Feeling

I have been taking anti depressants since the winter of 2009. I have decided that being that I am at a better place in my life, I would like to get off them. Mind you, no one told me that antidepressants have an addictive quality. I tried getting off the meds several times before this attempt only to find out that I couldn't just get off them. I tried the cold-turkey method only to find myself feeling dizzy a lot of the time and getting sensations of jolts through my body. Needless to say, this didn't work out very well because it interfered with my daily life.

Being that getting off cold-turkey didn't work out so well, I am tapering off the medications. For the first time in several years I am able to feel emotions again. Zoloft, the anti-depressants I was taking, had subdued my emotions. Yes, I still had them and felt them, but they were almost drone like now looking back. Now, I can feel the range of emotions I have and am capable of feeling. I feel like a child who is exploring the world for the time because I am exploring the world through my emotions. When I was younger, I thought that my emotions were a curse and I had to learn how to control them so that I could function in the world. I was scared of them (which is part of the reason why I got on Zoloft in the first place, other than being suicidal). I did not give myself the freedom or space to express my emotions much less experience the world through emotions. Emotions are rendered as weak by society, especially misogynistic mainstream thought. I am now finding new strength and freedom through my holistic existence which includes emotions.

The road to getting off Zoloft is not easy. I have been tappering off the medication since April and it is now July. At first I was thrilled with my decision and thought that getting off them would have been as easy as getting on them. But I was wrong. Between the dizziness, jolty feelings, light-headiness, emotional roller-coasters, and overall sick feelings, I thought that I would have to stop my journey of getting off Zoloft. But after reading many stories of other people's struggles I found renewed strength and confidence in myself. I wasn't the problem, Zoloft was and I need to get it out of my body all that much more.

Well, I believe I am in the last phase of my tapering off and feel really good about this process. I have come to believe that this society has found another way to try to make masses complacent and fearful of their own selves. The myth that people, especially women, are too emotional and can't control their own emotions is a lie to pinch people against each other and themselves. If one believes that the stress one is enduring due to the must-work-even-harder mentality or that the loneliness one is feeling because of the individualistic isolating culture we have or the sadness we carry from lack of love and warmth is of our own bodies' doing and can not be controlled or healed in other ways other than medications, we are only creating a society of people that can't trust themselves and thus runs into the arms of the government and the pharmaceutical companies. Ultimately creating a society that is taught that they can't function without themselves or each other, isolating individuals even more perpetuating the "mental illnesses" that permeate our society. Though there are some people that do have some medical issues and need help, I do not believe that the majority of these patients are suffering from actual disease but rather suffering from the disease of capitalism at play.

Looking....

When I feel miserable about life and myself, I have an inclination to look elsewhere for inspiration. Many of you out there might be thinking, "But Mims, you should be lookin in yourself for inspiration." But you know, I'm tired of looking inside and not finding any answers. What I do find is a hole that I dug for myself where I like to hide and sadness and regret. I don't know what my heart is saying anymore sometimes. My heart feels so torn sometimes, yet I wonder if it's really torn or if I just have to pay attention to it.

What? Where is my life going?

Hello my fellow twenty-some-odd years old peers. Is there someone else out there in this society who is just as bored with their lives as much as I am? Everything is so meticulously structured, that there is not escape for creativity. One goes to school for mad long, and then one foes to work, day in day out everyday for all of your days. I'm bored with this existence and long for something else.

For my students

I recently wrote a free-verse thinking about how in our current school system, not only are teachers and students kept at a distance from one another but are also pitted against each other. As a NYC public school teacher, I am told to be careful because anything I do is liable to get me reported as possibly terminated. I am told to be careful to not care too much about the students. I am told not to get too close...but what's the point of teaching if you can't care about the people you are teaching? And so, I wrote about it. I am afraid to post this because I could get in trouble since everything gets teachers in trouble these days. (Society hates teachers cuz we try to get people to think for themselves, god forbid.) but here it goes....

Do you know
that I dream about you in
the secret place
of my mind?
I dream of a time when you are safe
like I say you are
of a place where you can
live out your dreams
without fear
without the obstacles
society has emplaced
I dream of your smile when
 you talk bout all that it is
 you want out of life
Do you know
that when I dream about you
I cry knowing what it is
that is waiting for you outside of the walls of this uterus called school
That when we give birth to you
we spit you out to be
another gear in the wheel of
our rotating and self-perpetuating proliferating
social machine that
keeps us running in circles like hamsters

You know that when
the whole world fades away
and social restrictions don't
regulate my everything
I open my heart like
the floodgates of Citedal
and let everything collapse
and it is when I am truly free
and when I let myself feel
and dream
all that that psychotherapists could love to diagnose
in-complacent, borderline hot-mess disorder
BUT
By day, I live out my oath
  to be a heartless robot
assembly line 9-5 participant
social machine subdued fear induced conformity
And thus,
I stand here
look upon you
a hypocrite
cuz
my dreams for you, for me, for us
occur far away from
the realm
of the institutional structure
that tells me you are to be feared and ashamed of
and tells you I am not to be trusted
   that keeps us at a distance
perpetuating isolation
                    frustration
                    miscommunication
because I tell you the lies
they told me
     "follow the path laid out, set before you
by the omniscient Big Brother
and your life will be all the more better cuz of it"
Yet, here I am and my life is where it was yesterday
and the day before that
and the day before that
and before that
and before that
Stuck
unable to find a way out of this rat race
out of running 'round in circles
and live out my dreams
You know,
I sold me dreams for security
but I will not sell my heart

So I dream about you at night
and dream about holding you
reassurin you that we will find a way
and that I'm just as scarred as you are
but we will find a way
but we will find a way
even in out fractoluminescence
I reach out cuz
Cuz I want us to be whole and I will NOT sell my soul
But until I can find a way
to break out from our fractured
distorted
existence
I will dream
and hope
and envision
you and me
away from social restrictions
after we have parted to come back
in the spiral
that keeps us apart

When I grow up....

"You have so much potential. When you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be. Just gotta put your mind and all into it." How many of you heard this or said it to an unsuspecting youth? I know I heard it, I"m even guilty of saying it. You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be a superhero. I wanted to save the world from itself and from the ills that infect our existence. I was told I couldn't be a super hero. I was told to get real, get serious, and get back to the drone of this everyday existence. I'm almost 25 years old and I know I can't fly or shoot lazar beams from my palms or burn down buildings using my death stare, but I am sure I can still serve justice to the world. I want others to wake up! Wake up and stop roaming the world listening to the mind-numbing rhythm coming out of your ear buds. Wake up and stop thinking that all you're worth is how much your car is worth, how much money you make in your day in day out 9-5. Wake up and stop fearing your fellow human person because of arbitrary characteristics such as class and race. Wake up and realize that there is so much more to life, your life, than being a slave to the social machine. Wake up.

Waiting for the world to change

When you ask little kids about what they want to be when they grow up, they usually answer with lots of radiant hope that they want to be a police officer, a fire fighter, and teacher, a detective, an artist, an astronaut....Rarely will you ever hear I want to be an office clerk, work in a dead beat job, be homeless, be discriminated on, incarcerated....Most little kids dream of changing the world, helping others, and making their dreams come true. So what happens on the way from childhood to adulthood that makes most of lose that sparkle? 


Some people say that it's the system, others say it's fear, while the rest say it's just that children are naive and there are responsibilities that must be taken care of. According to dictionary.com, a system is defined as :noun an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole: a mountain system; a railroad system...any assemblage or set of correlated members." I wonder, are we not the parts that make the whole? Are we not the members of society? According to dictionary.com fear is defined as "noun a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid." So, what are we truly afraid of? Also, responsibility is defined as, "adjective answerable or accountable, as for something within one;s power, control, or management." What do we have control over? What are we accountable to?


The reasons that most people in society give up on and/or abandon their dreams are for arbitrary reasons. We talk about all these things as if we can't touch it or see it. As if we can't do anything about it. Yet, we are the ones that create it. Then that would mean that we are accountable for what is going on with the stale and abandoned dreams. So what do we do? Some give up and go with the flow, others try to change the world, the rest wait for the wold to change. 

Growing up

I am almost a quarter of a century old. I'm 24 and in 9 months I am going to be 25. ONe thing about getting older and being an adult is realizing that your parents are also getting older. Most children come to a point in their lives when they are no longer just the child and their parents are no longer the caregivers. Roles are reversed where the children become the caregivers for their parents and the parents become more like the children. This is where I am in my life at the moment.

Last year, Papi got cancer and I was faced with seeing him sick all the time and me trying to take care of him and Mami. Mami is now dealing with another medical problem. My brother's host father passed away last week. A generation is now passing and we are coming up. Our roles switch from child o adult ad sometimes we don't realize the full extent to what that means. I at least didn't know the emotional repercussions of what it will mean to grow up.