frankly, I was a lot happier just being on my corner of the internet, by myself, secretly liking the things I liked and that made me happy.

But, I run a blog off of my experiences and my thoughts and quite frankly this post is doing the exact thing I don’t want to do. I’m a writer, and I identity being a write before than being a woman.

Like, let’s cut to the bullshit and get straight to the point: I’m tired of the little comments and looks and questions about my interests from friends, family, and possibly those who follow me on any social media platform I’m active on. I’m tired of the eye rolls every time something with my name comes in the mail, I’m tired of the anxiety I feel whenever I talk about my interest and current hobbies with a smile on my face, and I’m quite frankly just tired of constantly playing the judgments again and again in my head because deep down inside I also think those same things about myself and feel them as well.

I’m tired of other people amplifying them for me.

It sounds so stupid and childish, sure; like it’s totally an issue that shouldn’t be called an issue. It’s the fact that my anxiety disorder is making it feel like it’s a huge problem. My anxiety loves to feed off of the judgments and comments from people, and although I wish I knew how to stop seeking approval or validation that I’m not these things that I think of myself, I still do, and my anxiety eats up anything negative towards the things that makes me happy, whether it’s people, my personality, my interest in Kpop music and collecting; whatever it is.

That anxiety turns into self-loathe; it constantly tells myself I should be a certain way because I’m a certain age, and it makes me regret wanting to ever like certain things, for instance: Kpop. I’m so close to making a rational decision like sell my collection and album and make my side of my room appear more like a 26-year-old rather than a 16-year-old’s because I’m so tired of the internal I keep having with myself about whether it’s age-appropriate to like and be involved in something like this.

But like, it’s fucking music, there’s no age-restriction on music, so why do other people (myself included) feel like I don’t belong within this specific genre of music? I swear it’s such a stupid fucking argument with myself, but it’s been bothering me for months.

It started to bother me when I started to really get into Victon at the beginning of this year. I started to buy their previous discography to start off an album collection because I was really getting into them and their music, and whatever goodies came with the albums I just mindlessly left in the albums because I wasn’t collecting the photocards or anything.

Fast forward to April, and I got extremely into buying photocards to start off a collection. By the time it was June, I started trading with other people around the country for the cards I’d wanted and vice versa. I will admit I spent a shit ton of money on this collection, but it makes me so fucking happy and every time I get a card in the mail, it feels like Christmas morning.

But when it started to become noticeable that I was into collecting, I started to get judged for liking and doing this. “Liz, you’re 26-years-old.” “This is something I would’ve expect you to do when you were a teenager.” “Liz is living her 12-year-old dream.” “What’s up with you listening to those *Asian* boys?” (And let’s just say the word used wasn’t Asian, I just don’t want to repeat the racist comment) While the comments are meant to just push my buttons, I don’t find them funny because those comments and jokes are internal judgments I tell myself all the time, and it’s just so discouraging.

Perhaps I’m just not used to sharing myself like this. Prior to 2020, was very anxious showing or being myself publicly because of the situation I was in, but now that I started to embrace my identity and who I am more and more, I feel all the negative things that come being me.

Anyway, if you read this far into this very true rant, thank you. Also, if this even makes it to the blog, then I guess I decided to just publish the scheduled posts I had on here for July. I can’t say where I’ll be during this time that this publishes; maybe I’ll feel better and maybe this was just a short funk of mine! But as of right now, I just don’t want to be on the internet for a bit. I just feel like hiding for a short period of time and keep to myself until I feel better about whatever this is.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz.

In the midst of the blog being very music heavy this month due to my interests, I wanted to take a step back and reflect on what this month was like outside of the Kpop music world; it was a month of hardships, fights, awareness and pride for those who’s voices are silenced, misjudged, and stereotyped due to society’s backwards way of thinking once.

I think back to how life was just a decade ago when people still thought LGBT+ jokes were funny and racially charged comedy was something that was huge. I think back at even my own actions and my own racially charged/gay insults or jokes that I told when I was a kid in order to hurt someone that hurt me. It’s the oldest tale in the book when we say “we are not those people anymore and I apologize for the things that I said in my past” but it’s the truest. We all said some pretty fucked up shit in our past. We didn’t know any better and us as an society didn’t realize it quick enough to know that these ideologies and “social trends” cost people their lives and undervalued their struggles to be seen and heard. People that look different and love different (which is it really any different?) are not the center of your jokes, and we as a society know that and practice being better people in society.

Here’s this month’s installment of:

In November 2019, I wrote a blog post about my romantic attraction and how I realized it changed throughout my self-discovery. I don’t talk about it much these days because I’m very much learning a lot about this identity of mine and I also believe that there are louder and more important stories to tell than my own. For those who don’t know, I am a demiromantic; it’s when you don’t feel any romantic attraction for a person unless you develop a deep, meaningful and emotional connection with someone. For me, that meant that my lines of romantic love and platonic love were sometimes blurred, and I end up being romantically attracted to my closest friends; no matter how they identified. To this day, I find myself still being romantically attracted to my friends but of course I am learning how to build up boundaries with them so that my mind doesn’t confuse friendship qualities and romantic relationship qualities.

Although this is the perfect time to talk about something like this since it is bringing awareness to a sexuality that is fairly uncommon or overlooked as “something everyone does, duh” (I don’t think everyone falls in love with their friends of the same sex though…) I am still not an oppressed person. I am a demiromantic/heterosexual white girl; nobody targets me on a daily basis due to the color of my skin or who I choose to love. Nobody is chasing me with bats trying to beat me up because I don’t follow their beliefs. I don’t have a family that kicks me out of the house for being anything different than what is considered “normal”. I’m not living the hardest life being a demiromantic person, and so I chose not to openly express it to the world because, well, there’s more important things we should be talking about.

It’s the fact that for June to be LGBT+ Pride Month, so many LGBT POC are either getting murdered for what they are and who they love, are being excommunicated from the rest of their family for going “against the Bible” and who are constantly the target for people to rage out on just because they are LGBT+. For a world becoming more and more progressive as the years go on, we still have people out here calling the LGBT+ Community slurs. I remember I had to correct someone close to me for calling a transgender woman “a t****y” because it’s a damn slur & for being a sister to a sibling who is trans, I felt the need to correct them for my sibling’s behalf, just how I would correct someone for saying the N-word that wasn’t Black.

I am very grateful that my family was understanding enough when I told them I was demiromantic. I am very grateful that even though they might fully understand what it means for me to be demiromantic, they were still able to love and support me for who I was. I am very grateful that I’m able to be so open and honest and still feel like no matter what, I don’t have people looking at me or targeting me for being this way.

I am also very grateful that I get to use my platform and my white privilege to educate those who don’t know or understand the many things of the LGBT+ community.

So, yeah, Happy Pride Month to this demiromantic person. But even more so: allow the voices who are constantly silenced to have this time to finally talk and express themselves.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz.

This time of year, I’m reminded of my past a lot. I deem myself a walking calendar, and when something has affected me or my life in a negative way, I’m bound to remember it. It’s a blessing and a curse; a blessing because I have a pretty good memory, but a curse because people think that it holds more significance in my life than it does. In the past, I’ve been scolded so much about not remembering my past as accurately as possible, that nowadays it’s the hardest fucking to do.

While May is still one of my favorite months out of the year because of the warmer weather and kickstart to the summer, It’s one of the hardest months to mentally get through because a lot of that traumatic shit happened around this time of year.

But fuck being silent about it.

With that being said, here’s this month’s installment of:

I talk a lot about my 18th year because a lot of dark shit happened that year. Eight years later and I still carry that baggage around me every now and then, but slowly I’m letting it go and forgiving myself the more I talk about it. My therapist, Cathy, told me one of the most important things that I think I’ll carry for the rest of my life: “by talking about it, you’re diffusing the energy behind it.”

So, hi. This is me using this month’s voiceless rant to go on a rant about some things that I’m learning to let go of.

Eight years ago in May, many things happened. After 5 months of emotional abuse and death threats, I let Person #2 back into my life because I was still in love with them. The thing was, I was already interested in another person, Person #3; a new person that didn’t know who I was or what I was at my high-school because from the hours of 4pm through 7pm at an after-school workshop, I was just Liz. I wasn’t “Liz, the slut” or “Homewrecking bitch Liz” or “Liz, the girl with the cut marks on her arms”.

Balancing Person #3, then Person #2, and then Person #1 was a lot for me, but I didn’t complain. For once in 5 months, I felt like people were finally looking at me, liking me, and giving me the validation and attention that I desperately wanted. I was 18 and lonely, what can I say?

Person #2 didn’t really last long in my life. Sure, they had a hold on me and I spent my time with this person every now and then, but I was finally at a place where I wanted to leave everything behind and start new with someone who was interested in me and single. Spending the first day with Person #3, I kissed them. Big mistake. It gave them a perception of me that I was trying to avoid with them. Slowly, the person I was trying to keep away from this person started to seep through. I trusted this person way too quickly, told them my issues, and how heartbroken I was with Person #1 since I was in love with them but always felt like their second choice. They even told me a story about a long-distance lover they had, which at the time thought was the sweetest thing. Person #3 and I were just two lost souls, and I guess their company felt right. Until it wasn’t.

I made a stupid move traveling across the city to see them one day. I even remember the only reason I went was because Person #1 hurt me so bad two nights before that I just wanted to let them go, and let Person #2 go as well. I lied to them, I lied to my family, and anything could’ve happened. Of course, I didn’t think that a person I barely knew would do anything that would later on stay with me for the next 7 years.

I didn’t go over their house to have sex. Make out? Sure. Kiss some more? Sure. I was fucking depressed, and all I wanted was to enjoy someone else’s company. When Person #3 and I started to make out, we took it to their room, and that’s when things got intense. Sure, the making out was fun, I won’t deny that, but they clearly had another thing in mind.

They were trying to get through my buttoned-up jeans and touch me, despite me saying no. They called it stubbornness and playing “hard to get” or a tease, I call it I don’t want to have sex with you because I don’t know you and I value my personal morals. I don’t know how many times I told them no, that no I didn’t wanna touch them back, that this isn’t what I wanted, and I don’t know how they stopped trying. At 18, I didn’t think much of it and didn’t walk out of their house scared. Uncomfortable, yeah, but not scared for my life. As I got older, I realized that one of the reasons it took me so long to reconcile this in my head was because I simply wanted to forget it. After a while, I dissociated from it. I felt like I was betraying the love I had for Person #1, but also I realized just how lucky I was to get out of that fucking house the way I did. Without knowing Person #3 that well, god forbid they could’ve assaulted me. Who really knows what could’ve happened?

I recall this day because it was the catalyst for a lot of my issues after that. I lied about it a lot of times when the topic was brought up – to the point where I couldn’t even remember my own lies. I was a scared, naive teenager that didn’t want the one person I loved to leave me. Let’s call a spade a fucking spade. Little by little, the truth would come out, but one thing stayed consistent in my story: I didn’t have sex with Person #3. I wish I was stronger back then to stick my ground and just have a “take me or leave me” mentality, but I really wanted this person to believe me not only because it was the truth, but because I didn’t want their image of me to be tarnished.

I vaguely remember 5 years later that I told the entire truth to them. I hoped that this day that I regretted since it happened would disappear and be a thing of the past, but somehow it came up at every chance it could. I thought that coming clean would end it for good. Mentally I was in a better place and I was a better person than my teenage years, but it never seemed like it was enough.

I found out years later that Person #3 spread some rumors about me. They said I did this, I did that, and that they took “Person #1’s bitch” from them. If it wasn’t bad enough, I now had to battle rumors similar to those that were spread while I was a teenager. For a while, I felt like I was just deemed this person that people thought I was and no matter how much I grew and learned from my mistakes and even took responsibility for my actions, it was never enough. This me was never enough because the version that was always lingered in my life. It followed me to my 20’s, and it followed me to this post.

I don’t blame anyone for what happened in my past. I’m not here to point fingers and say I turned out this way because of this person and this situation. I’m way more forgiving than I believe I am, but it doesn’t mean that I easily come to terms that I “deserved” for this moment in my past to follow me to the point where I felt like I always had to remember it minute-to-minute.

A lot of things happened during my 18. What happened because Person #2 and I is forgiven and let go on my end. I chose to let that and them go because it was time and it didn’t affect me the way it once did. It was about time I forgave them (not literally but figurately) for myself, own my responsibilities for my actions and dumb decisions, and it has officially become a thing of the past. Person #3, although I do not have contact or any means of communication with this person, is more of a situation rather than the person I need to let go of. I don’t give a shit about this person, but the situation at hand is one I’m slowly trying to work on and diffuse because it was something I was forced to carry for years on end. As for Person #1, I’m currently working on that forgiveness and letting them go figurately as we speak.

I write this not to expose anyone or to put people’s business out there. It’s my story to tell, and it’s something that I always wanted to talk about for the sake of my own mental health. I talk about it now because I know what my worth is. I know I’m not anyone’s property or territory, I’m not this lost chick that lost herself in the people around her years ago, and I’m not my fucking past. 

So this year, this particular month, I am using my voice to finally speak out on something that I kept ranting to myself for years on end. Don’t judge me for who I was, what I did, and for the journey that got me here. Judge me for the now, the present, and for the version of myself standing in front of you at this moment.

Here’s to the loudest voice I’ve had on “A Voiceless Rant”.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks not just for me but for the entire world. With COVID-19 rapidly spreading and the United States (especially New York State) being one of the hardest places that the virus has hit, it’s been nothing but rough, stressful, and frustrating not knowing what our next move is.

As I’m writing this, as a whole we are close to hitting 1 million cases of COVID-19, and by the time this is published on the blog only God knows how many more cases will there be, which is scary.

Before we continue, let’s introduce this month’s installment of:

Personally, it’s kind of crazy how much I’ve digressed mentally between last month’s installment of this series and this month’s post. It’s made me realized just what keeps me happy, and it’s honestly having a routine and some productivity in my life. Having those two things allows me to concentrate on the task at hand and my present surroundings instead of being in my head 24/7, constantly overthinking things.

Now that those two things are now non-existent due to COVID-19, I find myself coming victim to what I expect to be what a lot of people are experiencing: depression.

The depression I am feeling feels very similar to the one I felt all of last year when I didn’t have the schedule and routine I depend on now. I was home for most of my weeks, I was unemployed trying to find a job that would hire me, and I had a lot of time to overthink everything and be inside my head for days on end.

Of course, I have to remind myself that no matter what, we will get through this — that I will get through this — and I’m not alone in this process. Not only do I not have control of what’s going on, everyone else is in the same boat, and the only thing we can control at a time like this is how we take care of yourselves. We can keep our mental health intact by making sure you are keeping in contact with the people you care for as well as keeping your mind as focused and concentrated as possible! Personally, for me, I try to keep in contact with my coworkers and very few friends here and there to just feel like my relationships aren’t being compromised during this pandemic and if that means that I have to make the first move and hit them up, then just so be it. 

Personally, I am keeping my mind focused and busy by writing. Not only am I writing letters for the blog, but I am getting around to start writing for the academic journal article that I started last year! Although this method isn’t for everyone (if you simply don’t feel motivated or well enough to pick up a new skill or work on a passion project, that’s perfectly fine) and remember that we are all different and we all cope differently! Personally, for me, I feel my happiest when I’m busy and productive and working on something or towards something. Because I control my emotions, I’m going to do what’s best for them.

I hope everyone is going through this scary time as taking care of themselves because honestly, that’s all we can control in life. Sure, things may not go our way and the simplest things are now some of the most stressful things to do, but we just have to go through the motions, and that includes how we react to whats going on around us and how we take care of our mental health as well as our physical health.

Stay safe, and take care!

Dear, guys – Welcome back to Letters From Liz!

New month, new letters, new adventures, and a new installment of:

We are just jumping into it this month! 2020 thus far has been such a great year; between the new experiences I’m having, new milestones I’m hitting for myself, and the work I am doing to forgive myself and my past, it’s been bittersweet.

Back in January, I was able to go to my first Kpop concert by myself, in February I went out with some of my coworkers for a happy hour, and now in a couple of weeks, I’ll be traveling to Florida to see one of my closest friends, Tori, for the first time. It’s things like this that make me feel proud of the progress I’ve made within the last year; it’s crazy to think that this time last year I was just this anxious mess of a person that just felt really lonely for most of my days.

If I didn’t believe this before, I truly believe in it now: everything happens for a reason. My last chapter of life had to end in order to begin this new chapter. I started my job at the bookstore six months ago, I made some great friends in the process, gained some confidence when talking to customers, made moves to make new friends, and starting to work on myself, by myself, for myself.

Therapy has played a major role in this transformation, to be honest. As I mentioned a couple of hundred times, I’m using my therapy sessions to talk a lot about my past to diffuse the energy it still has on me so that I can learn to forgive myself and move on with my life. Since then, there have been plenty of opportunities that disguised itself as a fresh start and something new, but still had many of the undertones of who I was in my past and I really had to remind myself that I deserve better and I deserve respect, and not just from others but from myself as well.

Sometimes, I don’t remember the person I was because she feels like a distant memory. She feels like a different entity like she lived in someone else’s body and I only know of her by observing her from the outside. She feels like someone I haven’t known for a while, and maybe I haven’t – it has been a half of year already, but it doesn’t even feel like I’ve only known this version of myself for that short period of time.

I feel like I’ve known her my whole life.

I feel like this is the version of myself that I knew I was always supposed to be and wanted to be, and once I got here, I feel like I don’t know who and how I was before now. Sure, I know how passive I was and how anxious and depressed I was as well (and there’s always going to be parts of myself that have those traits embedded in me), but if I’m this far into this transformation, then I feel like I can do anything.

So, three months into 2020 and it’s going better than I expected. Of course, things can happen because that’s just how life is, but at least I’m mentally in a better place in order to handle whatever comes my way. I’ve had my fair share of really good years and thought that I was cured of the sadness and anxiety that I’ve always carried with me, not knowing that I was even carrying it around. This time will be different.

This time, I’m working on myself while trying to live my best life. I’m learning to break out of old habits so that this time around, I don’t allow bad things to affect me as severely as they used to. I want to learn how to process things as they happen, analyze them (as much as I can in a healthy matter) and ask myself what can I possibly learn from this experience to make me a stronger person. I have my whole life ahead of me, so sadness is inevitable. 

This time is different.