JE #3A

I have identity crises pretty much every day and I am feeling them at the moment too. And for many of those contradictory identities I am still unsure of how I really feel about them and am unsure of how to word them? I can write many, many words about them but I’ll try to keep my cornucopia of uncertainties to a short (cross your fingers) blog post. I grew up being told I was Mexican and German and that is how I identified myself to people. With a Mexican-American mom from a Spanish speaking household who grew up in El Paso then Echo Park listening to Jackie Wilson and a grandfather from Juárez and grandmother from El Paso and a white German dad who grew up in a hella German place in Canton, Ohio who died when I was five. I liked the astonishment I got from most people, I liked being different. But now that contradictory identity pulls my heart-ropes in different directions. And it pissed me off or it does more so now, the memories of that random dude asking if I was really my mom's daughter because you know she's this Mexicana taking care of some white youngin, couldn't possibly be her biological kid. And is my identity really contradictory? I do not feel comfortable or allowed to identify as Mexican-American, Chican@, German-American, white, or even as mixed. For every identity I am always missing something, either a fluency in the language, the cultural knowledge, money and social status, phenotypes, patriotism, geographical location, or something else that I couldn’t properly check off a box to. And should I have to be one identity? I felt that over time I would feel comfortable in one, have a few words that would encompass who I am. And while I feel the importance and significance of words, I do not want them for my identity. I prefer the mesh of swirling winds in my mind that sometimes morph into violent tornadoes of contradictions or simmer down to a soft warm whisper of understandings that I carry with me. And also I hate where I live/have lived? And I try to think of where I would move if I had the resources to but any place that requires me to go to a grocery store (grocery stores are such an odd concept it's really weird) or continuously buy disposable products will always leave me feeling wrong. But I was raised in fucking Hollywood, in the crappier part of Hollywood though all of it is crap really, it's not the idealized beauty of shining lights that everyone has in their head, that Hollywood is not accessible or allowed for the majority of people who actually live there. It's really just cucarachas and traffic. Everyday something always feels wrong.

I also sometimes prefer to just not think about gender and sexuality but that’s incredibly difficult and impossible as I have had gender identity contradictions since I was very young, since I was told to be a good niña, don't do the crazy boy things your cousins do, don't have sex till marriage, don't open your legs because having a kid is a terrible idea <-- (paraphrased from memory of my mom from when I was like 6 or something). I always felt constrained and wrong by being “muchacha”, “girl”, “hija”, “daughter”, “ma’am”, “miss”, “young lady”. And I am always trying to realize the misogyny I have internalized and unlearn it. I think I have decided that I embrace my social identity of womyn but I do not identify as a womyn. But how would agender or genderfluid be received in a small talk conversation? I enjoy and need to not follow gender expectations because I feel suffocated by them. And for a few years now I have realized that I can’t be in a relationship because of the societal expectations for relationships and the roles that have to be played, must be followed, and the power relations that don’t dissipate between partners away from the world because we can’t ever really get away. And then I really don’t talk about my sexuality. The ever present heteronormativity also suffocates me. I know that if I ever do talk about past relationships (which were 2 months and 1 week respectively, pre-college) they were both with guys and I don’t talk about my identity versus expression. I’m getting more personal in this post than I do speaking with people okay then, I haven’t identified as heterosexual for a long time(/maybe never, not sure) but I also haven’t identified as any other sexuality. And before I would consider the identity panromantic grey-asexual (yeah yay, many terms out there) there was always the homophobia in my home so that up to now I have no plans to ever get on that subject with my mom or family. I am expected to have a boyfriend and to have had sex by this point in my life but I’m not adhering to either expectation. I can only laugh when someone passing out flyers to a free clinic on my street incredulously does not believe me when I answer that I am not sexually active, whatever that means.

I also know that I code switch between when I am with my friends from school/work/meetings to when I go back home or visit my best friend. I am closest to the real me when I am with my best friend but on the weekends when she answers the door I can feel myself having to switch gears and it takes a while to fall back into how we interact. I have known her for almost ten years and she knows who I am but she also doesn't know parts of me like the Kathryn that I am with some other friends or the socially competent person that I try to be when I need to. It's stressful to act like a social mariposa when it takes so much energy that I need to just slip away and retreat to my apartment and I feel that is happening more often as I have a job and go to meetings that require me to be someone that I am not in order to do work that I believe in.