When you leave someone you can start to feel the residual energy of that version of ourselves and the strange process of watching it transform. Sadness almost always gets processed in indirect ways because grief is the thing that we usually don’t know how to feel. My grief came in the form of a paralysis about what clothes to wear. I didn’t want to go outside unless my outfit was perfect and it never was, and I spent more time changing clothes than living. This obsession started when I first came to Costa Rica and continuously got worse.
I spent a lot of money buying a traditional dress for annexation parties and I was too scared to wear it. I was scared people will think it’s offensive or weird. When I bought it the store owner gave me a flower and I think it was a good sign. But I couldn’t stop the rude voices of doubt.
Doubt can never be proved wrong before you try it. I’ll never know how people respond until I wear it. It is something that has no solution that I can calculate only from my mind, without any exposure or risk.
I am afraid of so many things. Living in Costa Rica, I never got to rest. Every relationship bullied and shamed me for being different and even when they ended, I was still afraid. And nothing or no one came to prove that I shouldn’t be afraid. I was treated worse by men, being stalked and watched and generally being subject to emotional and physical and psychological violence. My introduction to Latino machismo happened like quicksand. Once I was in, it pulled me under and didn’t let go. My first relationship I was cheated on, for the first time in my life. Then i was abused psychologically, then physically, and when I overcame all of that, I was stalked and ended going to the police for three different events. Every time I tried to return to a feeling of normalcy and safety that I felt in Canada, when I tried to live by the feminism I believed in, I was brutally hit. The problem was always so much worse than I thought.
The voice of insecurity went from being a moment of doubt to full blown bullying from men. Men who didn’t want me to go outside, to make choices, to make new friends, to read, to speak, to be intelligent, to leave. Most of all, I was bullied when I did not fear rejection, when I chose to disobey the community status quo.
A lot of my exes brought me into their carefully constructed world. They meticulously created a Instagram personality and reputation. Every time they went out, every time they said hello to a friend, it had to be measured and calculated ahead of time. Our interactions slowly taught me that there was a right and wrong way to act, even though the rules didn’t make sense. They were introducing to traditional Latino culture they said. I don’t understand because I’m foreign they said. They rejected me when I got too close. They wanted to create distance at all times.
Everything we fear is something that has already happened before. It is always a memory of pain. We as humans have no way of knowing something will hurt until we try it, and after we are hurt we remember. I realized that when I fear rejection it’s actually because I have already rejected myself. When I stopped rejecting myself, it became irrelevant who accepted me or not.
I walk down the street now and I don’t care how I look. I didn’t brush my hair. I don’t want to be pretty again unless it’s for a specific event. I want to have adventures. I want the kind of life where I don’t look pretty afterwards. I want to be dirty or sweaty or both. I show someone how I feel about them and I don’t care about analyzing it further. I don’t care about being careful. They will like me or they won’t. I am free.
SUBLIME COURAGE 
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