Not Today

All of a sudden the words get stuck in my throat and I can’t write anymore, I don’t know what to say. I like smoking because in some way it makes me focus, it lands me on earth and its clouds clear my mind. It entertains my anxious hands and my hungry of love lips; it burns the unnecessary words and fills my lungs with bravery and calmness. I don’t know how but it wraps me in some strange imaginary safeness and the moment is a little less chaotic, a little more mine.

I don’t feel good today. And I don’t want to feel good because sometimes I need to not feel good. I don’t want to be cheered up or to say motivational words because today I feel lonely and full of doubts and fear. Today I don’t want to be happy just because “I have to”. Today I’m sad and weird and that’s okay. I don’t want to go outside and admire anything, I want to be isolated and watch the roof from my bed. I’m not a mess and I know peace will be back, just not today. Today I’m empty and nothing is okay.

It scares me that my life could be a complete chaos again, to sink in the pain and sorrow and not knowing how to get out of it. It scares me to be lonely, even if I try to convince myself that it doesn’t. It scares me to be hurt, it scares me to love and to feel because I know how intensely I do. I don’t want to suffer, not again, not yet.

Sometimes I feel loved and sometimes I feel abandoned. Sometimes I love life and others I just want it to end already. Sometimes I’m thirsty of experiences and sometimes I don’t want to get out of my bedroom. Sometimes I’m one and sometimes I’m another.

I feel like crying but I don’t want to. I don’t want it to hurt, I don’t want to be broken and become fragments of myself. I wish I wasn’t so fragile, so naïve always, I wish I was more centered and thought more with the brain and less with the heart. I wish I didn’t get hopes and learnt to know about reason and logic. And at the same time I don’t. Maybe things would be easier, but then maybe I wouldn’t be myself.

And despite of everything, deep inside I know it’s all fine. And that I wouldn’t really change a thing, even if I break into pieces every time. As ephemeral as it was this time, it also was the sweetest, and it doesn’t really hurt, it feels good. And it always heals and I always start again.

Young Blood

I know I’m very young, but I was leading the life of an older woman, full of responsibilities, obligations and stress, I tend to overthink and analyze everything that happens and make myself suffer. All of my friends back in Tulum are much older than me, which I love because I admire and learn from them profoundly; when I arrived to Mexico City and went back to school I realized all of my new classmates are around my age, it felt very strange at the beginning, I thought we wouldn’t have anything in common and craved the deeper connection I have with my older friends. But it’s been a few months now and I find it so refreshing to be with all this young blood, they reminded me that it’s okay to let go, to go crazy and not be so serious all the time. It’s fine to have fun and be stupid at times.

I’m so inspired lately and I’ve been creating a lot, I’ve caught myself walking on the street feeling like the luckiest girl alive, like I’m the owner of the world and it’s spinning fast around me but it can't hurt me: I have deep roots and long wings. I feel an immense gratitude and appreciation for the people in my life, because they all have given me so much.

Thank you new friends for giving me back the sparkle I was missing, because I have this appetite for life again, for music, for photography, for connections, for experiences. Thank you for dancing with me in the subway while we wait for the train, for going to the movies together and eat popcorn, for feeding my obsession taking me to Harry Potter restaurants. Thank you for reading the covers of all the movies and books in the store just because we have time. Thank you for running under the rain with me and then go to eat sushi all wet. For laughing at my dorky jokes, for dressing up and lighting fireworks to film clips. Thank you for our conversations of what we love and dream and fear of.

Yes, getting old is scary, but these people let me forget about it for some time. These beautiful, full of dreams, not yet broken people. Life is delicious, with all of its contrasts and flavors, and ironically it feels brighter for me in this gray city in which I’ve been following cute guys on the street just to see their pretty faces a couple minutes more.

I was touring the city with my mom on her scooter a few weeks ago, watching the huge streets and the beautiful monuments and fountains and buildings and fast cars, when I suddenly felt a tremendous love for this place, and I knew it in my bones, the whole world is my home.

I made a vision board a few months ago and so many of the things I envisioned and manifested have been happening so quick that it feels like pure magic. I am surrounded by love and the best energy, filming, writing and challenging myself, going to the best music concerts and art museums. I don’t know how to explain it but life feels so full at this point that makes me shiver. And I feel deeper than ever. Anyela had to go to develop some film the other day and I made her company, while we waited, we visited some beautiful buildings, one of them was so stunning I almost cry, I felt I was part of a movie of another time and the moment was so perfect it left me speechless.

Crazy things have been happening and I embrace them all, dancing like a fool as an extra for a movie,  going to queer bars to see my friend’s band play, walking in the calmness of the night taking the time to admire the city lights. And most important of all, I’m feeling something I thought I’d never feel again: love. I’m excited and impatient and frightened, all at the same time. And it’s wonderful.

It just feels so damn good to be alive.

Twenty-one

In less than a week I’ll be 21, surprisingly I’m not having a melt down like every year around my birthday. I don’t know, it still drives me crazy getting old, but I’m too comfortable and happy with my life and what I’ve done and achieved so far. I’m happy with who I am, and that is enough.

All my life I’ve needed to run, wanting to do everything at the same time and eat the whole world in one bite, I always wanted to grow up fast and live the “real life”. I was (and still am) passion driven, but I always felt like I didn’t have enough time too, that I needed to rush into things otherwise just one lifetime wasn’t enough for me to do and be everything I wanted, and that thought scared the hell out of me. Today I’ve made peace with it- there are so many things I don’t know, and I don’t know if I will ever know them, so many people that I’m not and will never be.

Life felt like a race with myself and although I was pretty content with where I was and what I did, I was already thinking in where I would be next, never fully enjoying the present and today. Sitia, a beautiful girl with a soul full of light told me one afternoon on the beach I should stop stressing about time and life, that it’s not worth it, and that small comment had a huge impact on me, I listened to her and took her advice, she was so right. It’s been a dramatically different life the last couple months since I moved to city, but ironically I feel calmer and safer here. I still miss Tulum, but it feels so far right now, like it’s part of another life, I always have that feeling that my life is many, many different ones and that I've been different people, and it can be both scary and mind blowing. I wish I never forgot anything.

This year has been a complete rollercoaster and definitely one of the best years of my entire life, and I’m just so in love with everything to suffer, I think probably life is what and who I love most. It’s just so unpredictable and fascinating and you just never know a thing, and that’s exciting. I just feel very inspired and love everything so bad right now that I feel like my body is going to burn and collapse and rain and get together again, it’s a great feeling.

Suddenly I believe in magic and in people again, and I trust. Life is just too short to not do what I want and live the life I dream of. There is nothing more satisfying than being able to finally say I am who I always wanted to be.

Luz

During my highschool years I would spend the evenings creating and shooting with friends. Kei is my heart sister and also the muse of a lot of my work. A couple days ago I found these clips that we filmed many years ago with the hopes of doing something with them, but we completely forgot about it. So here it is, about 4 years later and us being two completely different people than we used to be those days. Also this is my first try at editing video, I hope it's not too bad!

See you soon Tulum

Before leaving Tulum I felt excited, decided, ready to create a new life in the city and eager for all the new people and experiences that were about to unfold, I never thought it would be so hard to leave my home and my people. When the date was getting closer everything became real, the doubts arrived and attacked me ruthlessly; my last days in Tulum were spent telling everyone how much I love them, thanking for everything I lived there, regretting for what I didn’t do and crying. I would cry all the time, while I was driving, laying on bed, watching the stars or the sea, when I hugged Fer. I’d cry alone and with company. I had so many mixed emotions that it was impossible to hold it in. It was a cry of excitement, doubts, pain, sadness, love, fear… all together and unruly.

In Tulum I found everything that can be wished for: my home, my family, my soul mate. But deep inside I knew well that in this moment I had to leave all of them and start a journey by myself, away from the people and the place I love most. It’s been the hardest decision of my life and it took me months finding the courage to take it.

I left my little Caribbean town that loved me dearly for two years and moved to the largest city in the whole world, Mexico City. My heart aches and cries because the stars of the infinite sky have been replaced by bulbs that shine bright in the darkness of the night, the white sand for concrete floors, and the turquoise sea became gigantic waves of people and cars, the palm trees now are buildings so tall that rip up the clouds.

Tulum is like no other place on Earth, it’s magical and timeless, intense and powerful, it’s a vortex of energy and craziness.  I barely took photographs there; I was too busy enjoying it to even worry about it. It also was too personal to share and too powerful to forget. I may not have many beautiful photographs of the beach or its people but I have thousands of memories that will live in my heart forever.

In this place I found a part of myself that I didn’t know existed, I’ve felt incredibly weak and strong, vulnerable and safe. It’s been beautiful, bright, tough and tragic, life-changing and inspiring. Leaving Tulum is bittersweet, I’m thrilled and terrified at the same time, I feel homesick for Tulum but impatient  to explore this new place. I’m close to my blood family but far from my tribe. And most of all, I miss his face and his voice, his smile and how he makes me laugh; I miss our conversations and moments of silence, both as deep and comforting. I miss the warmth of our skins and the safety of his hug, I truly don’t know how I’ll make it through this new chapter of my life without him by my side, but I know it’s where I have to be and I have the certainty that our paths will become one again.

I can’t remember how many times we’ve said good bye by now, but none of them has been real, not even when it felt like it. Life keeps pulling us together and nothing could be more perfect than us.  I’m surrounded by 20 million people in this city, and the only one I want to be with is not here. It seems that the love we have for each other is more powerful than any distance, time or complication we could ever have.

Since the moment I met Fer I fell deeply in love, I was scared because I didn’t feel ready to have a relationship and I barely knew him, but something inside me kept saying that the biggest adventure of my life was about to start. From the beginning we knew we were perfect for each other, we never had to pretend or force anything, it was natural, like if it had always existed. And it grew and grew and grew and we loved each other like the stars love the moon and the writer loves words, it’s inevitable and there's no other way it can be. But the timing wasn’t perfect, and as much as we loved we also knew that the moment in our lives we were in was of self-growth. In two years he have accumulated so many stories and been through so much that I truly believe we are invincible, we are infinite.

Saturday morning we loaded the car with my things and we said goodbye about five times, I kept forgetting things in his house and had to go back to get them, every time I’d cover him in hugs, kisses and I love yous. We drove for 20 hours in two days, listening to the music I like and admiring the landscapes and the highway, one of my favorite places to be. We stopped for lunch in Campeche and then slept in Veracruz.  On Sunday we arrived to Puebla where I visited my dad; for three hours we talked, ate ice-cream and enjoyed each other’s company. My mom drove all the way to Mexico and while we were entering I felt tiny, there was too much noise, too much traffic, too much chaos. I didn’t talk in all the way until we got home, I could only think of Tulum and the nature while teardrops full of terror and insecurity ran down my cheeks, I observed the skyscrapers and the hurried people in awe. I was sure I wouldn’t survive a month in this crazy place. I thought I had ruined everything and that I’d be miserably unhappy in this city, I wanted to go back to the calmness of Tulum and be with my friends. I wanted to see the stars and listen to the ocean. I wanted to be barefoot all day and dance all night. I had absolutely no idea of what was waiting for me here.

I left everything and everyone I love, yes, but I’m chasing my dream. It’s not a goodbye, it’s a see you soon.