The Things I'm Giving Up

Tuesday night, we elected Donald Trump as the President of the United States. Over the last 80 something hours, a lot of emotions have risen to the surface for me:  anger, fear, sadness, and yes, even peace.

I'm not going to speculate on how we could let this happen as a country. Not here, at least.

What I am going to say is this: I'm giving up.

No, not on humanity. I'm giving up on silence.

I am what most, except my mother and boyfriend, would call an agreeable person. Someone that others see as nice and easygoing. I oftentimes say "I don't care where we eat" or "I'm fine doing whatever" when trying to make plans. In most of those cases, I'm telling the truth. In these instances, I don't feel like being easygoing is a bad thing.

Unfortunately, there are times when my easygoing and agreeable nature have not been good. Times that I'll admit, I'm ashamed of.

I've sat at the table with people while they spewed their polite racism, saying things like, "my dad would shit if I brought home a Black guy." They'd then look at me and say, "well, you know what I mean." I've smiled, acknowledging that I understood their point, but in reality, I didn't.

I've listened, cringing, while people I know start out discussions with "I'm not a racist, but..."

I've had people say to me "Look, I voted Yes on 8, but like, I have gay friends. It's just not a lifestyle that I would choose."

I've sat in a room with people watching George Zimmerman's trial while they said things like, "well, clearly, the kid must have done something wrong. People don't just shoot people." I then went home, called one of my only black girl friends, and cried.

I've heard all of these things and more, yet I have rarely spoken out.

Why?

Because growing up as a biracial female in the conservative, predominately white Central Valley of California was a near constant reminder that I wasn't like everyone else. For one thing, I looked different, with darker skin and a wild tangle of curls that refused to lay straight. I also lived in a single parent environment, unlike the two parent homes that most of my friends experienced.

I mention all of this to show that I already had obvious differences from my peers, so speaking out as the only black girl at the table seemed risky, especially because I wanted people to like me.

And even though I am now a college educated woman in her late twenties, at times, I still feel like that young girl who spent hours in front of the mirror trying to flat iron my curls and erase my differences.

During most of the exchanges I mentioned above, I would think to myself, if I call them out, then it will make them feel uncomfortable, and I don't want to seem angry. 

Yea.

But you know what? Staying quiet makes me uncomfortable. Staying quiet hurts people I know and love. Staying quiet makes me angry.

So, this is my resolution: I'm giving up the silence. If I am engaging in conversation with someone and witness them committing everyday racism, sexism, homophobia, and/or xenophobia, I'm going to address it. It's not fair that I, and millions of other people who can relate to my experiences, should allow their feelings to sit on the back burner.

And if your reasons for liking me were my agreeable and easygoing attitude, then you probably aren't going to like me anymore.

And I'm okay with that, too.

Gratitude

I live in Santa Clarita, CA. Over the weekend, a wildfire, known as the Sand Fire, moved in.  In just 6 short days, it has burned over 33,000 acres, destroyed 18 homes, and taken 1 life.  My boyfriend and I don't have much experience with fires or fire safety. We are originally from Modesto, CA, and while wildfires happen near there, it's not the same as being able to see flames from your patio.

Live updates from news outlets were reporting that people were being evacuated from their homes,  so as a precaution, my boyfriend and I started packing up important items that we'd want to take with us in the event that the fire caused us to leave our home behind.

Aside from our safe that contains personal documents, I struggled with putting things together that I'd "need" because aside from my cat and my boyfriend, I didn't really "need" anything else.

I packed away my MacBook because it's where I write. I packed my great grandma's cookbook that she left to my nana when she passed. I packed the notebook I took with me to Paris and wrote in everyday I was there. I packed my favorite book, The Giving Tree that my great grandma bought me when I was seven. I packed some things that belonged to my biological dad, who passed away last year. Oh, and I packed my 8 disc Blu Ray set of Harry Potter because duh.

Honestly, just knowing my boyfriend and my cat were safe would have been enough. The other things I mentioned were merely things that I was given the luxury to pack up because we packed early.

I thought this morning how grateful I am that I don't need much.  It's really easy for me, when a wildfire isn't occurring, to think about all of the things that I don't have: enough money, a better job, a better place to live, but I realized over these last few days that those things aren't important. That if I were asked to leave my home with the possibility of never seeing it again, I wouldn't care about the car I was driving or how much was in my wallet.

Those are just things and those things can be replaced.

I'm extremely grateful to the brave firefighters who have worked tirelessly to contain the fire. It is looking, as of this moment, like we don't have to evacuate, but it's good to know the things I'd need in case we did.

"Keep Me Where the Light Is"

Last week, I was driving in the car with my two friends when we saw a woman stopped on the sidewalk. It looked like she had dropped something, and because of her being in a wheelchair, she couldn't pick it up. My friend jumped out of the backseat to run across and help her. A bicyclist pulled up and stopped, and that's when it appeared that the situation might be a bit more complicated.

My other friend pulled her car over and we jumped out to see if we could help. It appeared that the woman was stuck in a hole. They tried to push her chair forward, and when that didn't work, they tried lifting it, but the chair was too heavy. After a few minutes, a truck pulled up and a man jumped out to help. Within minutes, they all had the woman back on solid ground. The bicyclist rode away, the man in the truck drove off, and as we walked back to the car, I felt a thick coat of tears forming in my throat.

This happened two days after the Dallas PD killings and 4 days after Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were gunned down by police officers.

 I was feeling pretty awful about the state of humanity that entire morning before going to see my friends.

It seemed as though I had become accustomed to waking up in the morning and hearing about another shooting or how 'such and such celebrity' got into a twitter war with 'such and such celebrity' or how Bernie supporters were against Hillary because of [insert reason here] or The People vs. Donald Trump.

In short, I had gotten used to waking up and feeling our divide from one another growing stronger.  I was also starting to believe that there were more negative, hateful things in the world than positive ones.

That is, until my friends jumped out of their car to help a stranger and then another stranger stopped his car to help more strangers.

I was struck with an overwhelming sense of love and hope after close to a week of anger and sadness. But I was also struck by the realization that these random acts of kindness and humanity happen every hour in the world, but we never hear about it. Instead, we hear about hate. The media essentially offers us two sides and then wants us to pick one:

Media: "Cop shoots unarmed Black teen"
Response: All cops are awful
Outcome: Division (us/them)

Media: "Black man guns down cops who were putting their lives on the line to protect protesters"
Response: All black men are dangerous predators
Outcome: Division (us/them)

Media: "Brown skin man who also happens to be Muslim commits mass shooting, pledges love to Isis"
Response: All Muslims are terrorists
Outcome: Division (us/them)

Last week, I was watching the news with my grandparents, and I was amazed by how negative it was. They dedicate two thirds of the time to the horrible crimes happening locally and in the world, and then 4-5 minutes of good stuff.

I want to hear more good stuff.

I feel it's worth mentioning that wanting positive news isn't in any way a means to ignore the bad or exist in an ignorant "the world is 100%  wonderful/racism and xenophobia are just a figments of marginalized folk's imagination" bubble.

I know that there are bad things happening all over the world. I consider myself to be a pretty woke individual. I studied systematic racism, sexism, poverty, and hyper-masculinity in college and was a few units shy of a 2nd BA in Gender/Ethnic studies. I get it. I yell and cry about the bad stuff quite often, but what I need more of is good news. Because I think good news operates as a goal for us as humans to strive towards.


Before the guy got back in his truck after helping the woman get her wheelchair unstuck, he said, "we have to help each other. Especially now."

So, I guess the point of this post is to say that I am on a quest for good news to balance out the crappy stuff. I found this site and this one, and I've been visiting them for daily reminders that humanity still exists. I hope if you're reading this, you'll bookmark the sites linked above or comment below for other places to find positivity.


**Note, the title of this post is not an original of mine. They're lyrics from John Mayer's "Gravity."

A Brief History of My Hair

I have curly hair, and like most girls with curly hair that I've talked to, there was a point in my life where I hated it.

I straightened my hair consistently from age 11 to 23, giving it little breaks here and there. And when I say breaks, I mean that my hair was curly, and then I would proceed to use a curling iron on certain sections of my hair to give it bigger waves. Yes, I put the curling iron on my wet hair. Yes, I feel terrible about that decision now.

See those bigger curls? That's the result of a curling iron :(

Then, at 23, I randomly came across this YouTube channel. I thought to myself, I should totally let my hair go curly.

So I did. And I started a blog about my journey from heat damage to beautiful curls.

Here's a bit of what I was working with when I first stopped flat ironing my hair:

That wave though.

A little bit better. But still not great.

Day two hair. The curls are starting to take shape.

I applied minimal heat to my hair for two years, and let me tell you, it was a long two years. My hair went through some seriously awkward stages, but the curls finally started to come around.

Ahh, success. 

Then I graduated college and started teaching and really felt like I needed straight hair again because straight hair=professional?

Honestly, there are a lot of reasons that I straighten my hair, and I'm currently working on an essay about it, so more to come later on that subject.  But I will admit that when Chris Rock said, "When your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed" in Good Hair, he was totally right.

Anyways.

I started straightening my hair again pretty regularly for a few years, but luckily, I never allowed my hair to reach the level of damage that it had in previous years. Sure, it wasn't really growing, but it also didn't lose much of its curl pattern like before, thankfully.

I kept telling myself that if I had longer curly hair, I wouldn't straighten it as often.

Well, thanks to social media, I once again found myself envying another curly girl's hair, especially it's length. Imagine my surprise when I found out that her hair was actually shorter than mine and that she used extensions to fake the last few inches.

So, it was settled. I'd buy extensions.

I started looking for hair places online and made the commitment to buy them as a birthday gift to myself. We went to the store in LA last week, and even though I found a bundle that matched my curls perfectly for only $89 (a steal, honestly), I held off on buying them, telling myself that I would get them later after price checking them elsewhere.

When my Super Awesome Curly Haired Bestie told me that she thought I'd probably need two bundles, which would cost around $180, I decided not to go through with buying them at all.

What I want is longer hair, but I'm not willing to spend close to $200 to get it, especially since my hair will grow on it's own.

So instead of buying hair extensions, I've decided to invest in products and practices that will help me achieve my goal and grow my hair out.

Here's what I have on the list so far:

-Vitamins (biotin, folic acid, and iron)
-Cowashing
-Homemade hair masks (applied weekly) & Coconut Oil
-Reusable shower caps (for the masks)
-Satin pillowcase (because cotton=rotten)
-Scalp massages
-No heat
-WATER!!

All of this, let me add, is way less than $89, so it looks like I'll also be buying myself a few dresses for the unbearable California heat. I am pretty much winning at life right now.

So this is my hair today:

Selfies aren't my thing.

 I'm hoping that by following the regimen above, I'll see some growth within the year.

Thanks for reading! If you have any hair growing tricks, please comment below!

Eight Years

Today marks 8 years with my boyfriend, Eric.

The beginning, May 2008

We were 21 when we started this journey. I was working at a sandwich shop and finishing up community college and he was working full time at Staples and taking night classes.

We are certainly not the same people we were 8 years ago, but we've managed to make it work because we encourage one another to grow and celebrate our changes. Our relationship has survived college degrees, changing careers, moving to a new location, and so much more, and with each new challenge, I feel us getting stronger.

I'm grateful to have a partner who can not only love me through the good moments but also support me through the struggle.

Dealing with Anxiety

I spoke pretty openly last year about my struggles with anxiety and how it affects my daily life.

In the past year since writing that post, I think my anxiety has gotten a lot better.

Because our society encourages silence when it comes to mental health discussions, I think it's especially important to open up about tricks I use to combat these moments.


1. Keeping an "anxiety" journal.  I already write in a notebook almost daily, but it's usually about anything that is on my mind at that moment. I recently decided to start a journal specifically for my anxiety where I can talk about the thoughts I'm having, the way I'm feeling, etc. I think doing so is going to allow me to notice patterns with my thinking so that when I feel like I'm experiencing these feelings for the first time, I can open up to an old entry and see that these thoughts are in fact just the anxiety talking. I also think that I might be able to notice whether certain times of the day, week, and/or month cause me to feel more anxious.


2. Mindful activities. Cooking is a mindful activity, and it's one that I've gotten pretty into over the last 4 months. I find that when I'm cooking, I'm less focused on the emergencies that my anxiety tries to alert me to and more focused on making a delicious meal (and not cutting off my finger). Knitting is also something that I find helps me re-route my thoughts. Just a few hours ago, I was sitting in my room going out of my mind with racing thoughts when I decided to pick up a scarf that I've been working on since 2012 (no judgments). For twenty glorious minutes, I was pretty focused on just moving the yarn around the needle with almost no intruding thoughts.


3. Talking about it. I tend to let my anxiety build up until I feel like I want to sit in a corner and cry. After making my struggles public last year on my blog, I realized how unhealthy it is to keep to myself. My anxiety is like a really shitty friend who keeps a running tally of all the things that are wrong with me, and staying in the shadows with this "friend" can get pretty depressing. Creating a support system was a necessity for me. I don't always feel comfortable talking about my feelings with them, but I feel so much better after I do it. Their encouragement helps to pull me out of the shadows.



I will more than likely always have anxiety, but over the last year, I've started to see that it can be managed.  I've also started working on changing the narrative from "I am anxious" to "I have anxiety." This was a suggestion from my mom, and it has helped me see that anxiety is something I deal with, but it isn't who I am.

Happy

For the first time since I can remember, I'm happy.

I feel it in the way I interact with other people, in my own dealings with myself, and in my general outlook on life.

Happy.

And this isn't the type of happy that I used to feel after reading a bunch of essays. That feeling, as I understand now, wasn't happiness, it was relief.

Relief to be done with another assignment for a few days before diving into another stretch of chaos.

My life feels simple but worthwhile.  I wake up, I do some sort of work, whether that be editing from home or subbing, and then when my shift ends, I'm done. I've started running, going to the gym, writing, and reading for fun again.

There are aspects of my new job(s) that I don't like, for instance, reading 200+ short answer test responses for my job as a rater, but I recognize that part of working is doing things you don't always like doing. For the most part, though, I love subbing. It's been great to work in different classrooms with different types of students. This week alone I've worked as a librarian for the day, in a history class,  and in a ceramics class.

A lot of the students at the high school know me now, and I get joy out of hearing them shout "Ms. Brooks" from across the quad as they go to their next class.

So yes, I'm happy, and it's a damn good feeling.

Swimming Upstream

The summer before my sophomore year, I was lying on the couch watching Avril Lavigne premiere her new video for Complicated on TRL when I thought to myself, I wish I could dress like that. At that point in my life I was only wearing clothes from the Gap, Abercrombie, and Limited Too because that’s where my friends shopped and I had to make sure I blended in. We’ll ignore the fact that I didn’t and never would. That’s not important. What’s important is that on this day, I had a major epiphany: what if I wore the clothes I wanted to wear, regardless of what category they fit into?

This might not seem like a big deal today, but in 2003 when I was a sophomore, mixing styles was not considered acceptable. Doing so threw off the balance of the well-defined categories that high school operated on: if you wore Abercrombie, you hung out in the forum with the uber pretty people (jocks, cheerleaders, and girls who didn’t get acne). Wearing all black meant you were “goth” and hung out in the I-Wing and probably cut the heads off of birds or something for fun. If you were a stoner and listened to pop punk, then you probably wore band t-shirts and studded belts and hung out in the D-Wing.

When I came back to school that fall, I got crap from a lot of people. Friends asked things like “what are you doing? You used to be so pretty,” while others said, “I just don’t get Alexia. Why is she dressing like that? Who does she think she is, anyway?”

I didn’t realize it then, but any time someone decides to color outside of the lines, other people will likely have something to say. I continued wearing what I wanted to wear for the remainder of high school, and eventually, people stopped talking about it.

Changing my style was probably the biggest rebellion I’d ever staged. That is, up until 5 months ago when I decided to take an indefinite break from teaching full time.

I became a writing professor at the age of 26.

Growing up, I came to believe that having a career meant success, wealth, and happiness. When I started teaching at my alma mater 3 weeks after receiving my Master’s degree, I felt like I had found my niche. Better yet, I had accomplished the look of success that I’d always wanted. I loved seeing people’s reactions when I told them that I taught college. It made me feel important.

Everything seemed set in stone until my boyfriend was accepted to a university in Los Angeles.It was a no brainer that I would go with him, so I started applying to teach at colleges in the area. The entire time I was writing my cover letters, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t quite figure out.

I ignored the feeling because I had found a career with relative ease that allowed me to be my own boss (for the most part) and structure my own time outside of class, even though “my own time” was largely taken up by my job.

I received letters back about my applications saying I hadn’t been picked up for the Spring 2016 semester. I started to panic, thinking that I wouldn’t find work elsewhere. Once again, I felt the knot in my stomach, only this time, it was accompanied by a voice saying, try something else. But what else could I do?

  

Sometimes, during my marathon grading sessions where I felt like I was going blind from all the essays I’d read, I would fantasize about a life that wasn’t consumed by work. I thought about how great it would be to wake up a few days out of the week and spend time doing what I wanted, like writing, hanging out with my boyfriend, or reading books for fun.

I craved balance, but I also felt obligated to stay in a salaried, respectable position like the one I held. After all, isn’t that the reason I got a Master’s degree?

My students and I used to talk about work and how society influences our choices about the jobs we eventually take. Sometimes, I would “joke” with them that I wanted to work at Trader Joe’s because of how happy everyone always looked.

“How can you not smile when you’re wearing a Hawaiian Shirt?” I’d ask.

But I could see the looks on their faces after they stopped laughing. The ones that said, You’re kidding, right?

Those looks are pretty similar to the ones I get now when I tell people that I’m a substitute teacher. Most of the time, they are confused by my choice. Some people think it’s temporary until I can get a college job or a teaching credential. When I tell them it’s not, I get questions like, “But who will you be if you aren’t a teacher?” or “Okay, but after the subbing thing is over, what are your plans?”

If I'm being honest, these questions make me anxious. They sometimes make me feel like I should find another career fast.

But then I quickly remind myself that everything is fine and that there isn’t any rush to “figure things out.” In fact, there’s nothing to figure out. I made a decision that I’m happy with.

I do think, however, that these questions about my current and future plans speak to a greater problem in American society. One that says in order to be considered “important,” a person must do “important” work. One that encourages and glorifies busyness. One that tells us that who we are is intrinsically linked to the job we have.

I’ve personally seen how people who work these “important” jobs actually live their lives. Doctors, for example, who practically kill themselves working 80-90 hours a week and will probably end up as patients in the very hospitals they spent their lives working in.

I’ll admit, when I was teaching my own classes, I felt like I was making an impact. I was oftentimes told in my evaluations that I made someone’s first college semester a little bit easier. But I believe that this kind of impact can happen regardless of the job or the amount of hours worked in a week.

Last week, I helped a high school junior who was struggling to understand the Chinese Revolution. He shook my hand on the way out of class and thanked me for taking time to help him. I felt important. But after the bell rang, I went home. I didn’t prep. I didn’t grade. But I felt good about myself.

It would be silly to say, “I’ll never teach my own class again.” Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll work as a sub for a year and find a job that is not only challenging and rewarding but also balanced. Maybe it will be as a cashier at Trader Joe’s. Maybe it will be a librarian. Maybe I will decide that I enjoy the flexibility of subbing and spend my time with that.

All I know is, the girl who didn’t let her outfits define her won’t let her job do it either.

5 Things

A month ago, my boyfriend and I packed up our apartment and drove 300+ miles from our home in Modesto to start a new adventure in Santa Clarita. While it definitely feels as though we crash landed, with him starting work two days after we got here to me taking on a rather heavy workload as a long term substitute, this new life of ours also feels pretty great. Here's what I've learned so far:

1. I spent too much money on groceries before. When Eric and I were living in Modesto, we shopped separately. Because I was training for marathons (and also just love pasta), my diet was a lot more carb based than his non-running diet, so we bought and cooked our meals separately. One major issue with this scenario was that we were each spending around $250 a month on our food. Moving from the Central Valley where cost of living is cheap to Los Angeles where they charge you for just about everything except oxygen, we knew we'd have to change our crazy shopping habits. For the last month, we've been shopping and cooking together and have cut our grocery bills in half. Plus, we've really upped our cooking game:

Pozole!

Al Pastor Tacos with pineapple. Mmmm.

Enchiladas with homemade red sauce

2.  Letting go of material items is necessary. We used to live in a 2 bedroom/2 bath in Modesto, but moving to LA, we knew that we would need to downsize to a 1 bedroom apartment because, let's face it, being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment here would mean getting involved in some illegal work. The idea of consolidating our "already small" apartment down to an even smaller living space gave me major anxiety. I'm an introvert who also happens to be an only child, so needless to say, I need my space.

We got rid of a lot of stuff to make this move, and it's funny because I've never felt better. Living in our new place has made me realize how big our last apartment was and also how much I didn't really enjoy being in there. We may have 200 less square feet now, but our apartment feels a lot bigger without all of the extra crap.

Our new living room

Our dining room

3. The rumors are true: people in LA drive like maniacs. Within the first 48 hours of being here, I must have gotten honked at by at least 5 different drivers for not driving fast enough or waiting one, yes one, second after the light turned green to start driving. I started sweating and also felt like sobbing. I still fear the horn, but I am getting better. Plus, I don't have to get on the 405, which definitely helps.

4. Not commuting is glorious. I've been a commuter for the last 10 years, driving at least 45 miles to get to work or school. Well, currently, I am subbing at a high school that is 10 minutes away from my house and that doesn't require me to get on any major freeway. Last week was actually my first time on the freeway in over a month, and it sucked. I'm glad I don't have to do that everyday. In fact, I have gotten so used to not commuting that I have been turning down jobs that may require me to get on the freeway.

5. Moving makes you and your partner closer. People kept telling me this one before we moved, and I am surprised by how right they were. Although Eric and I have a couple of friends in LA and my parents nearby, they are still about 45 miles away, so we've really learned how to spend more time together. We're both still insanely busy (even though I aspire to be less busy each day), but we also have weekends off so we can spend time together and explore our new area. Being together makes this new adventure a lot less terrifying.

I love it here so far, and I can't wait to see what the next month has in store for me. Thanks for reading.