Removing The Scarlet Letter

My most recent relationship was complicated to say the least. We had been together for almost 4 years. I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as a relationship but in some ways it is. It was a situationship that lasted too long, It’s had its’ ups and downs and I have learned a lot from it. Some things I haven’t accepted or spoken about because just like everyone else, I was afraid to lose it. I know that I should be free to speak up in regards to what i want from the relationship and what I don’t want but it’s really scary. It’s scary to be that honest with your partner because if you both don’t see eye to eye then there’s a chance everything will just fall apart. I don’t think, I know I am not ready for that. He was my first in everything and I have my insecurity issues and was so afraid to lose the little love I thought I had. But if a man shows you his true intentions and you don’t pick p on that, shame on me.

Past childhood trauma has fucked me up when it comes to relationships and trusting men. I am a victim of sexual assault so being able to trust someone with your heart and body has been something that I have struggled with. I’ve never opened my heart to anyone because I have suffered a lot from a very young age. Sometimes sexual assault victims don’t heal or know how to deal with it and I have seen in a lot of cases that victims tend to over sexualize themselves but I on the other hand never matured emotionally and that stunted my sexuality. I didn’t lose my virginity until my 30’s and i say virginity because I never rusted and mutually agreed to have sex with anyone. I had only consented with a girl in my early early 20’s and my current boyfriend.

I was always very sexually promiscuous in my head and sometimes in life, but mostly in my head. It was very hard to just jump into those impulses. To be quite frank, I masturbated a lot. And to be clear, masturbating is a natural occurrence that everyone partakes in. No need to feel dirty or ashamed of it. Once you take control of that part you grow this confidence that is supposed to help but in my case, it was a safety mechanism. I trusted only myself with my sexuality and no one else. It was really difficult to trust someone with my sexual desires. That had been taken from me when I was very young and I still deal with it. I still suffer from it and I am tired of carrying that scarlet letter. So I thought the best way to try and start coping from it was to write my perspective on it. Give my trauma a voice and lessen the power of the shame.

Why is it that the victims always to be the ones to feel the shame and not the attacker? Well not today, I am tired of feeling like a victim. I am tired of feeling the shame when I am not the one at fault. I am ready to be transparent with it. Of course I feel like the repercussions of being truthful with this, is the anxiousness of having my family find out. My mom ended up finding out and we talked about it. But when it comes to family, it’s a taboo subject. It complicates the family dynamic and I didn’t want that to happen. Life is already complicated as it is that I didn’t want to complicate it any further. I don’t know if anyone will read this or if my brothers would but I am no longer afraid of the stigma of being a victim.

Being assaulted so young, took a lot of things from me, milestones that I never was able to experience. I was about 7 years old when it happened. After it started happening to me, I started becoming a dirty person. I wouldn’t shower, I wouldn’t be hygienic because I wanted to be as repulsive as I felt. I couldn’t look forward to having all the experiences that a normal child, teenager and adult experiences. I never had my first kiss, I never experienced the milestones that normal teenagers go thru when it comes to the subject of love. I never had a boyfriend or had a relationship.

For a long time, my family thought I was a lesbian because I never had a boyfriend or brought anyone to meet my family. I was completely fine with them thinking I was gay because that was better than being truthful. I didn’t learn these things until I met my ex boyfriend. He taught me how to love and how to trust. He accepted me for who I was and where I came from. He was gentle and he was loving and patient. But that doesn’t make a relationship still stand. I learned from it and learned from him but sometimes we hold on to the love we think we deserve. I know the relationship I’m in won’t last but I am grateful for it. You might think that I wasted my time with it but in fact I learned a lot from it. I learned to be honest about my trauma. I learned that I am capable of loving someone and being loved in return. I learned that I slowly can remove that stigma of being a victim and becoming the person and adult I am meant to be.

Love and all the Complications

I’ve been a romantic for so long, all I’ve ever known are love songs, rom com’s, TV shows and movies. I have never been romantically in love with anyone. The closest thing to love I’ve felt is an extreme love appreciation to the man that showed me that I am lovable. But even that doesn’t reciprocate the love I know I deserve. I have had sexual trauma, body issues and plain depression that has complicated my love life or lack of. I have had a ton of crushes, those come a mile a minute. I fall in love all the time, at least in my head. I have such a twisted and unattainable goal for love that borderlines delusion. In life, well at least mine, there are no meet cute’s, there are no men holding up a boom box outside of my window pining for my love and attention.

Sometimes I really believe I will never find the love of my life. Is that even an attainable wish? Do I even know what to do if love was to come to my door? I have no idea. probably not. I never have known what love is, what it’s supposed to look like. Every relationship I know, has had such complications and such heated fights that I don’t know if ill ever have that. They say love is complicated and never easy. If its easy, it isn’t love. I have fooled myself into thinking that love is for me. In this crazy thing called life, all we ever want is to find our other half. That other half that completes us, supposedly.

I guess I never knew what love could be since I never had a good example of it. I only know of familial love, that unconditional love that comes from our mothers and grandmothers. Big surprise, I never grew up with a father, I never knew what love could be by seeing my parents together. I never had that standard unit of family. To be honest, I’ve never been on date, not that typical dinner and movie. Love for millennial’s and I hate saying that lol, is a whole different ball game than what it was prior to technology and dating apps. I had always longed for the type of love life you find in an 80’s movie. I always ended up with the “best friend” role, never the main star. I always thought I would have my own love story to write but in this current era, it looks like I will literally have to write my own love story, a fictional piece since love is probably not in the cards for me. And trust me, I have tried dating apps and it’s just not in the cards for me.

I think and know deep down inside that I was put on this Earth to share my love with my family, friends, and strangers but not with a romantic love interest. I have always given my love away with no one to give it back. And I have a lot of love to give. That’s the reason why I still am with the guy I’m currently seeing. It’s temporary and probably not going to last but as they say, it is better to have loved and lost to never loved at all. And I think I am coming to terms with the role life has appointed me. I feel like Dawson from the aforementioned Dawson’s Creek, in the series finale, he wrote his dream relationship with Joey. He wrote and concocted their love life, even if it never came to fruition for him. That’s why God has made me a great writer with a great imagination. I can always dream of what I want and just have it in my thoughts where it will always live. This might sound so self loathing but it’s the only truth of love ‘Ive ever known.

Love is hard, Love is complicated. Love is never easy. Sometimes I truly believe I don’t have it in me to make a love last. I am just tired of waiting for that day. It’s been that way since I was young. No one and I mean no one ever asked me out, which never helped my self esteem but i overcame that and became confident in who I am, who I became, how I look and what I have to offer. Sadly no one has stepped up to claim the prize that is my heart. The true romantic in me is slowly losing it’s flame but I won’t go down without a fight.

Possibilities

Everyone dreams of possibilities. They dream of the possibility of a new life, of a better life. I used to dream of the possibility of so many loves. I kinda still do. No relationship is perfect so I dream of bettering my current relationship but that’s for another post.

Today I want to talk about the possibility of becoming what you think you were meant to be. I have always loved to write. Writing has brought me relaxation, success, and a platform to share what my imagination and creativity have conjured up. I’ve always been told that I am a great writer and I believe them. I believe in my work. I always wanted to have a career in writing. For a long time I always had a dream to be a journalist. I always wanted to write for a magazine. I also had a knack for fashion and wanted to be a fashion stylist. And my lack of motivation killed me. My potential to be great just evaporated. I still feel like I could become a great writer. I have so many ideas for books, screenplays, tv pilots, you name it and Ive got an idea for it. I know there’s always time to achieve these dreams but is there really time? I don’t want to live a life of regret. There are already a couple of things in my life that I do regret and I don’t want to miss out on my chance of achieving this goal.

I’ve had this blog for a couple of years and never took ownership of it. I believe in myself but not fully to my potential. I blame my laziness as well. I’ve been rewatching the Girls series on HBO and even though I have my thoughts on the characters I have come to the conclusion that I am kinda like Hannah Horvath and I hate that comparison. I only compare because she believed in her writing and worked towards it. If there was any perfect time to do this, it would be now.

I have to hold myself accountable and at least try. Most writers are freelancers and I’m not in it for the money. I have a great career that I still want to do along with my writing and I have so much more to talk about in the realm of possibilities. So I will begin my journey and I hope that I can ignite that light under my behind and just fucking do it. Just ripping that bandaid and going with it.

Corona Virus........ $hit is real

Cardi B said it right when she said “Corona Virus…. Shit is real. We are living in a weird world right now. A global pandemic has hit and shit has been real scary. In a world where everything is a joke, sadly this isn’t. We make a meme out of everything so where and when will people start realizing that we need to take social distancing for real.

I’m heading towards the closing of week two from WFH and things have been going swimmingly. My job has been amazing through out this whole ordeal. I really am truly grateful to work for a company that puts their employees first and helps them through out this tumultuous time. Work as a medical adjuster has been quite slow since people have been staying at home and off the road. I’ve been able to bring down my workload which is a high priority for me. My career is very important to me and it’s something I take pride in and am very proud of. Its a great feeling when you love what you do and who you work for.

Being able to WFH and staying in my bubble has been pretty good. I live on my own and have control of what happens to me and staying connected to what’s happening in the real world. Creating a balance between wearing a tin foil hat and being true to your normal self, it’s important to meet in the middle. During these times you have to stay informed and you also have to stay true. If you’re a jokester, its OK to share that meme here and there. If you’re that religious person, then continue to stay true to yourself.

When news broke out all of a sudden on the spread of COVID-19, I won’t lie, my PTSD from 9/11 kicked in. I was incredibly anxious, my hands were shaking, I was scared to drive and get all the necessities before things really hit the fan. 45 aka the president, I refuse to use his name because in all honestly, this term is a whole joke and I hate realizing that he was voted in but not to make this about him and getting back to the story, I had gotten a call from my best friend around 10pm and she got me so nervous and had reacted as if it was DEFCOM 6 and we were all about to die that I just got in my car to fill up my tank and headed to Walmart to get everything I needed to hole up at my place and be ready for the quarantine that was bound to happen.

Since things have settled for now, I prefer being in my space and practicing my routines so that I don’t get stir crazy.

By writing this I wanted to bring light that it is normal to feel anxious and to be scared of the current times. I hope that my confessions lol of my experience so far brings you a little bit of peace and remind everyone that we’re all in this together, HSM style lol.

New Beginnings

So, I originally launched my website a couple of years ago and let the domain expire and recently went to go check if anyone had taken it and made it into anything and was surprised to see that someone had purchased the domain name and was reselling it for $5000, so color me surprised when I realized that my brand, my vision was worth something. So, that inspired me to get off my lazy butt and work towards something I was passionate about. I do have my day and night jobs to pay my bills and survive as any other 30-year-old does but was lacking in the passion department and not the sexual passionate part which is a whole other story for another time lol. I remembered to myself Aaliyah’s great words and said to myself “If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again” and that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to make sure that I keep up with this. I have to!! I believe in my brand, my company, my vision and it is so satisfying to see it come to fruition. Now I know I’m only in the baby stages of this but I am confident of its success, I have to be. When I first launched Coco Chica, I was in college full time, working full time as well and had poor time management skills. Still working on the time management portion but easy does it cowboy.

The thing is that if you believe in your product, go for it, no matter how small the step is. The important thing is to actually take that first step. It’s crucial for someone to follow in what they believe in. I believe in my website, in my brand, in my name and my words. When you hear the name Coco Chica, I want it to be synonymous with chic, classic, fun things. The name is inspired by Coco Chanel and anything Chanel touches turns to gold. Chica, which is part of my nickname pays tribute to my female, Latina, empowerment prowess. I want this website to be about fashion, beauty, architecture, entertainment because all of these things are what make my identity, the person who I am and what I am passionate about.

This new beginning is to find myself as a brand and learn how to lay it all out. When I first started, it was all over the place. I had underestimated how much work goes into running a website and I failed, miserably. I had so many expectations on what I had envisioned as a website and it just didn’t come out that way. As they say, when you want something so bad, the harder it will be to make it happen. I originally thought that I could post new content every single day. Boy was I wrong. So, wrong lol. One does not know how time consuming it is to bring new content to a website every day. Especially for me and my daily responsibilities I already had on my plate. IE: school, work, family, social life, dating. I was seriously delusional, like certifiably crazy to think that I could make it work. Now that does not mean that it isn’t achievable but boy did it not work for me lol and that’s ok. That’s what life is about, learning from the mistakes we make. I wanted it all. Other bloggers made it look so easy and effortless and it is not. This is something you have to dedicate yourself to or else you will plummet just like me.

So here I am, like a phoenix rising from the blogging ashes, throwing my name in the race again. This is all a learning phase to see what works, what doesn’t and what can make it better. And I really hope you join me in my journey because what’s life without a little help from my friends.

XOXO

CC