I have a few things I would like to rant about today. First, I recently had a birthday, I turned the big age of 34. I’m not a youngster anymore, but a fully grown woman, and it’s had me thinking a lot about life and the aging process. What a beautiful gift, I am truly so grateful to have been given the gift to get to the age of 34, safely, and full of life and vitality. Surrounded by my family and a select few friends, a job that provides me the means to take care of myself, and my parents who are still alive and well. I truly can not give God enough praise for allowing me to be here, with bit joy still in my life. I think nowadays when there is so much going on in the world all you can do is give thanks to the one above, if you have a life with safety, a roof over your head, and a somewhat free life. I couldn’t be more grateful and I don’t take it for granted. I am trying to practice gratitude and contentment in every stage of life that I am in. I am always exactly where I’m supposed to be, whether life feels grand or small.

How did the time go by so fast, yet so slow all the same time? My sister the other day tells me, “Blanki, you are so beautiful, you radiate, but just make sure that that beauty is always coming from within, that’s all that truly matters.” I looked at her, and I was stunned for the very lovely compliment which I’m sure she sees me through the eyes of love as her little sister. But it got me thinking of something my grandma always use to tell me growing up. When I was younger it use to annoy the hell out of me, because I felt she always said it to sort of check me in my attitude or recklessness.

She would say, “Cuídate niña, juventud y pelo negro pronto pasa,” which translates “Be careful little girl, youth and black hair soon pass.” I didn’t understand what she meant by it when I was younger, I thought it was her way of telling me to be more mature. But now I think the quote is so beautiful. As I reflect on my 34 years of life and all the lessons and growth I’ve had since being a young girl. She’s right, youth does go by so fast, yet so slow at the same time. At times I feel like I have done nothing with my life, that I am a failure and nothing to show for. Other times, I think to myself wow, I’ve experienced so much, nothing in my story would have foretold the experiences I’ve had.

One of the biggest lessons that I believe have been the most meaningful to me as I’ve gotten older is the importance of that inner beauty that my sister mentioned to me the other day. I think a lot of people these days focus so much on the outside world and seeming to be good on social media, but really it’s all for show, it’s all an act to pretend to be a good person. To get all the likes and followers and the giant groups of friends. I personally think that the more I work on my insides the less people I’m actually around. This year has taught me that my goodness comes from how I am when no one’s watching. My inner beauty is more important to me than if other people believe it or not. I want most of all to be real and to be authentic, and to be around other real and authentic people. It truly exhausts me how incredibly fake I find most people to be. They’re all trying to see what they can get out of you and the more fake you are the more people seem to be attracted to you.

I find that true authenticity, realness, and kindness are actually kind of polarizing. Everyone says they want real and authentic, until it triggers them to reevaluate themselves and see through their own facades. I think that maybe for a couple of years I had my priorities all wrong, thinking that people presented a real and authentic version of themselves to the public. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize all of that is bullshit. People pretend to be best friends with people they barely know, people they gossip about or talk shit about behind their backs, but they like the persona those people have to the public. So the friendship is built on social status and convenience, when just the other day I heard you talking trash about that girl and her personality. Connections are made of empty personalities that have no substance other than the propaganda they spread so you’ll follow their accounts or whatever new gimmick they’re selling you. All of it is so fake and not real, it actually makes it kind of humorous, all these stories you can get caught up in, wasting time on people who probably don’t contribute anything of substance to society.

I think now I’m more focused on my inner beauty, the beauty that radiates from authenticity and can also annoy the hell out of people because they don’t understand and they can’t control it. I couldn’t care less if you and your friend and other friend think of my life, my beauty and how I make my money. Because fuck you, why are you relevant to my life and are you paying my bills?

No.

As my grandmother would say “juventud y pelo negro luego pasa,” what am I doing with my life to gain genuine wisdom and growth to get the purpose God truly has for me? Does it come with me having to perform goodness for everyone to like me? Do I need to look hot and perfect and with a giant group of friends to feel accomplished? I don’t think so. I also feel like I’ve spent quite some time comparing myself to privileged people. People who come from money and have been in the United States for generations. Meanwhile I’m first-gen, from a family that came from such deep poverty, that my current situation is beyond progress we could have ever imagined for our family, so why am I expecting the results of people who have never had to drag themselves out of the bottom of the food chain? I think this year of 34 is the year I stop comparing my progress to everyone else, because no one has walked a day in my shoes, or seen everything I have had to go through to be able to breathe a sense of peace.

I want to be around real people, authentic people, but most importantly genuine people with real integrity and not the made-up dramas that are so irrelevant to my life and the current events that are happening in America. I don’t want to live in the made-up stories of hierarchies where people fake their personalities for the gram and the likes and grandiose feeling of delusional importance. I love feeling beautiful on the outside, don’t get me wrong, I love a good selfie and to post something nice I can keep memories of, but that is not my identity, because looks fade. Popularity fades when you stop being something others can gain from. But your self-respect doesn’t, and how you feel about yourself doesn’t.

It’s not always easy letting go of what is fake and the people you once had a good time with pretending and escaping with. There is a period where you grieve and you feel, damn, here I am again, alone while you see their smiling faces. But you can’t help but just get this immediate feeling of those are not my people. I’d rather be hated for being exactly who I am than to be loved for pretending to be someone that I’m not. People who pretend to be good people for the social groups they reside in but vote for nasty politicians just to gain a buck in their taxes. People who don’t speak out on the atrocities that are happening in the world because it’s not happening to them. People who don’t care about the suffering of anyone else because does it even matter if it’s not happening to me and my fun group of friends who I go to Pilates with.

I just can’t stand it. I can’t be around fake frauds. Selling me sweet nothings. I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than to be in one more fake circle I have to pretend to be someone that I’m not. Where I have to go small or act dumb just to keep people from being intimidated by me, by my brownness and their preconceived ideas of how someone as brown as me should act. People think that speaking to them clearly is me being mean, and they use me for my energy, but their loyalty ends the second they stop benefiting from me. It’s painful to walk alone, but it’s the chance I guess I have to take to be the most authentic version of myself.

Because, at the end of the day, my grandma was right, “juventud y pelo negro pronto pasa.” Youth, beauty, trends, popularity—they all fade. What doesn’t fade is who you really are when no one is looking, the kind of heart you’ve built, and the way you’ve loved and stood for something real. I’d rather grow older with a face full of laugh lines and a soul that’s at peace, than stay stuck chasing approval from people who wouldn’t even recognize my worth if it slapped them in the face.

If 34 has taught me anything, it’s this: I am not here to perform, to be pretty for the world, or to live on someone else’s timeline. I’m okay with annoying the hell out of most of you people, because when I tried to be nice and palatable y’all didn’t like me or value me. So why the hell am I pretending anymore? You just don’t like me at all. And I’m finally at the age where your little cringed faces do make me uncomfortable, I’m not gonna lie, the people pleaser in me still wants to adjust to ease the discomfort. But my inner power is growing, being perceived doesn’t scare me anymore. I want to be myself. So keep cringing away, friends. I’m gonna still be me. Some days I feel that confidently, other days I feel I’m still pretending. But I am no longer filling in the space of discomfort for you to feel at ease with me. Don’t like me? Please, I beg you…don’t like me at all. Go away, I like that way.

xoxo – Blanca

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