education, empowerment, and unadulterated happiness.

they say a person is the culmination of all their experiences. when someone hurts you or does something you can't understand, they tell you to try to see things from their perspective. every experience we have, every person we come into contact with - they either leave a little piece of themselves with you or take a little piece of you. either way, you're irrevocably changed. how often do we actually notice these changes as they occur in our lives?

the unfortunate answer is probably rarely. when people characterize the united states, they note our work ethic. they talk about how driven we are. how many immigrants - my parents included - literally pull themselves up by their boot straps to attain this elusive american dream. the thing that never gets talked about? what we lose of ourselves in the process. 

what happens when we drive ourselves to utter exhaustion, day in and day out, so we can achieve x or y? what happens to our work ethic once we burn ourselves out? are we more satisfied once we've attained the american dream? 

the short answer is no. the OECD came up with a neat thing called the better life index. it ranked countries based on what global citizens consider most important to lead a "better life." not shockingly - or at least, not to me - the united states did not rank in the top ten. we're competitive. we're cold and calculating. we don't lend our neighbors cups of sugar anymore. we don't trust people, we're stingy with our money, and peaceful living is not something most of us are experienced with. 

having lived abroad, my very critical mind picked these things up about the world in which i live. a world i am desperate to escape but somehow, still have hope to alter in some small way. 

so i asked myself one thing (well, i ask myself many things but this question, i ruminate on more than most others): what was it, exactly, that i loved most about being in argentina that i was missing here? 

the list is long. very, very long. i liked being out until the sun came up. i loved getting facturas and sitting over the river, watching said sun rise. i loved the opportunity to walk into an ice cream shop, creepily introduce myself to the shop keeper, and have him become one of my closest friends during my time abroad. i appreciated being able to travel without really worrying about my safety. i appreciated the food and more importantly, the conversations we were able to have over said food (even if the veg options were not nearly as great as the non-veg options). 

i thought about these things and i realized how incredibly superficial i was being. i was happiest because i liked to party? i was happiest because i made friends easily? i was happiest because i gained a ton of weight?

i was happiest because for once in my albeit short life, i got to SLOW. DOWN. you know why i could be out until 7am? because there wasn't always something incredibly pressing for me to do at 9am the next day. i could make friends with someone in an ice cream shop because i had the time to stop and chat when i bought my daily fix. i could travel safely because you got to know the people around you on the bus and eventually, realized they weren't going to kill you in your sleep (most of the time, anyway). and at this point, i suppose you can guess why meals were so wonderful as well? 

so the natural follow-up question is if everything moves just a little bit slower there than here, what's the trade-off? on a macro-scale, of course argentina is not as well off as the united states. their gdp is lower but they're more progressive than we are - they have a female president, they require a certain percentage of their senate to be comprised of females, they've legalized gay marriage. their standard of living is lower and their median income is definitely lower than ours but they have a thriving small business economy. they haven't legalized abortion or centralized access to contraceptives but people walk around on the streets handing out condoms and at least they have universal health care. 

so again, i ask the central question: what's the trade-off? i think the answer is happiness. a good friend of mine recently referred me to an article on loneliness in response to the extreme loneliness i've been experiencing the last few months. not surprisingly, in a country with the values and standards that we have, we're making less time to foster relationships with others. and the loneliness we experience as a result takes a serious toll on not just our mental and emotional health but our physical health as well. you can't expect a car to run smoothly if you have healthy parts but put shitty gas into the tank. in the same vein, you can't expect to have a healthy person if you're skinny and have healthy organs but a shitty psyche. 

our mental state - work ethic, desire to achieve the american dream, drive to do better for ourselves or for our children - is the thing that makes us american at the core, right? well, it is also the thing that's making us unhappy and unhealthy. 

if we're successful because of that mental state though, would we lose that success if we chase happiness instead? i don't think so. or, at least, i hope not. you can be successful doing what you love the most. and when you have that love for your work - a true, soul-deep satisfaction - you can probably attain happiness. the key seems to be that when your work is taken away, when you start running out of money because your retirement package isn't as great as you thought it would be or you realize you have to sell your mansion because it's just you left in your house and the rest of your family has moved on with their lives in the same way that you moved on with your life when you were younger, you still have something that makes everything worth it. 

and finally, a billion words later, we come full circle. i was at my happiest when i was expending energy fostering relationships with others. so in my career, i'd be at my happiest if i could spend the rest of my life doing the same. 

"in one page, explain why you want to go to medical school."

the one question i've been avoiding answering all year. i knew i was intelligent when i was in high school. i'm extremely humbled by that which i've accomplished and for the opportunities so many people in my life have presented me and i know how each one has impacted me. but ask me to sit down and encapsulate everything in one page? no way. 

they say every person is the culmination of every single one of their experiences. but my experiences, at just the tender age of 21, are already so numerous that even i have a hard time keeping track of all of them. 

i'm a critical thinker. i spend a lot of time thinking about esoteric questions like the above ramble on how one can achieve "happiness." i meditate. i write. i listen and internalize everyone else's experiences to try to learn something else that can push me a little further on the path to fostering an enlightened soul. and sometimes, that causes me a lot of pain. but then i focus on more new-age bullshit about how pain strengthens you, makes you a better person, teaches you how to handle adversity in a way that nothing else ever can. etc. etc. and when none of that works, i put on black eyeliner and listen to angry music and cry until i attain some sort of inner peace. 

can't quite put that in my application, can i?

i want to go to medical school because i think i've found the key to happiness. or, at least, i think i've found the key to my own happiness. a happiness rooted in the ability to foster relationships with other people. in the ability to trust, to love, to allow yourself to be vulnerable because you can never know who is around to catch you unless you fall first. 

when i was fifteen, i got sick. i got really sick. and i distinctly remember being incredibly confused because while i knew rationally that my body was betraying me, i couldn't feel it. i had no outward signs, no symptoms. i had a biopsy and then i had outward symptoms - the incision site HURT, i couldn't really bend and i walked like an old lady. but as i was coming out from under anesthesia (p.s. ask for the happy juice any chance you can. probably the best i've ever felt ever), i needed to pee. and the nurse let me get out of bed and walk to the bathroom all by myself. like a big girl. except, well, except that my mother followed me. to the bathroom. to make matters worse, she wanted to come inside with me. "no, mom. i can pee by myself. thanks." i closed the door. i sat down on the toilet. and i knew about 30 seconds later that i was about to pass out. i barely made it back to the door, opened it, and looked my mom in the eye before i blacked out. i woke up to a giant bruise blooming on the back of my mother's hand, the dainty hand that has rubbed my back countless times swelling. when i passed out, my head went straight for the doorknob. my mom's hand went straight for my head. 

my mother sees me and her entire face lights up. i fight with her. i say god awful things and i rebel against the few rules she's ever set for me. but she looks at me and her entire face lights up. and i see the key to happiness - the relationships you foster with other people.

remember when i referred you to that great article on loneliness and physical health? you can't be physically healthy unless you're mentally healthy. i went into remission a few years later and no one knows why. i'm perfectly healthy now and there's no medical explanation. my mother and grandmother attribute it to God. i'm still working on that particular question but i'm coming to understand why i got better. 

my mother spent those years on her knees every night, praying. she thought i never saw the tears. she thought she was protecting me from the excruciating pain she felt every second of every day - the excruciating pain i should've felt because i was the one who was sick, but somehow, i was asymptomatic and she was the one who felt all the pain. she was the one with the bruise on the back of her hand while i pleasantly woke up for the second time from the happy juice. 

have you figured it out yet? i felt safe. i felt protected. i felt cared for and loved. i was never lonely. and i healed. hindsight is 20/20 though. what i now attribute to my mother, i never really noticed when i was fifteen. what i saw - what's left the most indelible impression on me - were my physicians doing everything in their power to heal me. i saw the heartbreak they felt everytime they had more bad news to pass onto us. i saw their joy and relief when i was having good days. i saw that they had hope. and hey, what do you know. i suddenly had hope too. 

it's not easy to put your life in the hands of another human being. it's terrifying. you thought letting yourself love someone makes you vulnerable? wait until you experience the vulnerability of literally laying your life in the hands of another human being. trust is not something we come by easily. trust has to be built. it's based on shared experiences that provide you with some kind of proof that you take as incontrovertible in any given moment, proof that you're going to be okay in the company of this person. you don't have the opportunity to do that with your physician in most cases. especially when you're incredibly ill. you get assigned to someone and you just have to trust that this complete stranger is going to take care of you. you have to trust that this person, who has some unwavering reason to have put themselves through hell for more years than most others,  cares enough about their job and you to not kill you. 

i don't know where it came from because at this point in my life, i had been let down enough times by one of the most important people in my life to not really trust anyone but i trusted them. i trusted them to take care of me. i trusted them to know what was going on, to call the right shots, to make the appropriate decisions because i certainly didn't really understand any of it. 

what do you do when you can't build that trust, though? what do you do when your mother's hand won't protect your head - or heart - from shattering? what do you do when you don't have anyone to be your advocate, when there's no one around to promise you that even when you can't anymore, they'll still be doing everything in their power to heal you? 

i still remember the first time i heard a rape victim speak out about her attack. it was around the same time and i was at my first take back the night rally. when your partner rapes you, you learn that you can't trust even those closest to you in your life. when a stranger rapes you, you learn that trusting strangers is probably the biggest mistake you'll ever make in your life. neither scenario really allows for survivors to put all that unyielding, poetic trust in a stranger because they know better. they've heard it all and they know that when you tell them you're going to take care of them, you're probably going to be the one that hurts them the most. and i want to say that they're wrong. that there's always going to be some awful piece of filth in the world but most people are good. that most people won't hurt you. 

except i know that's not true.  

they say a person is the culmination of everything they've ever experienced. i have experienced extreme love. i have also experienced some of the worst kinds of betrayal and hurt. and i know that you can't trust everyone you come into contact with.

when you have everything about you forcibly stripped from you - your choice, your personal agency, your dignity, your self-respect, your ability to trust or to love - who can you turn to?

it was with these very disparate experiences that i turned to my thesis project. 

i've known since i was fifteen, since i got sick and experienced the incredible healing that can arise from a healthy, trusting relationship with your physicians, that i want to be a doctor one day myself. i've watched the incredible prowess of my most salient role model as she defied cultural traditions, moved away from home, followed her dreams and became a physician. i watched as she took all that training, turned to research and made strides in combating a terrifying disease that has decimated a significant proportion of the world's population. 

i also watched as some of the most incredible women in my life took their own lives back into their hands. as we prepare for the vagina monologues, we end our time together by asking every girl why she chose to be a part of the production that year. for me, it was watching my mother's and grandmother's experiences and promising that as long as i lived, i would do everything in my power to never let someone else in my life become a victim. i watched how the appropriate environment, how companionship, how unconditional love, and how unwavering support could rebuild any broken heart or spirit. to know that as something so seemingly insignificant on a grand scale as directing the vagina monologues could leave such a lasting impact on the most inspiring women in my life? well, it made me start thinking about all the possibilities of what i could do with my life. 

so i started reaching out to faculty in the department of global public health. at this point, i had spent time in costa rica, worked with a medical trip in honduras and lived in argentina for six months. to say that i had a personal vested interest in latin america is an understatement. between my own experiences abroad and the classes i had been taking on globalization and it's widespread repercussions in all sectors of life - most especially in health care - i knew that global public health was the right calling for me. i only knew three things for sure: that without even knowing it, my cousin had fostered in me a vested interest in HIV prevention, treatment and care; that HIV had particularly severe repercussions for women; and that there had to be some sort of focus on domestic or gender-based violence because that's where a majority of my passion and work had been centered. 

what came out of that project was more than i could have ever hoped for. with the guidance of an incredible faculty mentor, i narrowed my focus down in a way that allowed me to combine the two things about which i am most passionate. the study examined the intersections between gender-based violence and increased risk of HIV transmission. for a variety of social and biological factors, victims of gender-based violence are more susceptible to contracting HIV than women in general. in cases of rape, for example, the most sensitive female membranes, which also have a greater surface area, tear easily, thus increasing the chances of contracting the disease. in another common occurrence, victims of violence are less likely to negotiate condom use because of an increased fear of physical retaliation, are more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as injecting drug use, and find themselves more dependent on their abusive partners. 

we come full circle once again. let's say, just for a moment, that these women were able to gather enough trust to visit a physician and ask them for help. where do they go? who do they turn to? what would be the consequences of seeking such help? well, it turns out that there are a lot of answers to that question. to access help, you'd have to assume that they have a place to turn to with physicians who can help. in tijuana, the study site, they not only have a limited number of clinics but they have even fewer physicians who are trained to help this very specific subset of the population. often, women go undiagnosed when they're HIV-positive. and when they are diagnosed, their physicians often miss their abuse - or refuse to acknowledge it as a result of cultural stigma - and can't provide any form of intervention. and if they're not HIV-positive? well, if they're still being abused, they're still at high risk of contracting the disease. but the failure on the part of physicians to intervene appropriately means that they'll always be at risk. 

among study participants, there was a general consensus that if we are to actually mitigate the risk factors for victims of gender-based violence in contraction of disease, both the general population and practicing physicians MUST be better educated. if we're going to go head-to-head against both a public health crisis that affects more than half of the world's females and a disease that has proven to be one of the most vicious we've ever seen, we're going to have to be as prepared as humanly possible. 

and if my time in academia has taught me anything, it's that with education comes power. and lord knows that we could all use a little empowerment. 

maybe more importantly, we can all use a little refresher training in humanity. the reason why i was so happy when i was abroad was that i was able to foster beautiful relationships with many people in my life. the ability to do so becomes even more important when you're trying to gain the trust of someone for whom the process may be absolutely traumatizing. if i can look at the work i've done over the past four years and see that i've begun to make some kind of difference - however small that may be - can you imagine how much more effective i can be if appropriately empowered? 

with education comes empowerment. with empowerment comes the ability to foster healthy relationships with others - especially those who could use a little nudge in becoming empowered themselves. and with those relationships comes true, unadulterated happiness. 

what better reason could there be to go to medical school?

overcoming fears.

in the way that some find solace in eating a shit ton of chocolate, i find my peace in writing. most often, it's letters to those who are causing me incredible pain or providing me with irreparable kindness or love. sometimes, though, i find inspiration in the most unlikely of places and out flows poetry. i tend not to share it because i'm incredibly self-conscious about my poetry but i realized that if there's even a slight chance that any of the following ring a bell with you or provide you with the same comfort i found in writing them, they're worth sharing. enjoy <3

lipstick.

the little girl
stares at the mirror
mother's lipstick in hand
wondering how her mama does it.
how does she paint herself, so painstakingly
every day
staring at the mirror
as seconds, minutes, maybe even hours pass
what is she looking at?
the little girl, she
she tries to understand
she grabs that lipstick and she smears
and in the mirror, she sees
she sees
a clown.
a word she doesn't know yet.
she sees
a fraud.
she sees paint
covering up natural beauty
she sees an extra splash of color
on a canvas that's already
so. beautiful.
a canvas that is beautiful and full
of color and vibrancy and song.
staring in that mirror,
the little girl transforms
from a girl to a woman.
breasts rounding out,
ass growing larger
hips the size of jupiter
and she stares.
smearing the lipstick that she hopes will cover the sadness.
the hate.
the torture she experiences
on a daily basis.
torture equivalent to a genocide.
or a femicide.
or a homicide.
because, at the end of the day,
isn't it all the same?
isn't it always violence
fueled by hatred?
fueled by a lack of understanding,
a lack of love,
a lack of power or agency or...
love.
a four-letter word, so powerful
so well placed
so often used.
almost like another four letter word we all know.
hate.
they say those words are two sides of the same coin.
hey.
i don't know if that's true.
but i know
that when you look in the mirror
and that word flashes across your mind
consciously
sub-consciously
spoken, in your mind, or aloud
that word.
is. a. weapon.
a weapon that should be feared
like guns in schools.
like bombs in Iraq.
like drugs on the street.
that word
should. be. outlawed.
because it is not hate that gives this world hope
it is not self-hatred
or negligence
or fraud.
it is love.
love we have for one another.
love we have for our mother.
love
love
love, maybe, one day, we should have for
ourselves.

feathers and rocks.

because you are beautiful.

because you should love without regrets.

in the way that makes you cry harder than you ever have.

in the way that makes you feel like your soul is being ripped in two.

in the way that you can't get out of bed some days, tears leaking out of your eyes, pillow (or teddy bear) hugged tight to your chest

while the memories - the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful - race through your mind 

and visualization exercises and yoga and meditation and breathing don't help.

for those days you wish it would all just go away.

know that it won't. 

know that in order to love, you must accept it first.

because at the end of all that pain is something beautiful.

something that teaches you about yourself.

something that shows you the true beauty in the world.

something that defies all odds, almost like it can defy gravity. 

we all know that a feather falls as fast as a rock in a vacuum.

be the rock. be the feather.

it doesn't matter.

because at the end of the day,

we're all the same.

and we're all going to fall.

a spoken word piece - tomorrow. 

            The silence presses in all around her, reminiscent of his hands around her neck, squeezing, tightening, gripping like a baby’s hand wound tightly around her mother’s hair. Except here, in this moment, there is no love. No comfort. No solace. Just pain.

            She didn’t even feel that last blow to her face, couldn’t feel the handfuls of hair he ripped out of her scalp, barely noticed the warm rush of blood cascading down her cheek. She is numb.

            Numb from the inside out, outside in – there is nothing left.

            Somewhere in the distance, glass shatters and she is surprised that the noise even registered. Surprised that she can still hear. Surprised that she is still alive.

            She keeps her eyes shut tightly, waits for the darkness to sweep her back under, waits for the moment when consciousness will never return to her, for the blissful moment in which she will actually turn into the nothingness, the nothing she has been led to believe she is.

            She hears her name. Whore. She hears him calling her. Slut. And as the footsteps come closer, as his words get louder, “Bitch, get up,” the fear returns. The panic sets in, replacing the calm of unconsciousness like the clouds replace the sun in the moments before the sky falls apart and the Heavens unleash themselves onto the world. Except here, in this moment, there is no Heaven. Only the bottomless pits of Hell, the burning of the never-ending fire, the eternity of punishment for the grievous sins she must have committed to deserve a life like this.

            She watches from above herself as he yanks her up off the ground, watches herself blink her one good eye, tenderly touch the eye that seems to be permanently swollen shut. She stumbles as he shoves her towards the kitchen. The acrid smell of stale cigarettes and fresh whiskey drowns out the stench of her own blood, of the sick splattered down her front. And as she staggers towards the fridge to pull out the eggs for his breakfast, she marvels that she is still breathing, wonders how she made it through six years with him, wishes for the day that he will finally use that gun he keeps brandishing around on her, waits for the day that she’ll be able to join that tiny, innocent being he kicked out of her belly.

            “Tomorrow, maybe,” she thinks as she sets the plate in front of him. Today, she survived. But maybe, maybe tomorrow. 

serenades.
truly make you feel cherished.