Anxiety Brain and Me

I’m finally putting into words what anxiety feels like for me.

Sometime in my 20s, I dug up my anxiety and have been trying to bury it ever since. Unsuccessfully so, I might add.

what you don't see is that hours before this photo
was taken, I was an anxious lil cookie.
(PC: John Cassidy)

It has become a project of sorts, something I will stop at nothing to fix. I started therapy. Still anxious. Started praying more. Still anxious. Started back running. And reading. And resting. Still anxious. Tried setting boundaries and saying no. Still anxious. Learned to listen to myself and ask for breaks. I meditated and partied, then realized partying wasn’t the answer, then spent more time laying in the sun listening to music and napping and enjoying nature and, guess what, still anxious. Moved back home (big win!) and I STILL GET ANXIOUS.

"Why you coming back to Trinidad?"

touched down in the 868!

"What you wanna come here for?"

"Why you want to move back to Trinidad?"

"Trinidad have nothing for you."

"Girl, find yourself an American man so you could get citizenship and stay there."

The people want to know why on earth I would come back to Trinidad and give up on living in the U.S., the land of opportunity
and all that jazz. Well, besides the fact that I have to move back home for contractual reasons (iykyk), more importantly, I want to move back. 

I've spent seven long, fun, transformative, life-changing but arduous years in the US of A and now it's time for a new phase of life. Leggo.

Finally I graduated and I’m not burnt out!

Until now, work-life balance felt like a myth. I struggled through four years of undergrad before learning how to respect myself, my time and my health. Now I can finally look back and see how far I've come.

Yesterday, we graduated! I’m not going to dwell on how underwhelming virtual graduation was, because it’s actually okay. I’d rather be underwhelmed than overwhelmed. 

Last year when I graduated with my bachelor’s we did the full shebang: my family came up to California to celebrate with me, we had all the ceremonies - black grad, grad mass, commencement ceremony in the stadium and the department ceremony under a huge tent on the main quad. I walked across the stage and got my diploma and introduced my family to my friends and we took hella pictures and I said goodbye to my friends and packed up my room and finished my final assignments and took down all our dorm decorations and played my last pan gig all in the span of one week. And that was all well and good but I’d be lying to you if I said it wasn’t utterly overwhelming. 

snapshots from graduation 2019

The uncharted territory of my 20s

Hint it’s uncomfortable and involves a lot of unlearning the ways of functioning that I’d built up throughout my life. Been broken down now I’m building back up! 

me, attempting to fly a drone

Where do I begin? Maybe with how introspectively uncomfortable I am these days. I’m no longer satisfied with my own status quo of functioning because I’m seeing a better way, but the better way is far off in the horizon. And I’m starting to make a dent towards the better way but it’s hard. It’s like wading full-body through a sticky mess and you keep going forward because you know you get to the other side eventually.

Coping and mourning in unprecedented times

Here’s to mourning the things we lost, realizing it’s okay to slump, and knowing we don’t have to go it alone. Plus, yay therapy!

work in the age of corona

Not gonna lie and pretend that I’m thriving during this time because I’m not. It’s difficult. I saw a social media post that read “Damn…I picked a bad year to get my life together” and I felt that. Because I started therapy at the end of last year and was finally learning to address my anxieties. I was finally learning how to push through discomfort and stay present and in tune to my body even when my mind sends me into a tailspin. I was learning how to be kind to myself and parent myself and BAM. Covid-19 comes and sends me spinning. So yeah, I'm upset.

Struggling to adjust to a new home

Since when is it a daunting task to leave my room or make a sandwich? What is going on?

New church in my new town. Moving can be exciting, but also a little scary.

Basic life update/recap: I graduated in June, went home, survived a full-time internship (all by the grace of God) and now I’m back in the bay for my master’s degree (who sent me?!). I’m no longer on campus, but an 18-ish minute bike ride away and living in a legit house - not a dorm with a dining hall and RAs and more people than you can befriend in a year, but a house.

When self-care feels selfish

Crying because Lilly Singh aka Superwoman, one of my favorite Youtube personalities, recently announced that she’s taking a break for her mental health. I’ve laughed along to her videos and seen her grow for the last 4 years, and now, hearing her talk about the importance of taking care of yourself has struck some chord in me that lay dormant for a while. 

She said, “Taking time for yourself and addressing mental health is positive. There’s nothing to feel guilty about. There’s nothing to feel bad about. It is what it is.” 😭

I’m thinking, if Superwoman can take a break and not feel bad about it then maybe so can I.

Sleep Deprivation is Changing Me for the Worst

When you spend the first weeks of the school year being sleep deprived and overextended, everything that happens suddenly turns into a drastic situation. Plus, senior year is tough!

been sleepy since freshman year

College is rough, as evidenced by my many previous posts ranting about the ups and downs, busyness and stress that comes along with trying to be and do everything in a short 4 year span.

But here we are, in senior year, because somehow I made it through. And honestly, I'm ready to leave already. 😅It's more complicated than that though.

On Adult Friendships

Moving on from high school and being at university has me thinking a lot about adult friendships. My friendships no longer fit into a mold, and that’s both wonderful and scary. 

With friends at Pigeon Point, Tobago

Last week, I took a #GirlsTrip to Tobago with 4 friends from secondary school. It was a much-needed, long-awaited trip, but in the days leading up I was more nervous and agitated than excited. I hadn’t seen these girls in over 6 months, including my long time bestie from high school whom I’ve officially known for just over 10 years. Our relationships hadn’t been the same since we'd graduated, and it’s been interesting navigating these changes. Like everything else in high school, friendships were molded by the structure and routine of school. We had classes together, ate lunch together, studied together and went out on weekends or during school breaks. There was always a time and a place for friendship, and leaving school suddenly left me in a place where I had to re-evaluate the meaning of friendship, and the time and effort that they take. My friendships no longer fit into a mold, which is both wonderful and scary, and worth thinking about.

The Evolution of New Year’s Resolutions

Documenting almost a decade of new years resolutions: successes and failures and everything in between

Yes, I am 100% that #NewYearNewMe chick, jumping at every opportunity to make a fresh start, improve myself and set goals that I may or may not achieve. Of course, New Year’s is no exception - in fact it’s the fresh start I get the most excited about, after my birthday, a new school year, or even a new school quarter. But my approach to New Year’s Resolutions has changed over the years and I thought it would be interesting to journey back in time to see how I got here: a girl declaring with absolute conviction to anyone who would listen that 2018 is gonna be my year.

Improv Wisdom

Thoughts on how improv is changing my life.

October 2017. There was a thing that i wanted to write about but didn’t get the chance.

Freakin’ improv wisdom! (which is also the name of the book by Patricia Ryan Madison) I would highly recommend taking an improv class if you can. It’s not just for actors, or theatre-people or whatever, but it’s a class that any and everyone can benefit from. It’s really helped me open my eyes and see and realize how much of the world I’m missing because I’m so wrapped up in my own head.

What does it mean to challenge yourself?

This quarter got me thinking a lot about this. After all, that’s the point of university, right? Learning. Growth. Pushing past your limits. Challenging yourself. But how do we know that we’re challenging ourselves, and not just pushing past our breaking point? Of course, there’s no simple “answer”, but I’ve tried to wrap my head around this concept of what it means to truly challenge yourself.

Life: A Series of Approximations

Side-note: this blog post has been in my head for the last 2 months so it’s really a wonder it got out at all. Leggo.

The more I live the more I realize that a great majority of life, especially when it comes to immeasurable or non-concrete things, is approximated. Like the following.

10 Weeks of Research, 10 Lessons Learnt

Posing with poster

Research. Such a loaded word, and quite frankly, a word that would have scared me a year ago. So this summer, when I finally had my first "research" experience, the fulfillment wasn’t so much about the theory of the research itself, but all the lessons that came with switching from student-mode to work-mode. Here are some notes that I took over 10 weeks.

1. Firstly, I had to get over my own version of imposter syndrome, and remind myself that I deserved to be where I was. After being accepted to do HBREX (the Human Biology Research Exploration program), I felt like I’d suddenly attained something that had felt unattainable only one year before. And I felt like I couldn’t possibly be qualified for this.

My Black Wedding Dress (A Celebration of Blackness)

Convention, Perception, and the Symbolism of the Color Black

screenshotted from Spotify

I'm listening to Chronixx's album Chronology which my Jamaican friend recommended to me. Chronixx is a Jamaican reggae artist for those who don't know, and I didn't know much about his music before. But this new reggae album is uplifting with its social commentary and personal narrative. Take a listen. You're probably wondering what this has to do with a wedding dress - don't worry, I'm getting to that.

The first song that popped up when I pulled up Chronology on Spotify was Black is Beautiful. Coincidence? I think not. He sings, "they never told us that black is beautiful". I'm taking "they" to be Western mainstream culture, but it could just as easily apply to someone or something else.

Maleficent rocking her black ensemble. Great
movie though (Source: http://movies.disney.com/maleficent)

So aside from the very obvious denouncement of dark skin in the dark days of slavery, it's no secret that both then and now, in Western pop culture (literature, art, the works), the color black has been associated with being evil/darkness and other countless negative things. You don't even need to google it. Just think of popular sayings like blackmail, blacklist, black sheep, and the fact that Maleficent and half of those evil witches in Disney movies wear black capes. Then there's this unforgettable image of my soul becoming "black" when I sin, which has stayed with me from childhood. Religious or not, it's a poignant image. Meanwhile, white is associated with purity and goodness and cleanliness. A lot of other religious references come to mind here, like baptism, and weddings, confirmation, doves...but why?

A Note on Nobility

Am I trying to be a hero? Is that a bad thing?

I'm writing this because the other day I met someone at a house gathering and we did the usual chit-chat/small talk, “where are you from?”, and “what are you studying” and eventually, “what do you want to do after? Do you plan on returning home?”

To the End of Sophomore Year

(Aka The Great Settling of Sophomore Year)

I wish I’d written myself a letter at the beginning of this year so I could compare how I felt then to how I feel now. I didn’t - but I did journal a lot at that time. And I remember journalling during Summer ’16 about how excited I was about sophomore year and obsessively listing all the reasons that sophomore year was going to be the bomb.com.

Long story short, it wasn’t. And if I could write a letter to my past self, there are a couple things I’d like to say. Leggo.

The Beauty of Community

There were one too many times this quarter when I felt like no one at Stanford really understood me, or I couldn’t really be myself around anyone, or I just couldn't fully connect with people because of cultural or personal or other barriers. Or some iteration of that sentiment has been running through my head, and I now call BS on myself.

21 Reflections

Cheers to 21 Years of Life!

Yes, today is the big day, it's my 21st birthday! I am celebrating my 21 years in a couple ways: 1) Treating myself to some pampering & self-care 2) Reflecting 3) A possible night out with friends 4) Having a fresh start!

Updates Galore!

Hello there😊

First of all, thanks for reading! I've just updated my blog with a ton of new (and old) content to satiate all your reading needs. Here they are, sorted for your enjoyment, starting with my most recent post about dealing with insecurities and perfectionism:

• Stuck in a Perfect Rut - Trying to be perfect doesn't work
• Poems
• Throwbacks
• Lessons from my early Stanford days
• Travels
• Service Reflections - Working with the Missionaries of the Poor in Jamaica

Read on for descriptions and sneak peeks!