New Year New City

This originally started as a post about my departure from New York City and the lessons I learned, but a few months have passed, so has my birthday and now it’s a new year. Since I very rarely get these bursts of motivation to write something up, I decided to somewhat combine it all into one post. 

new city, new year, new me

In October of 2023 I left the city I had always dreamed of living in, right as I hit the 6 year mark. I did not go too far, just over 200 miles south to Washington, D.C. our nation's capital. This is something I had been thinking about seriously doing for about a year. Often I would get the question if I planned on living in New York City forever. I usually said yes or maybe I’d move to D.C. I love living in a big city where I can walk everywhere and have access to so much just steps away. When I first started giving that answer I wasn’t really serious, but at some point something changed. Part of the reason for the move was work, as I started really settling into my new career and thinking about the next step, the only thing that really called my name was political journalism. The other big motivation for the move was, simply put, I was over the city. Last year, in my only post I wrote “The honest truth is that I really don’t feel like I have accomplished much… part of the reason I moved to New York was to find myself, but at this current moment I feel more lost than I was when I first arrived.” Looking back and reading that, it kind of clicked for me. I didn’t like the city anymore and I didn’t like who I had become being in that city. I’ve gone through a lot of growth in the past six years, but just because there is growth doesn’t mean there aren’t setbacks as well. I went in depth with it in last year's post, but I don’t feel as lost as I did back then. As the months go on, I get more and more confident in my job and career path, reaffirming myself that I’ve made the right decision. 

As much as I miss New York, I knew it was the right thing to do at the right time. She, as in New York City, tells you when it’s time to leave and it’s best not to argue with her. Since I moved to New York I thought that I would spend at least 10 years there, it felt too early to leave. Something I wrote on my first day living in New York in 2017 - “New York is going to be good to me, this is where I belong, I can feel it.” Was she good to me? Not really, but that’s not a bad thing. Was it where I belonged, at that moment in time it was. At this moment in time, it’s not. I have learned a lot of lessons living in New York, from the basics of how to manage money to the more complex realizations of friendships, dating, and career steps. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to always follow my instinct, about anything and everything. I knew deep inside, or maybe not that deep, that it was time to leave, at least for now. This is just a part of my journey, the next chapter. 

Less than two months after moving to D.C. was my 29th birthday, which comes with the dread of just one year left of being young (20s) before I hit the ancient decade (30s). In my 20s I hit a lot of missteps but I finally feel like I’m headed in the right direction, although the thought of being behind in life creeps in quite often. There are a lot of goal posts that I wish to hit that I keep missing but I have stopped being so hard on myself. I say this to so many people who feel the same way and sometimes I need this reminder myself, everyone has their own path in life and everything is meant to happen when it’s supposed to happen. It took me a while to realize that but it’s one of the most important things I’ve learned. My 20’s haven’t been what I always thought they’d be and it really sucks, I am not going to give this a “but” because I try not to live with regret. Reflecting on where I am, this was just all a part of my journey and has helped me become who I am now. I can try to make up for it, but there are some things that are just meant to be done in your 20s. I do have one year left so we’ll see what happens this year, I do feel hopeful. 

I will end with this, I feel down on myself a lot and put a lot of pressure on myself, especially when it comes to my career but I also know that I have accomplished a lot and there are people out there that are proud of me. Not sure who told me this, but I felt it important to write down - “you have a lot of people rooting for you, people that you will make proud, don’t see that as pressure but motivation.” That brings me peace. 

As I was finishing writing this, the song Freebird II by Parquet Courts came on and you know what, I do feel free. 

“I’ve learned how not to miss the age of tenderness

That I am so lucky to have seen once

And now that I’ve become older I’ve learned how to brush over 

My history and how it’s sequenced”

“I came to be

I feel free like you promised I’d be

Free, I feel free like you promised I’d be

Free, I feel free like you promised I’d be”

Five Years in New York

And somehow I’ve survived, kind of. 

I don’t want to come on here and try to list off accomplishments or lack thereof. Everyone has their own timeline which is something I have to remind myself of constantly. 

I started this blog right after I moved to New York thinking that I would chronicle all my adventures in this new city, a way for me to show all those back home what I’ve been up to. Well that hasn’t really panned out how I expected it to. The honest truth is that I really don’t feel like I have accomplished much. In my first post I wrote that part of the reason I moved to New York was to find myself, but at this current moment I feel more lost than I was when I first arrived. 

Not to blame the pandemic for all my troubles, but I will blame it for a few. Based on life on the internet, it feels like everyone and their mother found themselves, did some soul searching and came out of it a new person. The shutdown definitely changed me, but not necessarily for the better. I came out of it timid and scared of the world. Being stuck in New York wasn’t great. It probably wouldn’t have felt as bad being at my parents but being forced indoors in a small apartment every day and all you hear in the streets are sirens is unsettling. After things “opened” back up, crime started rising. Riding the subway, the only choice I have in transportation, became a game of survival. Will there be a shooting? Will I get sexually harrased? Oh and don’t forget there’s still a virus going around that you can easily catch on the train. And since New York is the epicenter of all that’s bad, let's throw in two more viruses and see how well they do. 

I spent my five year anniversary in Washington DC, the next place I might end up living. It took a lot for me to work up the courage to go explore a new city on my own after the pandemic but oh how much I loved exploring a new city. Just wandering around, figuring out where to go and how their public transportation works. Walking down a street just because it was pretty. It reminded me of what I was like when I first moved to New York, eager and excited for all the new. 

But I’ve been scared, anxious about it all. Every so often, in the moments I’m feeling really down about being here, I think back as to why I even decided to move here in the first place. One of those moments was from an email where someone told me to ‘BE BOLD’ and I really took that to heart. He said to never be afraid to ask for what you want, which after being shut down so much these past five years, gets harder and harder to do. 

I do wonder if I will ever get back to that person I was when I first moved here. I was so naive but I was happy and excited to tackle this big city and for any challenge it brought my way. In my first post I wrote this: “Life is full of challenges, and I know moving to a new city, across the country, not knowing anyone, trying to figure life out is probably one of the toughest ones, but I am ready to take it head on. I followed a dream of mine and I am now on a journey of self-discovery and to be the best version of myself possible. I hope that if anything comes from this risk, I learn and I grow.“ 

At this current moment, I feel stuck in a version of myself that I don’t like. I know I could be better. When I first moved here I had goals I wanted to achieve by a certain time frame, and I sure as hell haven’t but I am still here and I am still going to keep on trying. I’ve seen people come and go so I know not everyone can survive and I’ve had my moments where I wanted to pack it all up but I never felt like it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to give up on the city and my younger self. 

Part of me feels like it’s time to move on, so will I? Maybe.  

On Identity

““Why does everyone ask me if I’m Latina, isn’t it obvious?” - Alexa Demi”

There is nothing that bothers me more than when people ask about my ethnicity. When I try to vent to people about this, people don’t seem to understand my frustration. For most, it’s a simple question. 

On the surface level it’s an annoyance with men and dating. It’s ridiculous the amount of times I’ve told a man I’m latina and he then utters ~spicy~. It’s a very dangerous stereotype and just simply annoying. I don’t like it when people make assumptions about me, so this especially irritates me. When I moved to the east coast I started getting a lot of people thinking that I am pretty much anything but Mexican. In response to that, I started having people guess before I told them. It was fun and interesting at first, but it’s started to have a different effect on me. 

It now has me questioning myself, maybe I’m not really Mexican. If nobody else can see it in me, why should I? Eventually I started a list to keep track and it has become a wide ranging list of ethnicities and nationalities from all over the world. The racially ambiguous “trend” does play into it, but I won’t go into that beast of a discourse. 

A few years after I had moved to New York, a Mexican friend of mine invited me to a party that was composed of family and friends. My friends family and the community they surround themselves with come from a part of Mexico that is prominently indigenous. A man asked me to dance and hesitantly agreed since I still fear men at times, while dancing he asked me what I was, I said Mexican. He was shocked and then asked me where my parents are from and I told him their home state. He then proceeds to say that no wonder I was so pretty unlike the other girls at the party. I didn’t know what to say so I just nervously laughed. After that interaction, I started to realize that people on the east coast don’t tend to place me with Mexican because they equate Mexican with darker complexion and indigenous features, which I don’t have. 

It might come as a surprise to some people but Mexico is a very diverse country. It might even surprise people to know that there are African and Asian descendants in Mexico. They are still Mexican, regardless of their ethnicity. 

On a deeper level it does make me question myself and my identity. Growing up I never felt that connected to my Mexican roots, my parents didn’t expose me to much outside of our home. I also didn’t feel that American because I was Mexican and as pale as my skin was, there is still racism everywhere. So here it comes, I wasn’t Mexican enough for the Mexican and I wasn’t American enough for the Americans. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that it did have some type of affect on me and being able to fit in. It got me thinking, who am I and why does it matter?

Recently I went to go watch the Pedro Almodovar film Parallel Mothers and the subplot of it was the main character trying to excavate a mass grave from her hometown where her great-grandfather and other men from the town were buried during the Spanish Civil War and give them a proper burial. I wish I could remember the exact quotes but at the end of the film someone makes a comment about why does she care to dig up the past and the main character, visibly upset at the comment says something along the lines of you have to know your past and where you came from to be able to look to the future. Which is something that really resonated with me. After the movie, I decided to purchase a genealogy kit, something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while but always talked myself out of. I know what the results are going to be, Spanish. Both of my parents last names are Spanish. But what if there’s something else there? Will that hold the answers to what I’ve been looking for all this time? Now I’m just waiting for the results, but what am I going to do once I get them? I’ll know my genealogy and part of my family history, so what else is there to search for? 

My genealogy is part of who I am, it’s what I look like and how people see me. But who am I? This is just one part of discovering who I am.