JE #3A

Cultural Schizophrenia to me means that a person is in a constant state of an identity crisis. Identity crisis arise from the fact that most people are in a nepantla state and battle internally with who they want to be or who they “have” to be in a different surrounding. Cultural schizophrenia is a challenging process to go through seeing as the constant change in personality, culture, values, and beliefs are changing as a person going through different identities. Cultural schizophrenia puts me in directions of contradicting values. One such contradicting value is my belief in God and my sexuality. Because I believe in God I am struggle with the belief that people who are in same-sex relationships will be eternally dammed. I do not believe that God created individuals to simply dam them. My belief in God is based on faith, obviously since there is not concrete evidence in her existence. My belief in God could arise from attending church when I was young, but it also stems from sticking with my family’s values. Regardless of my belief, I am constantly struggling in this nepantla and I choose to believe that God created us to love one another regardless of which gender you choose to love. Another crisis that I face is when I go back home to the Central Valley and have to switch my role of being a loud Chicano queer male to a quiet heterosexual male. This identity switching disgusts me because it brings light to the fact that I am not full comfortable in my own body or with my identity of being a queer Chicano. I look to my family for acceptance and I am frightened to let them see me as a queer Chicano. Every time I switch back to a heterosexual male I feel like I loose my place in my consciousness and have to retract from the progress I have made.  While at school I feel like I have to put on this tough queer Chicano persona simply because there is a lot of work to be done within our community. I have to put up this facade simply because it is the way I feel that I will get respect in this educational establishment. People expect me to be this tough person, but deep down I am a kind-hearted person who just wants everyone to love one another as cliché as that my sound. Eventually I know that I will come out to my family and I will not have to retract in the consciousness I have made. Just writing this and posting it in a blog for everyone to see is a step forward in me coming out. I will slowly make my way out of the nepantla and made my way to having a mono-identity, but probably not because consciousness is a lifelong endeavor.