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i.

the dishes have been in the sink for four days.

i know it’s been four days because i’ve been counting. meticulously.

why? because that’s what you do when you’re trying to convince yourself you’re not being unreasonable. you gather evidence. you build a case. you prepare for the trial that will happen inside your own head where you are both prosecutor and defendant.

four days. crusted egg yolk. discarded shrimp in the floor and sink. something that was once oatmeal... maybe? the counters are a slick mess of oil and stains and cockroaches. a pan with what i can only describe as a crime scene of burnt cheese. and the smell… dios mío, the smell. sour and rotting and accusatory.

my roommate is not here. my roommate is at brunch, or with his judgmental lawyer friends, or living his main character life somewhere that isn’t this kitchen. but now, i’m standing here in my pajamas at 11am on a saturday, having a small existential crisis over dishes that aren’t mine.

here’s the thing that keeps circling my brain like a fly that won’t land: he made this decision for me.

he decided, without consulting me, that i would live with this. that i would either clean his mess or exist in it. those are my options. either way, i lose something. my time or my peace. my labor or my sanity. he got to leave the dishes and leave the apartment and leave me holding the bag of his thoughtlessness.

and if i say something? if i text him, hey, the dishes? then i’m the one making it weird. i’m the nag. the uptight one. the person who can’t just chill. one more story to shit talk to his friends about.

and this is such a small thing. i know it’s a small thing. that’s what makes it so effective.

ii.

let me tell you about paper cuts.

one paper cut is nothing. you wince, you suck your finger, you move on. two paper cuts, same thing, right? annoying but very much survivable. you don’t even mention it to anyone because who complains about paper cuts? that would be ridiculous! that would be… dramatic.

but here’s what happens with paper cuts: they accumulate.

by the fiftieth paper cut, your hands are a mess of tiny wounds.

by the hundredth, you’re bleeding from places you didn’t know could bleed.

and the wild thing is, you still can’t point to any single cut and say “this one. this is the one that broke me.” because it wasn’t one. it was all of them. it was the accumulation.

inconsideration works the same way.

one person doesn’t hold the door. fine. one person talks over you in a meeting. okay. one person cancels plans last minute. sure. one person plays their phone on speaker in a quiet coffee shop. whatever. one person lets their dog off-leash and it runs up on you. it’s fine, it’s fine, everything is fine.

except it’s not one person. it’s everyone. it’s constant.

this is the texture of daily life in a world where people have collectively decided that everyone else is an NPC.

you know NPCs, right? non-player characters. the background people in video games. they exist to serve your story, to give you quests or sell you potions or just populate the world so it doesn’t feel empty. they don’t have inner lives. they don’t have needs. they’re not real.

this is how people treat each other now. like NPCs. like everyone else exists as a backdrop to their main character moment.

the person blasting music on the subway isn’t thinking about the forty other people in the car. those people aren’t real to them. they’re scenery. the person who leaves their shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot isn’t thinking about the next person who needs that spot. that person is theoretical, abstract, basically fictional.

and it’s not that these individuals are monsters. most of them would probably help you if you collapsed in front of them. it’s that in the ordinary moments, the mundane daily transactions, they’ve stopped registering other people as fully real.

you’re just a shape they have to move around. an obstacle or an audience. never a protagonist in your own right.

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iii.

i’ve been thinking about why this bothers me so much. beyond the dishes, beyond the subway music, beyond all the small daily erosions. and i think it’s this:

every act of inconsideration is a tiny colonization.

stay with me, please.

colonization, at its core, is someone deciding that their desires matter more than your existence. that they can plant their flag in your space, extract what they want, and leave you to deal with the aftermath. that your land, your labor, your life is raw material for their project.

scale that down... like way the fuck down… to a sink full of dishes.

my roommate planted his flag in our kitchen. he extracted convenience from shared space and he left me to deal with the aftermath. and if i object, i’m the one disrupting the peace.

this is the same logic. the same grammar. just a different magnitude.

and listen, i know someone is already typing “you can’t compare dirty dishes to actual colonization.” and sure, fine, they’re not equivalent in harm. but they’re the same shape. the same assumption. the same sentence structure where someone else gets to be the subject and you get to be the object.

i do what i want. you deal with it.

this is why it scales so easily. why the same person who leaves their dishes for their roommate to handle can also talk about immigrants like they’re a math problem. “how many can we absorb?” “what’s the economic impact?” numbers, not people. populations, not personas. the humanity abstracted out until what’s left is just a logistics question. a clinical thought exercise with no real human value.

they’re not thinking about the mother who walked three thousand miles with her children. they’re not thinking about the family who lost everything to a war they didn’t start. those people aren’t real to them. just shapes on a graph, NPCs at the border.

same logic. same grammar. different scale.

iv.

here’s where it gets really fun.

so you’ve been absorbing these paper cuts. hundreds of them. thousands, maybe. you’ve been the bigger person. you’ve let things go. you’ve breathed through it. you’ve told yourself it’s not worth the conflict, not worth the energy, not worth being “that person.”

and then one day… you just fucking snap.

maybe it’s the dishes. maybe it’s the fourth time someone cancels on you. maybe it’s a comment that isn’t even that bad, objectively, but it lands on top of all the other comments and suddenly you’re crying in a target parking lot or screaming at your roommate about a pan.

and what happens then?

you’re the crazy one.

you’re “overreacting.” you’re “making it a big deal.” you’re “so sensitive.” you’re “emotional.” you need to “calm down.” you need to “relax.” you need to understand that it’s “not that serious.”

this is the trap. this is the part that makes me want to tear my hair out.

the structure is designed so that the person who finally reacts looks insane.

because any single instance is defensible. “it’s just dishes.” “i was just running late.” “i didn’t mean it like that.” every paper cut, in isolation, is nothing. plausibly deniable. barely worth mentioning. and so you’re not allowed to mention the accumulation. you’re not allowed to say “this is the thousandth time” because that sounds crazy. that sounds like you’ve been keeping score. that sounds like you have a problem.

and maybe you have been keeping score. because that’s what happens when you’re bleeding. you start tracking the wounds. you start building the case. you become a prosecutor in your own head because no one else is going to validate that you’re actually being harmed.

this is how they gaslight you.

not with lies, exactly. with scale. with isolation. with the insistence that each cut be evaluated independently, as if there’s no pattern, as if it’s not the same knife every time.

“why are you so upset about dishes?”

because it’s not about the dishes, pendejo. it’s about the fact that i don’t exist to you.

it’s about the fact that my time, my space, my peace, my actual presence in this apartment means nothing. it’s about the accumulated weight of being treated like i’m not real.

but try explaining that. try explaining that while you’re angry crying about a pan.

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v.

the myth of the high road has done so much damage.

you know this one… “be the bigger person.” “don’t stoop to their level.” “kill them with kindness.” “living well is the best revenge.”

it sounds wise! it even sounds… mature? it sounds like the kind of thing a person with good boundaries would say.

but here’s what it actually means in practice: absorb the harm. don’t react. don’t name it. don’t make it weird.

the high road is a trick. it’s a way of getting you to police yourself so they don’t have to. it’s outsourcing the labor of conflict avoidance to the person being harmed. you do the work of staying calm, staying quiet, staying reasonable, while they get to keep being thoughtless with no consequences.

and the kicker? the high road doesn’t even work.

people don’t respect you more for being endlessly accommodating. they respect you less. they learn that you’ll absorb whatever they do, so they do more. the high road teaches people that you’re a safe target. that you won’t fight back. that they can extract from you indefinitely.

i’ve been on that road for years. decades, maybe. i was raised on it. good puerto rican boy, don’t make waves, ten respeto, be gracious, be patient, be the kind of person who doesn’t cause problems.

and you know what i got for it? a reputation for being easy. for being flexible. for being the one who would always understand, always accommodate, always make it work.

which meant everyone else’s needs came first, always. because edgard will figure it out. edgard won’t mind. edgard is soooooo chill.

i’m not fucking chill!

i’ve never been chill. i’ve just been performing chill while dying inside. smiling while bleeding. being the bigger person while getting smaller and smaller.

ya no más.

vi.

i need to be honest about something: i’ve been inconsiderate too.

i’ve been the one who left the dishes. well, maybe not literally. okay, sometimes literally. but also metaphorically.

i’ve canceled plans last minute. i’ve been so caught up in my own stuff that i forgot to ask how someone else was doing. i’ve taken up space without thinking about who i was displacing.

this isn’t a confession designed to seem balanced. it’s just true. and i think it matters because the point isn’t that there are good people and bad people, considerate people and inconsiderate people. the point is that we’ve built a world that makes inconsideration easy and invisible.

the question isn’t “am i a good person?”, the question is “am i treating the people around me like they’re real?”

like they have inner lives. like they have needs that exist even when i’m not looking. like their time matters, their space matters, their peace matters.

not in a guilt spiral way. not in a way that makes you anxious and paralyzed. just… are you seeing people? or are they NPCs in your story?

i ask myself this now. like, when i’m about to leave something for someone else to deal with. when i’m about to cancel. when i’m about to be loud or take up space or assume my needs come first.

is this person real to me right now?

it’s a simple question. it’s completely changed how i move through the world.

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vii.

so where does this leave us?

here’s what i want you to take from this, if you take anything:

you’re allowed to stop absorbing.

you’re allowed to say something about the dishes. you’re allowed to not be the bigger person. you’re allowed to have a reaction that matches the accumulated harm, not just the single incident. you’re allowed to stop performing chill when you’re actually bleeding.

the people who call you crazy, who call you dramatic, who insist it’s not that serious? they’re the ones who benefited from your silence. of course they don’t want you to speak up. your compliance was convenient for them.

your reaction is not the problem.

the pattern is the problem. the thousand cuts are the problem. the culture that treats consideration as optional and your objection as pathological. that’s the problem. not you. not your tears. not your anger.

you’re not alone in this.

if this essay is resonating, if you’re nodding along, if you’re thinking about your own sink full of dishes, your own accumulated cuts. you’re not the only one. we’re all bleeding from different versions of the same wound.

and maybe that’s where it starts. naming it. seeing it. refusing to accept that this is just how things are.

because it doesn’t have to be. we used to assume that other people were real. we used to move through the world with the basic expectation that we’d be seen, considered, treated like we mattered. that’s not some impossible utopia. it’s just. consideration. it’s just remembering that other people exist.

well… the dishes aren’t in the sink anymore. the rotting food and the cockroaches and the slime and the sticky floors are gone.

because i cleaned them. again.

i’m going to say something. this is not because i expect it to fix anything. but because i’m done pretending it doesn’t matter. done being the bigger person. done absorbing.

he made his decision, now i get to make mine.

for the love of fucking god, please… take care of each other out there. and wash your goddamn dishes.

te quiero, mi gente.

edgard 💖

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what’s been cutting you lately? the comment section is open. let’s name it together.

p.s. if you’re someone who leaves dishes in the sink: this is your sign. just wash them. it takes three minutes. the people you live with are real. they have feelings. they’ve been counting the days.

if any of this resonated, you can buy me a coffee. no pressure. no subscription. just a one-time “thanks for existing” if you feel like it.

so a great substacker i know called wrote the most devastating thing on substack notes the other day.

it was something so simple and honest it made my chest hurt:

“i just wanna lay my head on a man’s shoulder and he lay his head on my head please.”

that’s it. the whole thing.

just a person asking the universe for the gentlest possible form of intimacy. head geometry, human tetris. two skulls, one shoulder, zero pretense.

a normal person would reply “mood” or “same” or maybe just a single emoji of a person lying down.

i wrote this:

“clamors this yearnfully to the winds and airs around me, all while standing amidst four large, tall, thick stone walls crafted with inca stonemasonry precision.”

let’s sit with that for a second.

i clamored. yearnfully. to the winds AND the airs… inside a fortress… with historically accurate masonry.

i provided the NUMBER of walls (four). i described them (large, tall, thick). i named the CIVILIZATION responsible for the technique. i commented on the QUALITY of their craftsmanship.

she asked for a hug and i gave her national geographic.

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what is WRONG with me?!?

here’s the thing, though.

i didn’t write that as a joke. i mean, i did. but also… i didn’t.

somewhere in the absurdist theater of my response is the actual truth: i have built walls. massive ones. they’re load-bearing, they’re historically significant. they’re surely kind archaeologists will study someday, shaking their heads, muttering this person really did not want to get hurt again.

and yet.

AND YET.

i still want the head on shoulder thing. i still want the sublime geometry of being held. i want it so badly that sometimes i have to turn it into a bit just to survive the yearning.

the funniest lie i’ve ever told myself was “i’m healed now.”

i said it after three years of therapy. i said it after doing EMDR and somatic work and reading all the brené brown and going to the gym and journaling and meditating and whatever else the algorithm told me would fix my attachment issues.

i felt good. i felt ready. i thought: “okay, i can do this now”. i said: “i can let someone in”.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

here’s what nobody tells you about healing: you don’t actually know if it worked until you’re in the situation again. you can do all the work in isolation, feel totally fine, and then someone gets close to you and suddenly your nervous system is like oh, we’re doing THIS? let me pull up some files you forgot existed.

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trauma is patient. trauma will wait. trauma will let you think you graduated and then show up at your door like hey bestie, remember me? remember that thing from 2019? 2014? 1997? let’s TALK about it.

i thought i was ready. then i started seeing someone and within three weeks my body was doing things i thought i’d outgrown. hypervigilance. scanning for signs of abandonment. rehearsing the goodbye before the hello was even finished. building walls in real time, brick by brick, while simultaneously screaming why won’t you come closer.

the audacity. the absolute audacity of thinking i was fixed…

The Mystic Hour

I’m 29 & I’ve Never Been In A Relationship

Relationships can teach you about the other side of yourself. They really are mirrors but mirrors can also distort your reflection. I’ve always wondered what people used to reflect before the modern creation of the looking glass—I imagine it was people. If they couldn’t see themselves how would they know. We know now from history that the first mirrors were pools of still water and shiny stones that reflected light waves through cones in our eyes. To be a mirror, it requires a certain level of flatness, reflectivity and space. Mirrors allowed us to see what’s behind us, even things that existed in the distance. You would be fascinated to find out that the image in the mirror doesn’t exist and the things in the mirror are seen inverted. Everytime I look in the mirror I see a different person. Everytime I’m with a different person I experience a different me. I think there’s a great value in looking in a mirror and if you look for a long-time you can study the image t…

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4 months ago · 31 likes · 6 comments · Deziré

mi abuela used to do this thing when i was little and visiting puerto rico. she’d be cooking, and i’d come into the kitchen, and without even looking up from the sofrito, she’d just... open one arm. i’d tuck myself into her side. and we’d stand there. her stirring, me breathing. no words. no performance.

she never made me ask. she never made me earn it. the touch was offered before i had to build a fortress around the wanting.

i find myself drowning in that scene constantly, all in my head. what it felt like to just... receive. there was no negotiation, there was absolutely no proof of worthiness required.

i don’t know how to do that anymore.

i know how to perform. i know how to make my loneliness into content. i know how to be charming and funny and keep people at exactly the right distance where they can see me but not touch anything that might break.

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but the simple thing? the head on shoulder thing? the letting someone in without simultaneously constructing emergency exits?

that actually terrifies me more than i want to (or care to) admit.

but here’s what i’ve learned, though.

the walls aren’t the problem.

the walls kept me alive. the walls were the right call for a long time. when people kept proving that closeness meant pain, the walls were smart. the walls were how i survived. i’m not going to drag myself for building them. i had to do what i had to do.

the problem is that now i can’t find the door.

i built so well, so thoroughly, with such inca-level precision, that i kind of... forgot where i put the entrance. somewhere under all that stonework is a person who knows how to just open their arm and let someone in. but i’ve been in here so long, making jokes to the winds and airs, that i’m not sure how to get back to them.

so when deziré said i just wanna lay my head on a man’s shoulder, i felt that in my whole body.

yes! god, yes. same.

i want that too. i want it simply. i want it without building a history channel documentary around it first. i want to want things without immediately calculating how much it’ll hurt when they leave.

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but wanting isn’t the same as being able to receive. and receiving requires something i’m still learning: trusting that the walls can have a door. that i can let someone in without the whole structure collapsing. that i can be held and also be safe.

i’m not there yet.

but maybe writing this is me looking for the door. maybe saying it out loud, to the winds and airs and also to the internet, is how i start finding my way back.

love, kamory

27 & I've Never Been Touched Before.

Trigger Warning: Rape…

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4 months ago · 64 likes · 8 comments · kamory rose.

above i’ve shared two substacks that i read recently that really touched me recently. i want to give their authors a shoutout: to and they are two of my favorite substackers here, thank you for sharing your experiences.

anyway… if you need me, i’ll be in here.

the acoustics are excellent and the masonry really holds the sound. the elephant really brings the room together.

but! i am looking for the exit.

te quiero.

edgard 💖

p.s. , if you’re reading this: same. just... same.

p.p.s. the inca thing wasn’t random, by the way. their stonework was so precise they didn’t need mortar. the stones just fit together perfectly. which is maybe the whole metaphor. we’re all just looking for the person whose edges fit ours without needing anything extra to hold us in place. but first you gotta be willing to take down a wall or two… working on it.

p.p.p.s. to my therapist, who i know reads these: yes i’m journaling. this counts. don’t @ me.

if any of this resonated, you can buy me a coffee. no pressure. no subscription. just a one-time “thanks for existing” if you feel like it.

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i.

mi tío sent me a video yesterday about how the government controls hurricanes.

i watched the whole thing. twenty-three minutes. a man in a polo shirt standing in front of a whiteboard, drawing arrows between haarp and fema and something called “ionospheric heaters.” his confidence was immaculate. his sources were vibes.

i had to understand what i was up against.

here’s what i know about my tío: he’s smart. i mean, like, genuinely smart. he ran a successful business, raised good kids, can fix anything mechanical for sure. he’ll talk your ear off about baseball statistics going back to the roberto clemente era. the man is clearly not stupid, i know it.

but he doesn’t know how weather works. not really. fluid dynamics? pressure systems? the actual physics of how a hurricane forms and moves and dies? why would he know any of that? he’s not a meteorologist. most of us aren’t. i’m definitely not.

so when a hurricane hits puerto rico with suspicious timing, when the federal response is slow, when the death toll climbs and climbs… and nobody seems to care. when you watch your island drown while the president throws paper towels like he’s at a pep rally and gringos just talk about it as the political football du jour. when all of that happens, you see it build up around you, and you don’t always quite understand the boring mechanical reasons why. well… someone must be doing this on purpose, right? because it really feels like that.

here’s the thing about those deaths: a study published in the new england journal of medicine estimated that hurricane maría killed 4,645 people. not the 64 the government initially claimed. a 62% increase in mortality compared to the year before. households went an average of 84 days without electricity, 68 days without water. one-third of the deaths came from delayed or interrupted healthcare. it was a cascading infrastructure failure that was documented. it was fucking measurable. and it was also fucking preventable.

but that explanation doesn’t satisfy something in us. the cruelty must be the point. so there must be a plot… right?

and you know what? i get it!! the alternative is almost worse. these systems we depend on are broken in banal, extremely preventable ways. incompetence and selfishness and neglect have killed millions of people (see: covid) because nobody was steering the ship. and right there… that’s the fucking problem. and it’s terrifying in a way that doesn’t give you anyone to fight, much less any will to fight in the first place.

conspiracy theories offer comfort because they promise that someone, anyone, is in control. even if that someone is evil, at least the chaos has an author we can all rage against. it prevents us (and is designed to prevent us), really, from doing anything.

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ii.

let me tell you what happens when you don’t know how anything works.

when you don’t understand how legislation passes, every law looks like a backroom deal.

when you don’t understand epidemiology, every vaccine looks like an experiment.

when you don’t understand journalism, every story looks like propaganda.

when you don’t understand economics, every price increase is a cabal of elites.

when you don’t understand algorithms, every coincidence is proof they’re listening through your phone.

when you don’t understand how elections are administered (by actual county workers, by volunteers, by your neighbor carol who’s been doing this for twenty years) then of course it seems possible that millions of votes were fabricated. why not? you don’t know what the process actually looks like. you’ve never been in the room.

and the gap in your knowledge has to be filled with something. a story about fraud is going to be way more interesting than a story about poll workers eating cold pizza at 2am while they scan ballots one by one under the watch of police and lawyers and county officials.

ignorance makes you easy prey for bad policy dressed up as salvation.

take last year’s proposal for 50-year mortgages. the pitch was seductive: helping young people afford homes by stretching payments over half a century. suuuuure. sounds reasonable, right? housing is expensive. longer term means lower payments. problem solved!

except not if anyone runs the numbers.

on a $400,000 loan, you’d save about $56 a month compared to a 30-year mortgage. fifty-six dollars. that’s two mediocre burritos. one, really, if you’re ordering it through doordash. that’s the price of “helping young people” while the vast majority of your payments go toward interest, while equity builds at a glacial pace, while lenders and bankers collect decades of additional profit.

if you understand how amortization works, how interest compounds, how equity actually builds? you see through this instantly! it’s theater, it’s panem et circenses with a fixed rate.

but if you don’t understand those things, it sounds like someone’s finally doing something… it sounds like hope.

ignorance makes you grateful for crumbs. that’s the trick.

and the gaps always get filled… that’s literally how our brains work.

neuroscience backs this up in uncomfortable ways. people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to perceive meaningful patterns where none exist. they see connections in random coin flip sequences. they find intentional designs in abstract art. research using eeg measurements shows that conspiracy believers exhibit reduced frontal beta power (which is linked to cognitive control and decision-making) paired with heightened sensitivity to pattern detection in ambiguous information. brain imaging studies show increased activation in the prefrontal cortex when conspiracy believers evaluate conspiracy content, but not when processing factual information. something specific is being triggered.

listen, we’re pattern-seeking animals. we have evolved to see faces in clouds and predators in shadows because the cost of a false positive was low and the cost of missing a real threat was death. paranoia kept us alive on the savannah.

but we’re not on the savannah anymore, are we?

we’re out here, raw dogging a crazy fucking world with the same pattern-seeking machinery that helped us survive the ice age. this machinery is now being hijacked by algorithms optimized for engagement, pushing nothing but fuckery. that is how the instincts that kept your ancestors alive now make you believe that bill gates wants to microchip you through a vaccine. now, you sit around with the anxiety of a small animal being hunted for sport.

evolution isn’t helping you here and neither is your phone.

and the scale of this is staggering. according to prri’s 2024 research, 19% of americans now qualify as qanon believers, up from 14% in 2021. that’s based on agreement with specific statements about political violence, “the storm,” and satan-worshipping pedophiles.

yougov polling found that 40% of americans believe a secretive shadow government rules the world, registering a nine-point increase from the previous year.

this isn’t fringe anymore.

this is your neighbor. your tío. your roommate who seemed so normal until last thanksgiving.

iii.

i want to make a distinction that matters.

skepticism says: i don’t know if this is true. let me investigate.

paranoia says: this can’t be true! someone must be lying.

skepticism requires effort. you have to actually learn things, you have to read boring documents, wrangle your focus to do it. it makes you understand processes and accept that reality is complicated and most outcomes have multiple causes. sometimes bad things happen without anyone planning them.

paranoia is lazy. you just have to distrust. you don’t have to understand monetary policy, just believe the fed is a scam. you don’t have to understand viral transmission, just believe doctors are compromised. cook up a story that confirms your biases and lulls you into suspicion. and suspicion is the whole job.

skepticism makes you smarter over time. you accumulate knowledge, you develop judgment. you start to distinguish good sources from bad ones. you start to trust your gut more because you’re well informed.

paranoia makes you more isolated. how? well, everyone who disagrees with you is either a sheep or a shill or a dumbass, right? the circle of people you can trust shrinks and shrinks until it’s just you and the youtube guy and the telegram channel with phishing links. and somehow that feels like winning?! you figured it out! you’re not like the others… you’re special smart.

but the lady always shows a little leg here: skepticism can change its mind when presented with evidence. paranoia treats evidence against as evidence for. the harder they try to convince me i’m wrong, the more i know i’m onto something.

that’s not critical thinking, y’all. that’s a trap door.

once you’re through it, it’s fucking hard to pull back out.

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iv.

“haz tu propia investigación,” my tía tells me. do your own research. okay…

this phrase is thoroughly poisoned for me now.

it used to mean: don’t take things at face value. verify, be curious. now it means: find youtube videos that confirm what you already believe or “think”. confirm your biases, disregard facts.

the guy who “did his own research” on vaccines did not read peer-reviewed immunology papers. he watched a documentary made by a chiropractor instead. the woman who “did her own research” on election fraud did not audit ballot chains of custody, she watched a pillow salesman give a powerpoint.

these people aren’t conducting research. what they’re actually doing is conducting confirmation bias with extra steps.

and look, i really get the appeal. experts have been wrong before. experts have fucking lied! the government has done fucked up things and the experts enabled it. we know this is true.

we know because the real conspiracies are documented. they come with receipts.

tuskegee happened. from 1932 to 1972, the u.s. public health service enrolled 399 black men with syphilis in macon county, alabama, telling them they were being treated for “bad blood.” they weren’t being treated at all. the study continued even after penicillin became the standard cure in 1945. by the time it was exposed, 28 men had died directly from syphilis, 100 more from related complications, 40 wives had been infected, 19 children born with congenital syphilis. the men were never given informed consent. never told they had syphilis. guinea pigs.

cointelpro happened. from 1956 to 1971, the fbi ran counterintelligence operations to “disrupt and discredit” groups deemed threats to national security. in practice, that meant civil rights organizations, anti-war activists, the black panthers… anyone fighting for a better america, basically. they surveilled martin luther king jr. they sent anonymous threatening letters. they used police harassment and dirty tricks to destroy people’s lives. they were exposed in 1971 when activists burglarized an fbi office in media, pennsylvania and confirmed by the church committee investigation in 1975-76.

and in puerto rico, sterilization campaigns happened. from the 1930s through the 1970s, approximately one-third of childbearing-age puerto rican women were sterilized. the highest rate in the world. so common it was simply called la operación. many women were coerced, misled about the procedure’s permanence, or sterilized without consent during other medical procedures. family planning clinics in factories provided free sterilizations funded by usaid grants. american population control policy targeting puerto ricans. it was documented and exposed.

so believe me when i say i understand the distrust. i carry it too.

but distrust without understanding is just vibes. and “the government has lied before” doesn’t mean “therefore anything i want to believe is equally valid.”

the documented conspiracies (the ones you can actually read about in declassified files and congressional hearings and investigative journalism) are almost always more boring and more fixable than the ones people invent.

it’s usually pretty easy: it all comes down to powerful people protecting their interests through legal or quasi-legal means. it’s not a secret satanic cabal harvesting children for adrenochrome.

the real conspiracies are zoning laws that maintain segregation. lobbying that blocks climate action. private equity gutting hospitals left and right, all around america. pharmaceutical companies bribing doctors to push fentanyl to people. wage theft. the police stealing from innocent people through civil asset forfeiture.

these are only a very small selection of the menu of fuckery… there are many, many more actual documented ways that power screws people over, every day, in plain sight, and with receipts.

but those require you to understand how zoning works, how lobbying works, how healthcare finance works. and that’s hard, that’s boring an requires effort and focus. that doesn’t make you feel like neo dodging bullets in the matrix.

so people skip it, they jump straight to the juicy stuff. people end up believing in jewish space lasers while ignoring the mundane evil happening in broad daylight, like the atrocities in gaza and sudan and myanmar, for instance.

v.

i was a republican once. i’ve told this story before, but it matters here.

i worked for right-wing media in the 2010s and i saw how the sausage gets made. i saw myself how a story gets seeded in a fringe outlet, picked up by fox, aggregated on drudge, and then repeated constantly until it becomes “conventional wisdom”. i saw how easily you can launder a lie into a “controversy” just by getting enough people to repeat it. so much smoke for so little fire… but her emails!

and i saw how the people running these operations thought about their audience. they didn’t respect them. they saw them as marks. they all knew they were peddling bullshit and went through the theatre of “critical thinking” and “facts don’t care for your feelings”. they thought it was funny when people bought it. there was contempt in those “newsrooms”, like… real contempt.

so when i watch misinformation spread now, i don’t just see victims. i see a fucking entire supply chain. someone is making this content. someone is funding it. someone is profiting from your confusion. the algorithm accelerates it, sure, but the algorithm didn’t write the script. people did. people who are betting (correctly) that you won’t know enough to call bullshit.

the best defense against manipulation is knowledge. the specific, substantive knowledge about how things actually work. when you know how a hurricane forms, when you know the physics, you can’t be convinced that the government aimed it at puerto rico. the claim becomes obviously absurd, you’re immune.

but you have to do the work because there’s no shortcut. there’s no youtube video that going to give you twenty years of meteorology training in one sitting. you can’t hold a book to your forehead and learn through osmosis. at some point, you either do the reading or you don’t. and if you don’t, you’re vulnerable. forever.

vi.

let me tell you what i’m actually asking for because “be smarter” is useless fucking advice. let me try to present something concrete for you (and me, too).

one: learn how one thing actually works.

pick something… anything! the electoral college. how vaccines get developed and approved. how a newspaper fact-checks a story. how a bill becomes law and not the schoolhouse rock version, but the real version with the boring committee markups and amendments and procedural fuckery.

go deep in as much as you can. read primary sources, not bullshit or heated takes about primary sources. find the most boring, detailed, technical explanation you can find and make yourself understand it.

two things will happen. first, you’ll actually know how that thing works. that’s fucking useful! and second, you’ll learn what real and true expertise looks like. you’ll see how much complexity hides underneath even the most simple-seeming systems. and that will make you better at recognizing when someone is bullshitting you about other systems.

two: talk to someone who actually knows.

not a podcaster. not a random tiktoker. talk to someone whose job is the actual thing. like, a nurse about healthcare, a poll worker about elections, a city planner about zoning. buy them a coffee and ask questions. and here’s a cardinal rule for anything in life, really: listen more than you talk.

you will learn things that never make it into the discourse. you will learn how much of reality is just people doing their jobs, badly or well, with limited resources and competing pressures. you will see that most of the people operating these systems aren’t villains. they’re tired, overworked, and underpaid. just like all of us out here in this bitch.

three: sit with uncertainty.

this is the hardest one. i hate not knowing. you probably do too. we fill gaps compulsively. it’s uncomfortable to say “i don’t know” and not immediately reach for a theory. uncertainty fucks with our sense of safety.

practice sitting with it anyway. practice saying “i don’t have enough information to have an opinion on that.” practice letting questions stay open. practice tolerating ambiguity without resolving it into narrative.

four: know the difference between your truth and the truth.

somewhere along the way, we started calling our feelings “my truth.” i get where this came from. marginalized people have had their experiences denied, gaslit, erased. claiming “my truth” was a way of saying what happened to me is real even if you refuse to see it. that matters.

but the phrase has metastasized. now “my truth” often means “my narrative, which i will defend regardless of evidence.” my interpretation. my story. my vibes. challenge me and you’re invalidating my lived experience. convenient, right?

your experience is real. your feelings are valid. your interpretation of what caused those feelings? your story about what’s happening in the world? that can be wrong. that can be checked and should be checked.

there’s a difference between “i felt unsafe in that interaction” (your feeling, unchallengeable, yours) and “that person is a threat” (a claim about reality that requires evidence beyond your gut). there’s a difference between “this policy hurt me” (your experience) and “this policy was designed to hurt people like me” (a claim about intent that can be investigated and evidenced).

discernment is knowing which is which, honoring your experience without mistaking it for a complete picture of reality. understanding that you, like literally everyone else on earth, are the unreliable narrator of your own life. i am. you are. we all are.

“my truth” is a starting point. the work is figuring out how much of it maps onto the actual world, and having the humility to adjust when it doesn’t. giving yourself room to be wrong and to correct… that’s growing up.

five: notice when you’re being flattered.

conspiracy theories make you feel smart. they feed off our need to belong, our need to feel special, in the know. they make you feel like you’ve seen through the matrix while the sheeple stay asleep.

that feeling? red flag.

real learning humbles you first. real learning will make you realize how much you don’t actually know. if a theory makes you feel superior without making you feel confused first, always be suspicious.

six: read a book.

not a substack. not even this one! a whole ass book, okay?!? from someone who spent years researching one topic and verifying things with peers. let it be boring in parts. let it challenge your priors. let it take longer than a podcast episode.

here’s three recs from me:

• puerto rico: a national history by jorell meléndez-badillo

• bird by bird: some instructions on writing and life by anne lamott

• in this economy: how money and markets really work by kyla scanlon

books are how humans have transmitted complex knowledge for centuries. they work… use them!

seven: don’t sleep on your abuela.

i’ve spent this whole essay talking about expertise and evidence and primary sources, and i stand by all of it. but i’d be a hypocrite if i didn’t acknowledge that some of the best advice i’ve ever received came from people who never finished high school.

my abuela had a refrain for everything. “dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres” (tell me who you walk with and i’ll tell you who you are). “un amigo es un peso en el bolsillo” (a friend is a peso in your pocket). i never knew if that second one was good or bad, actually, because she used it both ways. sometimes it meant friends will use you and take advantage of you (and that you should too). other times it meant that a good friend is worth their weight in gold. i think she liked the ambiguity and i did too. because life really is like that.

“camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente” (the shrimp that falls asleep gets carried away by the current)… she’d been saying that one for sixty years before anyone invented “stay woke.”

because here’s the thing about refranes: they survived! they were passed down through generations because they worked. there is always going to be some truth to a cliche, and at least in puerto rico, if a refrán is a cliché… then, fine! i’ll take the cringe of the cliche over the soberbia of feeling like i know better (when i know i don’t!). este manganzón knows which one to take now.

these refrains and sayings are the oral traditions of our ancestors, it is their distilled wisdom. these were people who didn’t have time to theorize because they were too busy raising kids, surviving colonialism, and fucking figuring out how to stretch a pound of rice and beans into a week of meals for everyone. there was no autism, adhd, schizophrenia, nothing. now, i don’t mean that there actually wasn’t… i mean, no one had any idea of these things, much less them being treatable and rightfully acknowledged. a lot of people had to survive, and honestly… a lot of them didn’t.

the trick here is discernment.

my abuela knows everything about how to keep a family together, how to read people, how to stretch nothing into something.

she did not know how mrna vaccines work and she would have been the first to tell you that. “yo no sé de eso, m’ijo. pregúntale al médico.”

she knew what she knew and she knew what she didn’t. and this is coming from a deeply superstitious and stubborn woman. un poquito mañosa.

contrast this with the guy on youtube who’s an expert in vaccines AND elections AND monetary policy AND nutrition AND geopolitics AND ancient civilizations AND also he’s selling supplements! because why the fuck not.

that guy is after only one thing: how to monetize your confusion.

so here’s my rule, only take advice from people who have actually done the thing.

want parenting advice? talk to someone who raised kids. strongly prefer you look out kids who turned out okay and still call their parents. (if not, run the fuck away and don’t say anything.) want career advice? talk to someone who’s actually built the career you want, not someone who teaches seminars about building careers. want relationship advice? (avoid the people who want to bring you down or be you and project their shit onto you.) find the couple who’s been married forty years and still holds hands at the grocery store. (not your friend who cuts and runs at the first sign of discomfort.) ask them… they know something.

this sounds obvious, of course. but watch how often we violate it. or fuck, i’ll speak for myself here… i fucking violate it! i clog up my feeds with influencers who are “in shape” (whatever that means) because they use ai, ozempic1, or steroids (or all three). i see financial advice raining from people who make their money selling financial advice. i see “life advice” and “get ready with me” videos from twenty-three-year-olds with podcast mics and confident opinions about things they haven’t lived through yet. shit they proudly don’t know shit about. with pride.

yet your abuela, with her sixth-grade education and her sixty plus years of surviving and her mental catalog of everyone in the family and who owes who what, might have more useful wisdom than the entire self-help section at barnes & noble. she’s done the thing, she’s lived it.

“el que no oye consejo, no llega a viejo.” he who doesn’t listen to advice won’t grow old.

she tells me that one a lot. i should listen more.

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vii.

i want to be clear about something.

i don’t want to be out here mansplaining and shit. i’m learning myself and this comes from what i have lived and felt and seen.

this, at the end of the day, really comes from grief.

i grieve that my tío, who fixed my first bike and has more practical intelligence in his pinky than most people have in their whole bodies, now believes that weather is a weapon.

i grieve that we can’t talk about politics anymore because we don’t share enough baseline reality to have a conversation.

i grieve that his grandkids are growing up learning that distrust is the same as wisdom.

i grieve the family group chats that became minefields. the friendships that cracked along fault lines of “did you see that video?” i grieve the impossibility of explaining, of reaching across, of saying tío, that’s not how any of this works in a way that lands.

i’m also scared. very scared.

i’m scared of what happens to a country where a hell of a lot of young people have adopted a belief system based on political violence. this is a country where basic facts are contested. where public health is impossible because so many people genuinely think vaccines are trying to kill them. where elections can’t be trusted because the losing side will always claim fraud. where nothing can be done together because we can’t even agree on what’s happening.

this is how democracies die. not with a bang. with a shrug. with “well, who can really know anything?” with “both sides lie.”

our country is dying to the tune of the exhausted surrender of people who stopped believing that truth was even possible.

i refuse to shrug.

i believe people are capable of more than this. we weren’t always like this. not this badly. we built public schools and libraries and land-grant universities because we believed an informed citizenry was possible. we trusted each other enough to get vaccines, to pay taxes, to follow traffic laws. we agreed on enough to function.

we can choose that again. it’s not too late.

but this requires you to be curious. i mean actually curious.

i don’t mean “i’m just asking questions” curious, which is usually “i’ve already decided and i’m performing skepticism.” i mean actually curious, where you are humble enough to learn and patient enough to sit with complexity. you need to be brave enough to say “i was wrong about that” when the evidence demands it.

the conspiracy is that you gave up.

the conspiracy is that learning felt like too much work.

the conspiracy is that you chose the story that made you feel smart over the facts that made you feel confused.

you can choose differently. por favor. te lo pido!

con todo mi corazón frustrado,

edgard 💖✊🏽🌈

p.s. if you’re reading this and thinking “but i’m not like those people, i’m actually informed,” good. prove it! explain how a bill becomes law. not vibes, baby, process. if you can’t, you have work to do. so do i… and so do we all.

p.p.s. if you want to argue with me about this, i welcome it. but come with sources that aren’t youtube videos and be ready to change your mind if you’re wrong. that’s the deal, i’ll hold up my side of the bargain.

Share edgard

if any of this resonated, you can buy me a coffee. no pressure. no subscription. just a one-time “thanks for existing” if you feel like it.

sources

50-year mortgage proposal:

• Gregory, John. “Is Trump’s Proposed 50-Year Mortgage Right for You? Experts Weigh the Pros and Cons.” ABC7 Los Angeles, 8 Dec. 2025. https://abc7.com/post/is-president-trumps-proposed-50-year-mortgage-experts-weigh-pros-cons/18254870/

hurricane maría death toll:

• Kishore, Nishant, et al. “Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 379, no. 2, 12 July 2018, pp. 162–170. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmsa1803972

conspiracy belief statistics:

• “The Rise and Impact of Q: The 2024 Election from the View of QAnon Believers.” PRRI, 4 Nov. 2024. https://prri.org/spotlight/the-rise-and-impact-of-q-the-2024-election-from-the-view-of-qanon-believers/

• “Which Groups of Americans Are Most Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?” YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41873-which-groups-americans-believe-conspiracies

cognitive psychology of conspiracy belief:

• Narmashiri, Abdolvahed, et al. “Conspiracy Beliefs Are Associated with a Reduction in Frontal Beta Power and Biases in Categorizing Ambiguous Stimuli.” Heliyon, vol. 9, no. 10, 1 Oct. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20249

• Zhao, Shuguang, et al. “Neural Correlates of Conspiracy Beliefs during Information Evaluation.” Scientific Reports, vol. 15, no. 1, 26 May 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-03723-z

• Mattson, Mark P. “Superior Pattern Processing Is the Essence of the Evolved Human Brain.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 8, no. 265, 22 Aug. 2014. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2014.00265

• Rose, Dr. Hannah. “The Dangers of Apophenia: Not Everything Happens for a Reason.” Ness Labs, 10 May 2022. https://nesslabs.com/apophenia

historical conspiracies (documented):

• CDC. “About the Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.” 4 Sept. 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html

• FBI. “COINTELPRO.” FBI Vault. https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro

• “Sterilization of Puerto Rican Women: A Selected, Partially Annotated Bibliography.” University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. https://www.library.wisc.edu/gwslibrarian/bibliographies/sterilization/

documented systemic issues:

• Rothwell, Jonathan, and Douglas S. Massey. “The Effect of Density Zoning on Racial Segregation in U.S. Urban Areas.” Urban Affairs Review, vol. 44, no. 6, 9 Apr. 2009, pp. 779–806. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087409334163

• “Private-Equity Firms Are Gutting US Health Care Facilities, Study Says.” KFF Health News, Aug. 2024. https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/private-equity-firms-are-gutting-us-health-care-facilities-study-says/

• “Jury Says Drug Firm Founder Guilty of Bribing Doctors to Push Opioid.” PBS News, 2 May 2019. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/jury-says-drug-firm-founder-guilty-of-bribing-doctors-to-push-opioid

• “Wage Theft, the $50 Billion Crime against Workers.” Working Now and Then, 11 Nov. 2020. https://www.workingnowandthen.com/blog/wage-theft-the-50-billion-crime-against-workers/

• Bentley, Jenna. “Tracking the Numbers on Government Theft of Private Property.” Goldwater Institute, 17 Dec. 2020. https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/new-report-tracking-the-numbers-on-government-theft-of-private-property/

misinformation & media:

• Jensen, Elizabeth. “Clinton Emails: Closing the Loop on a Prominent Story.” NPR, 23 Oct. 2019. https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/10/23/772328703/clinton-emails-closing-the-loop-on-a-prominent-story

• Chait, Jonathan. “GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser.” Intelligencer, 28 Jan. 2021. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html

political violence:

• Beshay. “Americans Say Politically Motivated Violence Is Increasing, and They See Many Reasons Why.” Pew Research Center, 23 Oct. 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/23/americans-say-politically-motivated-violence-is-increasing-and-they-see-many-reasons-why/

background & context:

• Baseball Reference. “Roberto Clemente Stats.” https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/clemero01.shtml

• “Panem et Circenses (Bread and Circuses).” Mercer County Community College.

[Verse 1]
Spent the year tryin’ to get you to love me (Get you to love me)
Put your needs high up above me
All night talkin’ on the telephone
Listenin’ to you cryin’ ‘bout being alone (Ooh)
Spent the summer tryin’ to get you to care (Get you to care)
Bought new jeans and grew my hair (Ooh, ooh)
Called me up when you wanted me around (Ooh, ooh)
But when I needed you, you could never be found

[Chorus]
So this year’s gonna be about me
Nevеr will I have another reason to doubt mе
This year, this year (Ooh-ooh, ooh)
This year’s gonna be about me
Never will I have another reason to doubt me
This year, this year (Ooh-ooh, ooh)

[Verse 2]
Spent the year tryin’ to get your attention
All my miles just to make a connection
Runnin’ around just to get to you
When I showed up, you had something to do (Oh, oh-oh, oh)
Met your mama and all your friends
Didn’t know it was all pretend
Lifted you up, you were bringing me down
But this year’s gonna turn them tables around

[Chorus]
So this year’s gonna be about me
Never will I have another reason to doubt me
This year, this year (Ooh-ooh, ooh)
This year’s gonna be about me
Never will I have another reason to doubt me
This year, this year (Ooh-ooh, ooh)

[Post-Chorus]
(I’m loving, I’m feeling myself) Ooh, ooh-ooh
(Not worried ‘bout anyone else)
(My mind, my body, my health)
(This year, this year)
(I’m turning it all around, nobody gon’ bring me down) Ooh, ooh-ooh
(My vision, my mind, my crown)
(This year, this year)

[Bridge]
I’m taking what’s mine, I’m putting it on the line
This year
Not gonna waste no more time, I’m coming to claim my shine
This year
I threw away all your shit, I’m ready to get my fix
This year
This year’s gonna hit my stride, I’m living it, my best life
This year

[Chorus]
This year’s gonna be about me
Never will I have another reason to doubt me
This year, this year
This year’s gonna be about me
Never will I have another reason to doubt me
This year, this year

[Post-Chorus]
(I’m loving, I’m feeling myself) Ooh, ooh-ooh
(Not worried ‘bout anyone else) Ooh, ooh-ooh
(My mind, my body, my health)
(This year, this year) Uh
(I’m turning it all around, nobody gon’ bring me down) Ooh, ooh-ooh
(My vision, my mind, my crown) Ooh, ooh
(This year, this year)

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it’s december 27th.

we’re in that weird purgatory week, that strange and lawless territory that is between christmas and new year’s where time collapses into a greasy blur of leftovers and existential reckoning. i’ve been wearing the same fucking hoodie for three days. and somewhere in the distance, i hear 2026, revving its engine like a threat.

and look, 2025 has been… well…

calling it brutal feels too small. too polite. this year feels like it kneecapped our collective sanity, shook us down for our lunch money, and set the cafeteria on fire.

we have been running a marathon on a treadmill made of bad news and broken dreams, and the treadmill is on fire, and the fire is somehow our fault. trauma prime, baby. two-day delivery on your complete psychological unravelling. no returns accepted, all sales are final.

so if you find yourself reading this and you’ve also been betrayed this year, by a person, by institutions, by your own body, by the sheer audacity of life itself… i see you. i am you. we are all just standing in the rubble wondering how we even missed the signs.

that’s the thing about betrayal that really hits different, no? it’s not just all the loss. it’s the way it makes you question your own damn perception, your very own reality.

and once that starts… you’re in for a long night.

the forensic phase

there is a certain peculiar kind of madness that sets in after betrayal. it’s not the screaming, the tantrums, the throwing of things, the gnashing of teeth… it’s a much quieter one, at least from what i have experienced. it’s the kind where you find yourself replaying every minute, every word of every conversation like a detective scrubbing through surveillance footage at 3 am, running on cold, watery, shitty coffee and the fumes of your own disintegrating trust.

¿cómo no lo vi? how did i not see it?!?

and this question loops endlessly.

i have been betrayed in ways both spectacular and mundane this year. the friend who borrowed money that she never intended to repay. the acquaintance that was becoming a friend but then leveraged my relationship with them for their social clout. the colleague who smiled in my face while quietly building a case against me in emails or texts i wasn’t included on. the community group that said it would be a haven for good and it turned out was just a high school clique with adults bullying each other behind the scenes. the “friend” who helped himself to my body by the handful whenever we would drink together. the institutions that promised me services, safety, support… and instead only gave me paperwork, paper cuts, and a phone tree that led to fucking nowhere.

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each time, the initial wound healed faster than the secondary infection: the creeping suspicion that i am fundamentally broken. that my judgement is garbage. that i am the kind of person who walks into the walls that everyone can see.

the thing about betrayal that no one tells you is that the person who hurt you gets to walk away. they get to post about their “healing journey”, or another fraud-rife gofundme when their grift reaches a dead end, or some stupid ass picture of a sunset while saying that they are “releasing what no longer serves them”. (you were the thing that no longer served them, by the way.) it’s like we are all a product and we’re consumed, voided of everything we have.

but you? you’re stuck in the crime scene of your own mind, dusting for fingerprints on every memory.

the autopsy of affection

when someone lies to you, you start performing forensic analysis on love itself.

that time they said they were proud of me? was it real? the birthday dinner where he seemed so present… was he already planning his exit? the inside jokes, the 2 a.m. confessions, the heart to hearts, the trust, the secrets… which parts were genuine and which parts were theater?

this is betrayal’s cruelest trick. it doesn’t just poison the present. it reaches backward in time and contaminates everything. the beautiful moments become suspect. the hard moments become evidence.

me, trying to be healthy: “i should process my grief constructively.”

also me, at 3 am, going absolutely feral: [rewatching mental footage of a dinner from 2019 like it’s the zapruder film]

i spent months doing this. i analyzed texts like they were encrypted transmissions. i looked for the code that would finally explain it all, the primer that would show me how could i have been so wrong about someone i thought i knew.

spoiler: there was no code. there is no code. sometimes people just choose to be dishonest bastards, and me, doing the exhausting work of trying to make it make sense. some people are just snakes in love’s clothing. they slither and like like it’s breathing. there is no amount of forensic analysis that will change that or make it your fault.

the real wound

we often talk about betrayal like the injury is the loss. the friendship that ended, the shattered romance… but that’s just a piece of the picture. it’s the surface laceration.

the deeper wound is epistemological. (yes, i said epistemological. i had to check the spelling. i went to therapy and i have vocabulary now.)

betrayal makes you doubt the very instruments and assumptions that you use to better navigate the world: your perception. your gut, your picker, your ability to sense danger, to know when someone is really being real with you.

if you were wrong about them, what else are you wrong about?

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this is the question that haunts me every moment of my life now. it’s not just staying up at 3 am anymore, it’s every waking minute of my life. i’ve become a walking and talking security system that runs on threat assessments on anyone that gets closer, seeing a myriad of conspiracies in an outstretched hand, in a person offering me kindness. where is the other shoe? what’s the catch? where’s the fine print?

my therapist says this is hypervigilance. okay. i called it “finally being smart”.

but she was right, though. i was exhausted and paranoid and mistaking my own fear for discernment and wisdom.

the real wisdom, which i’m still learning, is that you can be careful while being closed. you can protect yourself without becoming an unassailable fortress. you can really learn from betrayal without letting it teach you that everything and everyone is a threat.

but fucking hell, that’s hard. especially on a year like this one.

rebuilding the compass

so what happens now? do we just accept that betrayal leaves permanent damage?

maybe. but it doesn’t feel to me like that’s the whole story.

the thing i have learned, slowly, painfully, through too much therapy and too many 3 am reddit rabbit holes about attachment theory: you don’t rebuild trust in others first. you start by rebuilding trust in yourself.

not the naive trust of before, but something that is more calibrated, grounded on actions and evidence. on deeds, not words.

trust that when someone shows you who they are, you will believe them. trust that you’re perfectly okay to leave any situation that feels wrong, even if you can’t exactly put a pin on why. trust that your gut is not your enemy, even though it failed to protect you once. (or maybe it did and you didn’t listen to it, which is even worse and something i’m absolutely guilty of.)

in argentina there’s a popular saying. it goes: el que se quema con leche, ve una vaca y llora. the one who burns themselves with milk cries when they see a cow. weird, i know. but it’s a warning about becoming so traumatized that you cannot fucking function.

but i’ve been thinking about it differently. maybe the tears aren’t weakness. maybe they’re data. your nervous system saying: you know what hot milk feels like now. act accordingly.

a quiet, tentative hope for 2026

here’s what i want you to know if you are, like me, in the middle of this right now:

you probably didn’t miss it.

you probably saw something. felt something. a restless energy. a flicker. a moment where things did not sit right. and then you proceeded to explain it away, because you cared. you wanted to be a better person. because you wanted the stories and the feelings to be true, and ultimately because the alternative was too painful.

that does not make you stupid or gullible. it makes you human.

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the capacity to trust is not a design flaw. the willingness to believe the best about people you love is not naivety to be cured.

they lied. you believed them. that is precisely what lying is meant to do, and you are not broken forever because one of those lies got through to you and worked.

listen, i’m not gonna wrap this shit in a bow. i can imagine my writing lately feels dark and sad and horrible, but that’s just where i am now and i sure as hell won’t put up a fucking mask for anyone anymore.

i’m not gonna sit here and tell you or myself that time is going to heal our wounds and that we’ll all be stronger on the other side of the shitshow.

one can only hope that 2026 will surprise us in a good way.

and honestly… that’s all i fucking got. nothing but hope. it’s tentative, bruised, and limping (or maybe even army crawling) toward the new year.

the reconstruction always tends to be slower than you want or wish. it is always fraught with relapses, with mistakes. it’s never linear or neat. there will be days where you trust yourself completely and others where you feel like becoming a hermit and only talking to plants.

but you keep going. you learn that trust is not a light switch. it’s a dimmer. you can adjust it based on evidence. you can give people access to more of you as they prove themselves worthy of it.

this is not hubris. i’m not better than anyone. this is protection. this is discernment.

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and maybe, eventually you’ll stop performing the autopsy on every memory you hold. the dead stay dead. you opt instead to place your energy into the living, into the worthy that are showing up.

not because you’ve forgotten. but because you decided that living deserves more of your attention and less of your passivity and derision.

hasta la próxima, mi gente. please be gentle with yourselves on this limbo, this purgatory of a week. and even more if 2025 took more from you than you can even name.

here’s to making it to 2026. here’s to trusting ourselves again, one day at a time.

i’m still here. you’re still here. and i think that counts for something.

con amor,

edgard 💖✊🏽🌈

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p.s. if you’re unraveling a betrayal right now, my DMs are open. not to fix anything. just to witness.

p.p.s. betrayal trauma is real and treatable. therapy has helped me. so did people who believed me when i said something felt wrong. you deserve both.

if any of this resonated, you can buy me a coffee. no pressure. no subscription. just a one-time “thanks for existing” if you feel like it.

my therapist tells me to meditate.

i sigh deeply. okay, then.

this is my third week with her, which means i’ve known her for approximately twenty-one days longer than i knew my previous therapist was planning to retire and move out of state. that surprisingly tantalizing little detail came up in our last session and it shook me. this was back in april 2025. “by the way,” she said, casual as someone mentioning the weather, “this is our final appointment.” eight months without a therapist it was, then. cool. cool cool cool.

i have a new one now. she specializes in CBT, which sounds like something you’d find from urban dictionary as some sort of sex position, but it actually stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. she’s been walking me through techniques to manage the anxiety and depression that have been chewing through me like termites since… oh, let’s say february, plus the withdrawal symptoms from quitting nicotine after mass chain-vaping geek bars like my lungs had personally wronged me in a past life.

“try meditating in the morning,” she says. “even just five minutes. focus on your breath.”

fine! fine. i’ll try it. i’m a good student, and i want to win at therapy.

so monday morning i sit on my bed in my bleak, dingy apartment with the shit-brown carpet that my roommate has spent years soiling despite my many, many attempts at intervention. i close my eyes. i breathe in, and i breathe out.

i try to be present, to notice what i’m feeling, to let the thoughts pass like clouds, the way the apps and the podcasts and the wellness influencers promise they will if you just breathe deeply enough, if you just center yourself enough, if you just purchase enough monthly subscriptions to guided meditation services.

and you know what i find, underneath all the numbness i’ve been marinating in for the better part of a year?

rage.

not clouds. a fucking hurricane. a category five emotional disaster spinning in my chest with tornado arms. the meditation didn’t create it. the meditation just cleared away enough fog for me to finally see what had been churning there all along.

i tell her about it in our next session and she celebrates the fact that i did the meditation at all. it feels a little like being praised for showing up to a house fire with a glass of water, but.. okay, i’ll take the win.

“wait,” i say, because something is dawning on me that i don’t fully understand yet. “it’s anger! it’s rage. and it’s massive, like, a lot. that’s not good, is it? i feel it in my chest, in my stomach, when i tremble.”

she smiles the way therapists smile when you’ve accidentally stumbled onto something important. “your acknowledgment of it and your embrace of it is good. having the emotion is not bad. it’s what you do with it.”

i blink at her. wait. is this a fucking breakthrough? am i winning at therapy? i feel a small dopamine hit, the same one i get when i land a joke at a dinner party or make a stranger on the internet laugh. comedy has always been my survival mechanism, and right now i am barely surviving, so i decide to push my luck.

“you know,” i say, leaning into the bit, “sometimes it feels like if i take one more deep breath, i’ll hyperventilate.”

she laughs. actually laughs.

i have made my therapist laugh, and this is genuinely the highlight of my week, possibly my month, maybe even my year, which tells you everything you need to know about how this year has been going. but let me tell you something, and this is so fucking important: that line wasn’t entirely a joke.

because 2025 has been one long exercise in being told to breathe, to stay positive, to practice self-care, to trust the process, to manifest abundance, to regulate my nervous system while the entire house burns down around me and everyone else just keeps insisting the smoke is probably from a scented candle.

at some point, the breathing starts to feel like a con too.

like everything else.

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how things are

and i do mean everything else, because if there’s one thing this year has clarified for me with brutal, unrelenting precision, it’s that we are living in an era of cons so elaborate and so normalized that we’ve stopped recognizing them as cons at all. we just call them “how things are” and keep scrolling. fabulous.

the trump administration is enacting project 2025 policy by policy, methodically, like a nightmare to-do list being checked off by someone who enjoys their work. DOGE has allegedly exposed our data to god knows who while slashing and dicing the entrails of government until agencies that actually did good in the world just don’t exist anymore. USAID, gone. PEPFAR, gone. and for those who don’t know, PEPFAR was the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief, a program that saved millions of lives across the globe, and it was, i say this with complete sincerity, literally the one thing george w. bush did right. his entire presidency, the one good fucking thing, and now it’s gone too.

meanwhile, near hillcrest, san diego’s queer neighborhood, my neighborhood, the place i chose to build a life because i thought it would be safe, people are driving around shooting pellets at folks waiting in line outside gay bars. a trans woman was injured.

this happened a couple years ago too, and someone i know got hit in the eye, which resulted in them losing their job and their income and their home for a while, and they only just recovered this year with a lot of help from the community. they caught those guys back then. there was fanfare. press conferences. everyone congratulated themselves and each other and then went home. and now it’s happening again. the swastikas spray-painted on the walls of churches, this time.

back in 2023, i helped clean some of that graffiti, scrubbing hate off walls at a cocktail and cleanup event organized by benny cartwright and rick cervantes through rick’s @hillcrestsandiego instagram account. they caught those people too. fines were issued, and we even got funding to keep the neighborhood clean out of it. more fanfare.

and now here we are again, because hate doesn’t stay gone just because you caught a few people and held a press conference about it. hate is emboldened right now. you can feel it in the air, sharp and electric, like the moment before a storm that everyone pretends isn’t coming.

and while all of this is happening, while the political fabric of the country unravels and my neighborhood becomes a target again, everything also costs more, because… of course it does. because why would anything be simple or singular when it could be compounding and relentless instead? groceries are up. eggs are up. my vegan food and protein shakes are all up, even fucking vegetables. i paid eight dollars for a cortado in hillcrest last week. eight dollars! for espresso and a splash of oat milk, in a neighborhood where people are literally getting shot at with pellets! the audacity of that transaction still haunts me. the ordacity!

college remains overpriced , while facing steep losses in enrollment. and the biden student loan debt relief was killed by the supremes (the court, not diana) and all the things biden did to make new, less draconian payment plans went out with trump this week.

wages remain stagnant while CEOs post record earnings. AI is ruining everything, while simultaneously making me feel dumber because i keep falling for AI-generated video slop and misinformation on social media. i thought i had decent media literacy, i really did. i prided myself on it, and yet tiktok has been fooling me on a weekly basis, feeding me rage bait to make me angry, hope bait to make me feel inadequate, outright lies dressed up as citizen journalism. and that’s where most of my following is, which makes the whole thing feel even more absurd. i’m building an audience on a platform that’s actively rotting my brain and making me question reality.

social media in general has become this machine designed to make us consume and consume until we’re hollowed out, and i’ve been watching myself get hollowed out all year. i’ve been making room for the slop onslaught. i’ve been doom-scrolling until 2am and wondering why i feel empty and anxious in the morning. everything is a subscription now. everything is a service. everything is designed to extract from you until there’s nothing left, and then to extract a little more, and then to charge you a monthly fee for the privilege.

case in point, and i promise you i am not making this up: my landlord now forces me to pay fifty dollars a month for a subscription to a service called piñata.

piñata.

what does piñata do? well, it reports my rent payments to the credit bureaus, which sounds helpful until you remember that paying rent should just automatically build credit but doesn’t because the system is designed to keep poor people poor. it also gives me “piñata points.” my half of a bleak, dingy, dark, shit-brown carpet, roommate-dominated 2-bedroom 1-bath in university heights is $1,450 a month. for that princely sum, i earn 60 piñata points every month.

and what can i do with these points? well, currently piñata is running a contest where you can spend your accumulated points on entries to win a free month of rent. like a lottery. like a game show. like late-stage capitalism dressed in a party hat, handing out confetti while picking your pockets. i spent 520 points on entries this week. let’s see if i’m one of the lucky ones.

the service is also called piñata, which feels fitting, because it makes me want to give my landlord the piñata treatment.

this is the backdrop. my baseline anxiety and depression is already so fucked. and this is the water we’re all swimming in, whether we acknowledge it or not.

a world of escalating cons, normalized extractions, and the constant low hum of dread that we’ve all agreed to call “the economy” or “politics” or “just how things are now.” and maybe some of you are handling it fine. good for you. maybe some of you have figured out how to breathe through it, how to meditate your way to acceptance, how to center yourselves amidst the chaos.

i have not… and in february, the chaos got personal.

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february

in february of this year, my credit got hit with a collections notice for almost eleven thousand dollars.

it was back rent from an apartment i lived in two years ago with a woman named brianna kelly.

i had known her for about a year before we moved in together, which felt like enough time to trust someone, especially someone who showed up to the same community spaces i did. she was a regular at trans tuesdays, the weekly gathering i’d attend at the dojo cafe with my friends, and we’d chat. and she seemed cool. and when i was looking to move out of a bad living situation, she needed a roommate. at the time i was living at a golden hill apartment with a couple that fought at odd hours of the night in that exhausting two-against-one dynamic that made me feel perpetually outnumbered in my own home. it felt like the universe was providing for me. it felt like community taking care of its own.

the landlord told me, during the application process, that he couldn’t verify she had a job.

she explained to me, and i believed her because i wanted to believe her: she was a student, working part-time at her school, and she was living off a trust fund that was disbursing money for her expenses. she had just bought a new car. she had just gotten plastic surgery. this looked, to me, like official trust fund baby behavior. and listen, a lot of san diegans cosplay poor when they’re actually rich, so i followed what i saw. i trusted her. she was part of my community. she leveraged those connections, whether consciously or not, and i let her, because i wanted out of that golden hill apartment badly enough to overlook the red flags.

we moved in february 2023. march was free rent, a move-in special. and then april came.

she couldn’t pay her half.

“i’ll pay you back,” she said, and i believed her, because what else was i going to do, because i had just signed a lease with this person, because i wanted to believe that the community i’d invested so much of myself into wouldn’t betray me like this.

may came. she still couldn’t pay.

“i promise,” she said.

every time the landlord threatened a quit-to-pay notice, i used my savings to cover her half. i did this twice. three months of her rent, paid from money i had spent years building up, money that represented my safety net, my stability, my future ability to move somewhere better when the time came. by the end of may, my savings were decimated and i realized, with the kind of clarity that only comes when you’ve already lost everything, that she was never going to pay.

i asked her to leave. her name was on the lease. so was mine. the apartment had been approved on the strength of my credit, not hers. i should have known. i should have listened to the landlord’s warning and i should have trusted my gut instead of my hope.

i ended up moving out and she stayed for seven more months. she stayed in that apartment, not paying rent, until october, when she finally got evicted.

the landlord took her to court for unlawful retainer. she got legal aid, god bless the system that helps people who need it, even when those people are the ones who destroyed you. she entered a settlement agreement: one hundred dollars a month toward the debt. i was dismissed from the lawsuit without prejudice. which, for those unfamiliar with legal terminology, is the one where they’re allowed to sue you later, the one that sounds like mercy but is actually just delayed reckoning.

she never paid. not a single hundred dollars of that settlement. so the landlord petitioned to vacate the judgment. and when a judgment is vacated, everything falls back on the original contract… the fucking. lease. which still had my name on it.

february 2025… almost exactly two years after i moved into that apartment with hope and savings and trust, the collections notice hit all three credit bureaus. it was like fucking a condom full of fire ants del campo, the red ones, las hormigas bravas. juuuuust peachy.

i had just recovered. finally, painstakingly, dollar by dollar, i had saved enough for a security deposit again. i was ready to start looking for a new place, calmly, without the desperation that leads to bad decisions. maybe even find a good roommate this time! someone vetted, someone safe. i was so ready to move forward.

and then eleven thousand dollars appeared on my credit report like a ghost i thought i’d buried.

i challenged the collections online with all the credit bureaus. i submitted documentation of the lawsuit and my dismissal, thinking surely, surely this would be enough to prove i wasn’t responsible. but i didn’t know about the vacated judgment. i didn’t know it had all come back to me like a boomerang made of debt and betrayal.

i consulted lawyers, plural, spending money i didn’t have to hear the same thing over and over. the best they could offer: two thousand dollars to negotiate with the collectors, no guarantees, and i’d probably have to settle anyway. money to maybe reduce the amount of money i owed for something i never should have owed in the first place.

depleted… again?!? back to zero. back to worse than zero, actually.

and you know what really broke me? even more than the money, even more than the credit score cratering, even more than watching my escape hatch slam shut? it was the friends who said, after the fact, when the damage was already done and irreversible, “i knew this would happen, but i didn’t tell you.”

a friend who watches you walk into a fire and says nothing is not a friend. that’s not friendship, that’s spectatorship. that kind of cruelty wears a familiar face, and it cuts deeper than anything a stranger could do, because a stranger doesn’t owe you anything. but a friend? a friend is supposed to be in your corner, a friend is supposed to warn you, a friend is supposed to care more about your wellbeing than about being right after the fact.

que a lo hecho, pecho, my mother would say. what’s done is done. face it with your chest.

but this wasn’t something i did. and i’m still the one facing it. still the one paying for broken pottery someone else shattered.

that realization, that fundamental unfairness, that sense of being trapped in consequences i didn’t create, is where the spiral really began.

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letting myself go

here’s what happens when you get hit with something like that, something that feels both catastrophic and completely mundane at the same time, something that destroys your stability while the world keeps spinning like nothing happened: you stop trying.

not all at once, of course. because it’s not really dramatic like that.

it’s gradual, insidious, a slow leak rather than a sudden break. you stop waking up early… because what’s the point, right? you stop going to the gym because you’re too tired and too sad and the energy it takes to get there feels insurmountable. you stop eating well because cooking requires effort and ordering delivery requires only a thumb and a credit card you probably shouldn’t be using. and in my case, the roommate probably left the kitchen nasty and covered in his dishes and food and grease… it would take a gargantuan effort to clean it and then cook?

gurl... fuck!

you just fucking stop caring. you stop caring about all the things that used to matter, from the little things to the big things, because now your capacity for caring is fried completely. along with your savings.

i work from home. this is both a blessing and a curse, because it means no one sees you falling apart. that means you can fall apart more completely than you ever could if you had to show up somewhere and perform functionality. monday through friday my alarm goes off at 6am. i used to wake up at 5am, give myself time to ease into the day, shower, coffee, mentally prepare for whatever was coming.

when things got bad, i started waking up at 5:59, rolling out of bed and opening my laptop and logging in with one minute to spare. one minute of dignity preserved. barely. the bare minimum of professional presence while the rest of me crumbled.

and then staying up way too late because sleep wouldn’t come, or because i was avoiding it, binge eating at midnight, two in the morning, dozing off in a haze of weed smoke because i’d been using cannabis not recreationally but medicinally in the worst sense. i was self-medicating my way through each day, numbing myself into something that resembled peace but was really just absence.

here’s a confession that still embarrasses me: i had been vegan since 2021, vegetarian since i was five years old. that’s over thirty years of not eating meat and then four of limited dairy at most (with lactaid). and this year, without even really deciding to, i abandoned it completely. started ordering pizza. burger king fries and shakes and pies. mcdonald’s at 1am for fries, apple pies, and sundaes. late-night runs to the corner store at cleveland and meade, buying massive quantities of candy and diet coke and doritos and ice cream. i did not eat meat, that i did stick to. but i was eating like someone who had given up on their body, and it was because i had! it was because the body felt like the enemy now, something to be numbed and stuffed and ignored rather than cared for.

i will confess, in the interest of honesty and also comedy, that i certainly enjoyed all the dairy. years of deprivation makes a milkshake and a slice of pizza taste like heaven. i say this, even if the indulgence has led to my gastrointestinal fortitude declining precipitously. just ask my toilet.

the weed was constant, daily, sometimes multiple times a day. the geek bars, those sleek little nicotine vapes, were always in my hand, always being pulled on, always filling my lungs with something other than the deep breaths i was supposed to be taking. i even feel like the combination made me dumber, slower, less able to think clearly or feel anything real, like i was experiencing my own life through a fog machine.

i watched the crown on repeat on netflix. all six seasons. multiple times. there’s something perversely comforting about watching rich british people be miserable in castles, about seeing that wealth and power don’t protect you from grief or dysfunction or the fundamental loneliness of being human. it made my own misery feel almost regal. at least i wasn’t trapped in a loveless royal marriage while the tabloids dissected my every move.

but mostly i scrolled. documentaries, shows, performances, youtube rabbit holes, instagram reels, tiktok for hours and hours until my thumb hurt and my eyes burned and i still couldn’t stop. the algorithm learned what i liked, which is to say it learned what would keep me watching, which is to say it learned how to exploit my sadness and my anger and my desire for connection. it fed me other people’s lives to compare myself to, their careers and their bodies and their relationships and their seemingly effortless success. and i consumed it all, letting it hollow me out, and i kept making room for more.

and the whole time, the entire time i was falling apart in private. i was showing up to my kiwanis club meetings in public, smiling. i was vice president. i was reliable. i was the one who made everyone laugh, who brought the energy, who seemed like he had his shit together. the mask was flawless because it had to be, because i knew so many people around me going through worse, economically, health-wise. who was i to complain when at least i had a job? i at least i had a roof, at least i wasn’t being bombed or starving or dying of something incurable.

the mask costs something though. it costs everything, eventually, because you can’t pretend forever, and the energy it takes to maintain the performance is energy you don’t have for anything else. i resigned from kiwanis earlier this month.

i’m tired.

i’m burned out.

my empathy tank is on empty and i don’t know when or how it’s going to refill.

i stopped going to the gym in may. that was when my old therapist left, actually. i just made that connection now, writing this. eight months without therapy, eight months without exercise, eight months of numbing and stuffing and scrolling and pretending.

i’ve gained sixty pounds since february. my right leg now starts swelling randomly and i haven’t even gone to a doctor about it because what if it’s something serious and what if it costs money i don’t have and what if i just don’t want to know. i lost my abs, my gains, years of muscle i’d built. i watch my body change in the mirror and feel nothing but a dull shame that isn’t strong enough to make me do anything different. i’ve let myself go.

here’s the thing, and this took me a long time to understand: for most of my life, i associated self-harm with cutting, with physical acts of deliberate violence against the body. i would never do that, i’d think. that’s not me. but self-harm is so much broader than that, and so much sneakier.

self harm is also neglect. it’s abandoning the practices that keep you healthy and sane and stable. it’s binge eating to fill a void that food can’t fill. it’s smoking yourself numb every single day. it’s isolation. it’s letting yourself disappear.

i have been self-harming all year. just slowly. just quietly. just in ways that don’t leave visible scars but leave scars nonetheless.

it’s hard out here for a bitch

and it wasn’t just my body and my habits and my mental health that suffered. somewhere in there, my heart closed too.

i tried dating this year. twice. briefly. disastrously.

the first one, late last year bleeding into early this, was supposed to be casual. just fun. no strings. and then the chemistry hit like a truck and i put her on a pedestal so fast it made my head spin. all the lessons of the last ten years, all the healing and the therapy and the work on self-confidence and self-worth, failed at the sight of someone who seemed to see me. i am consumed by shame in retrospect. i smashed myself to pieces on that one. it was such a self-own, and i knew better, i knew so much better, and i did it anyway.

the second one started in february, right after the first ended, because apparently i learned nothing. i could tell things might develop, and then i started seeing myself falling into old patterns, the same ones i thought i’d exorcised when i left dc in 2021, the same patterns from the complicated eight-year relationship i’d escaped by moving across the country. so i pulled away. hard. probably too hard. definitely too hard.

and now i’m closed. completely, totally closed. i can’t let anyone in. i can’t even let anyone think of me in that way without feeling something like panic, something like violation. the idea of someone finding me attractive, wanting me, feels like too much, overwhelming, almost threatening. i feel like a nun who accidentally took vows she doesn’t remember taking, sworn to celibacy not by choice but by damage. i feel incapable of love, or incorrigible, or both. i don’t know where i would even start if i wanted to try again. i don’t know what i would do.

so i’ve pushed it all away. every possibility, every glance, every flutter of interest. and that’s its own kind of loss, grieving something you’re not even letting yourself have.

hell has a broken tv

and here’s where the story gets even more absurd.

apparently rock bottom has a basement, and that basement is furnished with a broken television.

albert camus, the existentialist philosopher who spent a lot of time thinking about the absurd, once wrote about sisyphus, the mythological figure condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down every time he reached the top. camus concluded that we must imagine sisyphus happy, that the struggle itself is meaningful, that accepting the absurdity of existence is the only way to live authentically within it.

the stoics had similar ideas. marcus aurelius wrote about focusing only on what you can control. epictetus taught that it’s not events themselves that disturb us but our judgments about them. this is all very wise and very true and i believe it intellectually.

and yet…

earlier this week, my tv broke.

it’s three years old. i bought it thinking it would last, because that’s what you do, you buy things expecting them to work for a reasonable amount of time, especially when you can’t afford to replace them. the screen started glitching. lines across the picture. random blackouts in the middle of whatever i was watching. i took it apart like a surgeon, checked every connection, cleaned out all the dust, looked for anything obviously wrong. everything seemed fine.

i went online. found forums about my specific model… and turns out it’s shit, a known issue. hardware failures that happen right around the three-year mark, like clockwork, like it was designed to die just past the warranty period. planned obsolescence, probably. another fucking con.

and i know, i know, in the grand scheme of things, in the context of everything i’ve just told you about, a broken tv is nothing. it’s the most first-world problem imaginable. people are losing their homes, getting bombed, losing their healthcare, their rights, their lives… and i’m upset about a television?

sisyphus would be ashamed. marcus aurelius would gently remind me that this is outside my control. epictetus would point out that my judgment of the event is causing more suffering than the event itself.

but let me tell you something about rock bottom: you don’t get there in one fall. you get there through a thousand small collapses. each one ravages and takes things away from you, corroding you like acid. then something tiny and stupid (something that shouldn’t matter at all, really) becomes the one little thing that breaks you.

because it’s not really about the tv. it’s about everything the tv represents: another thing that doesn’t work, another expense i can’t afford, another system designed to extract from me until there’s nothing left. another con in a year of cons.

i don’t have money for a new tv right now. i don’t have money for a lot of things. and i sat there, in my bleak apartment with the shit-brown carpet and nasty roommate, staring at the broken screen that had been my primary escape from my own thoughts, and i lost it.

not dramatically. not spectacularly. just all of a sudden, on a random day. and then you lose it in that special little way, when you’re too tired to scream and too defeated to cry. just sitting there, staring at the glitching screen, thinking about sisyphus and his fucking boulder, and whether camus ever considered that the boulder might also be rusted and the hill might be covered in piñata points and the whole thing might be a subscription service now.

and then something shifted.

i don’t know how else to describe it. something in me, some small stubborn part that had been buried under months of numbness, said: okay. enough. that’s a fucking sign to go touch grass.

which is such a stupid millennial phrase, “touch grass,” but it’s also exactly what i needed, exactly what the absurd hero would do, i think. acknowledge the boulder. acknowledge the hill. and then go outside anyway.

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puerto rico

i went to puerto rico twice this year and both times saved my life in ways i’m still trying to understand.

the first trip was in august, for bad bunny’s concert, with my tía vilmarie. we had a blast. the show was incredible, that specific kind of joy you can only feel when you’re surrounded by thousands of people who love the same thing you love, singing every word, moving together, alive. i hung out with my cousin hector and mi tía cathy. i saw my abuelos. i went home.

and i don’t use that word lightly. home. san diego is where i live, but puerto rico is where i’m from, and there’s a difference, there’s always been a difference. the inevitable and enticing pull toward la isla that gets stronger every year i’m away from it.

one night during that trip, we went to lote 646 in dorado, a spot where my grandfather plays with his trio los cancioneros. i bought dinner for the whole family. everyone came out, we ate well, drank well, and laughed the way you can only laugh with people who’ve known you your entire life and love you anyway.

the trio that was playing that night, not my grandfather’s group but another one, invited him onstage to play with them.

his name is ricardo feliu. he founded trio los cancioneros. he plays the requinto, a small guitar with a high, bright voice that cuts through everything and goes straight to your heart. he’s my mother’s father. he’s been struggling with arthritis lately, dimmed by health issues and the constant low-grade pain that comes with getting older. but when he picked up that instrument, when his fingers found the strings, when he started to play.

he played so beautifully.

i sat there watching him, my abuelo, this man who has shaped so much of who i am without my even realizing it, and something in me released. something old and tight and held for so long i’d forgotten i was holding it. i felt it let go. i felt myself, for the first time in months, actually present in my own body, actually feeling something other than numbness or rage.

i reconnected with claribel arreaga during that trip too. she was my teacher in elementary school. more than that, really. she would watch my brother gus and me after school, tutorías at their house along with a ton of other kids. we’d be there until our parents picked us up after they’d get off work. she shaped me, she saw something in me when i was too young to see it myself and she nurtured it. we had a long heart-to-heart over dinner, catching up on years and years of life, and it felt like a homecoming in a way i hadn’t expected, my soul reviving a little.

i came back to san diego feeling better than i had in months.

and then i plunged into an even deeper depression than before, because that’s how it works sometimes, isn’t it? you touch something real and good, you remember what it feels like to be alive, and then you return to your regular life and the contrast is devastating.

the bleak apartment feels bleaker. the shit-brown carpet feels shittier. the loneliness that you’d been numbing yourself against comes roaring back twice as loud.

so i went back in october for a book launch.

my friend manuel ortega caro wrote a book called no seas pendejo; no pertenezcas. we went to the same elementary school, colegio sagrados corazones in guaynabo, and claribel connected us, because she taught us both. and why not, of course. because the web of people who shaped you when you were young stays connected in ways you don’t always see.

the book is not self-help. manuel is very clear about that. it’s what he calls a “manual de demolición personal,” a personal demolition manual. it’s for people who are tired of living someone else’s script, tired of the lies society tells us about success and happiness and belonging, tired of being a pendejo who belongs to systems that don’t serve them.

“there’s a voice in your head,” the synopsis reads, “that whispers that this is all a lie. you hear it in the silence of your car. in the shower. in those three seconds of honesty before you fall asleep.”

i felt that line in my chest when i first read it. i still feel it now.

the launch was at the fundación nacional de la cultura popular in old san juan, and manuel gave me a chance to speak. i spoke about being non-binary, about being trans, about what it means to not belong to the gender binary in a world that insists you must.

i brought my hillcrest activism back to la isla, spoke openly about things that don’t always get spoken about openly there, and my tía cathy and cousin hector were in the audience, listening, and afterward we talked about trans issues in a way we never had before. i think we changed some hearts and minds that night. at least, i hope we did.

my old elementary and middle school teachers came to the launch too. they saw me, the adult i’ve become, the person i’ve grown into. it was joyful in a way i still don’t really have any words for. but it was beautiful being witnessed by the people who knew you when you were still becoming.

i met hilda curet that night as well, the daughter of tite curet alonso, one of puerto rico’s greatest songwriters. claribel knew her from their school days. the connections, the history, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself, a chain of influence and care stretching back generations… it all wove together into something that felt like belonging to me.

and somewhere in there, a word lodged itself in my brain that hasn’t left since. i heard it on instagram, from an account called @infinite.ritual. she was talking about going back to puerto rico after years away. she didn’t say she “returned.” she said she “rematriated.”

rematriate.

going back to the motherland. back to la madre. back to the place that made you, the soil and the salt and the sound of coquís at night and the specific quality of light in the afternoon and the way spanish feels different when everyone around you is speaking it too, not as a second language, not as something you code-switch into, but as the air you breathe.

i can’t even get a place here, in san diego. i can barely afford the bleak apartment with the shit-brown carpet. but nonetheless. that’s my new dream now. return to la isla. go home.

to rematriate.

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december

so here i am. december. the year limping toward its end like a wounded animal, and me limping alongside it.

i’m not okay. i want to be clear about that. i’m not writing this from the other side of some miraculous recovery, not offering advice from a place of wisdom and healing.

i’m writing this from the middle of it.

i’m writing this from the fucking stomach of mess, from the ongoing attempt to dig myself out of a hole i didn’t entirely dig but am responsible for climbing out of anyway.

but i’m doing better. and there’s a difference between those two things.

not okay, but doing better. still in the hole, but climbing.

i tossed the vape, finally. the withdrawal has been awful, the irritability and the cravings and the constant awareness of not having the thing my body has become dependent on… but it’s getting easier, a little bit easier every day. that’s really fucking nice.

i’m not smoking weed anymore. well, not completely, let’s be realistic, but significantly less. this week, i’ve tried out a small edible before bed, controlled and intentional, to help me fall asleep. i’m using it occasionally instead of constantly, every day. instead of becoming a permahigh chimney.

i’ve quit drinking entirely, which was easier than i expected because alcohol had become just another numbing agent in a arsenal of numbing agents. cutting it out became one less thing clouding my brain.

i’ve started walking, too. 10,000 steps a day. i started monday. today is friday. i’ve hit the goal every day so far, which doesn’t sound like much but feels like a revolution when you’ve spent months barely leaving your room. that’s something, right?!? that’s a start.

i deleted the food delivery apps. all of them. doordash, ubereats, grubhub, postmates, all gone from my phone. that alone will save me hundreds of dollars a month, and maybe some of my gastrointestinal dignity. if i want junk food now, i have to put on pants and leave the house to get it, and that friction is enough to make me think twice, which is all i need right now: enough friction to think twice.

i’m back in therapy, and that’s a huge triumph. three weeks and counting. we’re making progress, i think, or at least we’re digging into things i’ve been avoiding, which is its own kind of progress even when it doesn’t really feel like it.

i started journaling again, too. that was my fuel when i was writing on here regularly. i was writing lyrics, chord progressions, poems, thoughts, feelings… it was a source, a muse. though i haven’t been consistent, because consistency is hard when your brain is foggy and your energy is depleted and forming coherent thoughts feels like trying to catch fog with your hands… *sighs* but i’m trying. i keep trying.

one of my favorite authors is antoine de saint-exupéry, the guy who wrote the little prince. he was also a pilot, an adventurer, someone who understood both the poetry of existence and the practical necessity of putting one foot in front of the other. he wrote this:

“what saves a man is to take a step. then another step. it is always the same step, but you have to take it.”1

set and step. set and step.

that’s all i can do right now: set an intention and take a step. repeat.

don’t worry about the whole staircase, just take the next step.

i don’t know what to do about the collections. maybe it’s time to stop fighting and just start paying it, monthly, whatever i can manage, chipping away at eleven thousand dollars i shouldn’t owe but do anyway. paying for broken pottery someone else shattered, because contract law is contract law, and brianna kelly is a fraud who will likely never take responsibility.

but… que a lo hecho, pecho! what’s done is done. face it with your chest.

i don’t know how to open my heart again, ether. maybe that comes later, maybe it doesn’t. maybe i’ll be a nun forever, incapable and incorrigible, closed to possibility. or maybe, once i’ve rebuilt some of the other things, the body, the mind, the bank account, maybe then i’ll have capacity for that too. i don’t know right now. i’m trying not to know everything right now. trying to be okay with uncertainty.

i don’t know how to get to my puerto rico dream yet. i can barely afford san diego, and starting over somewhere new requires resources i don’t have. but the dream is there now, planted like a seed, and even if it takes years to grow into something real, at least i know what i’m growing toward. rematriate. go home.

i don’t know a lot of things but i know this: i am so fucking sick of self-harming. of being small. of feeling so aggrieved and so stuck and so numb. of numbing myself into nothing and calling it survival.

i have had enough.

i don’t want this anymore, this half-life, this slow disappearing. and i will change what i can. and it turns out i can do a fucking lot, actually, when i decide to. when i stop waiting for someone to save me and start saving myself.

because here’s the truth, the one that took me all year to learn: someone needs to show up for me and it might as well be me. it has to be me! the rest will fall in line as i keep building and moving forward, or it won’t, and i’ll adjust, and i’ll keep going anyway.

set and step. set and step.

i, too, can command the wind

there’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, elizabeth: the golden age. cate blanchett, one of the greatest actresses alive, plays queen elizabeth I facing the greatest crisis of her reign.

the spanish ambassador has just confirmed that the spanish armada is coming. the largest naval fleet ever assembled, 130 ships carrying 30,000 men, sailing to destroy england and return it to catholic rule. he’s smug about it, certain of spain’s victory, certain that this woman will be swept away by the tide of history.

and elizabeth, facing annihilation, with something between contempt and absolute defiance and says:

“i, too, can command the wind, sir! i have a hurricane in me that will lay spain bare if you dare to try me!”

she wins. england wins. the armada is scattered and sunk by storms and english fire ships and the sheer stubborn refusal to accept defeat. history remembers.

i think about that line constantly.

not because i think i’m a queen… though i sure as hell fucking am, haha. and it’s not because i think my problems are equivalent to an invading armada, though sometimes it feels that way, all those ships on the horizon, the debts and the betrayals and the broken systems and the hate crimes and the eight-dollar cortados.

sometimes defiance is all you have.

sometimes you’re outmatched and outgunned and the odds are against you and the only thing you can do is refuse to kneel. refuse to accept that this is how it ends.

and yes, i can make a wind joke now, because it turns out i can also command the wind in other ways, given that the dairy has led to some truly impressive gastrointestinal developments. commanding the wind indeed. elizabeth would be proud. or horrified. probably both.

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this little light of mine

and yet, the flame is still here.

that’s what i keep coming back to, through all of it, through the collections and the betrayal and the spiral and the sixty pounds and the broken tv and the fucking piñata points. there’s still a flame.

it’s the same flame that got me out of dc in 2021, out of a relationship that was drowning me, across the entire country to san diego where i built a whole new life from nothing.

it’s the same flame that’s kept me in school, working toward something better, even when i’m exhausted and broke and wondering what the point is. the debt goes up some more. the world keeps turning. i still don’t know how i’ll pay these loans.

it’s the same flame that’s kept me writing, kept me creating, even when i haven’t published anything in months, even when i’ve been too depressed to string sentences together. it’s still there, underneath everything.

it’s the same flame that got me through this year, somehow, despite everything trying to extinguish it.

it’s burning dimly right now. oh so dimly, so threatened. the slightest wind, the slightest change, could stamp it out. some days i feel that fragility acutely, feel how close i am to just letting it go dark.

but i haven’t, it hasn’t… not yet.

i’m just here trying to shelter it with half a hand, blown to pieces from shielding and blocking the blows. but i’m still sheltering it. still protecting it. still here.

elizabeth won and i want to win, damn it! i want to survive this year and come out the other side and look back at 2025 and know that it tried to break me and failed miserably. i want to pay off the debt and rebuild my credit and rematriate to puerto rico and write things that matter and maybe, someday very soon, let someone love me again. i want to command the wind.

and god, has this year sucked, and not in the way we all hope and dream. i don’t even know where to begin, but i have some ideas.

i’ll start by saving myself. by taking a step.

set and step. set and step.

it is always the same step, like antoine says, but you have to take it.

if any of this resonated, and you want to help me rebuild, you can buy me a coffee. no pressure. no subscription. just a one-time “thanks for existing” if you feel like it.

i’m back. let’s see what happens.

with all my love, defiance, and compromised gastrointestinal fortitude,

edgard 🧡

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p.s. if you’re going through it too, whatever “it” is for you, i see you. i don’t have advice. i barely have my own shit together. but i know this: you’ve survived 100% of your worst days so far and that’s not nothing. that’s everything, actually. that’s the whole thing.

p.p.s. to the people driving around hillcrest shooting pellets at queer folks: i hope your tires are eternally flat and your phone chargers only work at one specific angle that you can never quite find.

p.p.p.s. to brianna kelly: i know you’re reading this. pay your debts, bitch.

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hey mi gente! 👋🏽

i've been thinking a lot lately about sex. or more specifically, the lack of it.

it's weird, right? we live in supposedly the most sexually liberated time in history, yet studies keep showing that people (especially young people) are having less sex than previous generations.

meanwhile, the "wellness" industry has exploded into a $6.3 trillion behemoth, promising us that the path to happiness lies in self-care rather than connection with others.

what's going on here? how did we end up replacing intimacy with jade eggs and morning routines? and more importantly, what are we losing in the process?

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the wellness industrial complex

let me paint you a picture: it's 6 a.m. you wake up to your circadian rhythm alarm. you drink celery juice. you sit on the floor and meditate for 20 minutes. you then procced to journal three pages, take eighteen supplements, do a peloton ride, shower with special mushroom-infused soap, and apply seven different serums to your face… all before 8 a.m.

congratulations! you've completed your morning routine. you're now "that girl." you've optimized yourself. you've practiced self-care.

but here's my question: when in this carefully curated life did you make space for actual human connection? for the messy, sweaty, and imperfect? for the vulnerability of allowing another human being to see you without the filters, the routines, the optimization, the mask?

the wellness industry has convinced us that the path to fulfillment lies solely within ourselves. need to feel better? don't reach out to a friend or lover… buy this face mask instead! feeling disconnected? it's not because you need human touch… you just need to optimize your gut microbiome!

this isn't to say that taking care of yourself is bad. dios mío, i love a good face mask as much as the next person. but we've replaced genuine connection with a commodified version of self-reliance that ultimately leaves us hollow.

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between puritanism and exploitation

meanwhile, we're caught in a bizarre cultural tug-of-war around sexuality.

on one side, we have a resurgence of conservative puritanism. books are being banned, comprehensive sex education is under attack, and reproductive rights are being rolled back. the far right has weaponized moral panic about sexuality (especially queer sexuality) to further their political agenda.

on the other side, we have the hypersexualization and commodification of... well, everything. from instagram to music videos to advertising, sex sells. but it's a performative, plastic version of sexuality that has little to do with genuine human connection and pleasure.

young people today are looking at both options and saying, "no me jodas." and honestly, can you blame them?

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reclaiming intimacy in the age of disconnect

what's particularly heartbreaking is that we're losing touch with one of the most fundamental human experiences: the power of physical intimacy to heal, connect, and bring joy.

sex (good sex, consensual sex, connected sex) is one of the few spaces where we can be fully present with another human being. this is where we can drop the performance, the optimization, the endless striving to be better. we can just be in our bodies, experiencing pleasure and connection.

in a world that's increasingly mediated through screens, where touch has become suspect, where we're told that the solution to our loneliness is more self-care rather than more connection, the radical act might be to turn toward each other rather than inward.

this isn't about returning to some mythical past where sexuality was "simpler" (it never was). it's about finding a way forward that honors both autonomy and connection, that allows for pleasure without exploitation, that makes space for the messy, beautiful reality of human desire.

finding our way back to each other

so where do we go from here?

how do we navigate between the wellness industrial complex, conservative fear-mongering, and exploitative hypersexualization to find genuine connection?

i don't have all the answers (shocking, i know). but i think it starts with asking better questions:

• what if wellness included our relationships with others, not just our relationship with ourselves?

• what if we talked about sex not just in terms of risk and danger, but also in terms of joy and connection?

• what if we challenged both the puritanical notion that sex is shameful AND the capitalist notion that sex is just another commodity?

maybe the revolution isn't just in the streets or at the ballot box. maybe it's also in the bedroom, in the vulnerable space between two bodies, in the radical act of being truly seen by another person.

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i'd love to hear your thoughts on this. am i totally off base? have you noticed this trend? how are you finding connection in an increasingly disconnected world?

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖✊🏽🌈

p.s. if this resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it. we're all just trying to figure this shit out together.

p.p.s. for the conservatives clutching their pearls right now: talking about sex doesn't mean i'm "promoting" anything. it means i'm acknowledging a fundamental part of human experience. deal with it. 😘

Refer a friend

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hey mi gente! 👋🏽

i've been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

i don’t mean the superficial "let's grab coffee sometime" kind that populates our dm’s or text chats. i mean the messy, complicated, beautiful disaster that is genuine human connection. the kind where you text each other memes at 3 a.m. and they actually respond. the kind where they've seen you ugly cry and still choose to hang out with you afterwards.

i’ve been going through a really difficult time lately and i’ve leaned on my hyper independence way too much. i’ve realized that maybe, just, maybe - i need to start learning to ask for help and to voice my struggle. i don’t want to suffer in silence. i’m really good at it. and the medal you want for “survived this alone” will never, ever come.

but this has started to make me think… the difference between a friend, an acquaintance, and someone who just happens to know your coffee order. there's a science to this sorting, a delicate alchemy that determines who gets access to the unfiltered version of yourself and who gets the carefully curated highlight reel.

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the loyalty experiment

i'll start with what might seem like a trivial question but actually reveals volumes: should friends split the bill?

this seemingly simple question quickly opens a pandora's box of cultural norms, personal values, and relationship dynamics. in puerto rico (or at least, my personal custom), the person who invites typically pays unless there’s a different arrangement due to circumstances. in some american circles, the expectation is to split everything down to the penny. i’ve heard that in germany, they'll calculate exactly what each person consumed with mathematical precision that would impress einstein.

but the bill is just the appetizer for the main course: what do you do when your friend "breaks up" with another friend that's mutual? do you side with your friend or do you become switzerland – neutral, full of chocolate, and morally superior?

me? i'll side with my friends, always.

that doesn't mean i'll join a pitchfork-wielding mob against the ex-friend. it just means that the people i'm in community with – their feelings, their safety – will always take precedence over people i'm not emotionally invested in.

"edgard, that's pretty fucking childish. don't construct your life around the emotional whims of your friends."

you're absolutely right! i agree with you. it is childish. but you know what? I AM CHILDISH! 🧸 i embrace both the light and the dark, i embrace my biases and work hard to curb those that cause harm.

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the friendship selection protocol

because i'm very careful (now) about the type of people i call "friends," i trust their decision to discard or disengage from specific people was a philosophical process, an intentional mindful process. i know i don't do it lightly. i agonize and i cry and i get mad at myself, because i always know what i need to do is right.

my role as the "consigliere," the trusted advisor (because my friends are MAIN CHARACTERS, OKAY?), is to be the personification of loyalty, an unwavering ally, and sometimes that means there's a risk of not being fair. but according to my value system, that is a risk i'm willing to take.

friendship isn't a democracy. it's more like a benevolent dictatorship where the dictator is your collective well-being. sometimes, tough decisions need to be made. sometimes, people need to go. the real question is: how do we make those decisions?

the friendship equation

the better questions, the right questions to ask, are these:

1. what type of people am i in community with?

2. what demands do they make on my moral framework? on my ethics?

3. is there a disconnect between my ethics and the ethics my friends demand?

these questions aren't just philosophical musings – they're practical tools for navigating the complex terrain of human relationships. they help us understand not just who our friends are, but who we become in their presence.

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a theory of friendship relativity

friendship isn't static; it's a living, breathing entity that evolves over time. the person who was your ride-or-die in college might become a distant memory by your thirties. the coworker you barely noticed might become your emotional support human during a crisis.

in my twenties, i collected friends like pokemon cards. quantity over quality. i was terrified of being alone, of not being liked, of missing out. now, in my late thirties, i understand that friendship is less about accumulation and more about curation.

some friendships are seasonal and that's okay. some are situational, and that's okay too. and some – the rare and precious ones – are forever, transcending time, distance, and circumstance.

these are the friends who show up when you're at your lowest. who send you memes about your specific neuroses because they know it'll make you laugh. who remind you to take your meds and drink water and go outside like a normal human being instead of becoming one with your couch.

the friendship scientific method

here's what i've learned about friendship through trial, error, and a whole lot of therapy:

1. true friends pass the 3 a.m. test. if you'd call them at 3 a.m. in an emergency (and they'd actually pick up), they're a real friend.

2. friendship requires maintenance. like any relationship, friendship needs regular care and feeding. check in. show up. remember the little things.

3. boundaries make better friends. counterintuitively, having clear boundaries often strengthens friendships rather than weakening them.

4. friendship evolves. the way you were friends in your twenties might not be how you're friends in your forties, and that's okay.

5. some friendships are meant to end. not every friendship is meant to last forever and that doesn't diminish its value.

6. friends don't keep score. if you're tallying who paid for what or who called whom last, you're doing it wrong.

7. loyalty isn't blind. true loyalty means wanting what's best for your friend, even when they can't see it themselves.

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the friendship results

and finally – the friend that comes to you in your hour of need and gives you money, love, time, or blasts your mutual aid requests/housing search posts are the ones you should keep. those are the ones you owe your loyalty to.

not everyone is in your corner. but to reference the motto of the great state of michigan – if you really need to know who's in your corner, at your hour of need, look around you.

the true test of friendship isn't how much fun you have together when things are good. it's who shows up when things fall apart.

friends don't split bills unless y'all broke and watching out for each other. otherwise, pick up the tab and take care of it like a corrupt saudi prince. but that's just me. (though if you're always the one paying, maybe examine that dynamic a bit more closely, mi amor.)

to my friends, thank you for loving me. thank you. thank you. i am your liege person of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth i will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folx.

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what are your friendship non-negotiables? who's shown up for you when you needed it most? drop a comment below – i'd love to hear about your friendship experiments.

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖

edgard✊🏽🌈

p.s. if you're reading this and thinking "damn, i don't have friends like that," remember that it's never too late to find your people. sometimes they're hiding in the most unexpected places – like a substack comment section. 😉

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hola mis bellezas,

if there's anything i can tell you that i am now is that i am a leaver.

it took years, it took so much - therapy sessions unpacking my fear of abandonment, nights spent staring at packed boxes wondering if i was making a mistake, relationships that died slow deaths while i convinced myself they were just sleeping.

i've learned that staying isn't always loyalty; sometimes it's surrender. staying can be fear dressed up in a fur coat as hope.

i left a political party, career paths, three cities, situationships, and even some real relationships that nearly left me bereft and broken. every time though, it got a little easier. but it’s like sara bareilles sings in “bottle it up” - “skin has gotten thicker / but it burns the same”.

i think that now i recognize the signs earlier. you know, that moment the lights start to dim and the music begins to fade. the moment that the proverbial cotton candy turns stale on my tongue. maybe it’s hypervigilance. maybe it’s my instinct. but i’ll leave before the carnival becomes a ghost town.

i was probably seven when i went to my first fair in puerto rico. las fiestas patronales transformed the little town of moca into something ethereal. think of them as a form of a county fair, where the best of a county (in this case a municipio) meets to party and drown in joy. my grandfather - a musician who plays these festivals with his trio los cancioneros - would lead me through crowds that smelled of coquito and fried food. he'd point out the piragüeros with their rainbow-colored syrups, the old men playing dominoes under string lights, the balloon vendors whose wares looked like confused stars caught in nets.

"mira, edgard," he'd say, gesturing at the whirling rides, the squealing children, the lovers sharing cotton candy, the people dressed in vejigante masks. it was magical. it’s still magical to me.

but what sticks with me most isn't the height of the festivities - it's the ending of it.

the way the lights flicker out one by one, like stars giving up. the mechanical whir of rides powering down. vendors packing up their stalls, counting their coins as their faces tire beneath the remaining bulbs.

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i never wanted to leave. turns out… that's a pattern i’d find very hard to break.

thirty years later, i still struggle with endings, even if i’ve become a leaver, a detacher.

i stayed in the republican party long after my values diverged from theirs.

i lingered in dc years after the city stopped feeling like home.

i’ve tried twice with some of my past relationships, hoping the second time would rewrite the ending of the first.

we humans are creatures of habit, even when those habits hurt us. we build fortresses of familiarity and then call them safety. we mistake comfort for happiness. we contort and rationalize and convince ourselves that good enough is enough.

in washington, dc, i spent seven years building a life with someone. we shared everything: an apartment and the common dreams that stretched into someday. but somewhere, the lights started dimming. the music grew fainter. i noticed it in small moments - the silence over dinner becoming louder than any argument, the separate weekend plans that felt like relief, the way "i love you" started sounding like something we'd rehearsed too many times.

still, i stayed. one more ride. one more game. one more chance to win back what we'd lost.

my apartment in dc grew smaller each year, like alice after drinking the shrinking potion. the walls absorbed our arguments, our silences, our resigned acceptance of mediocrity. i knew every crack in the sidewalk between my front door and the crystal city metro.

it was fine until it wasn't.

@allmykeeunfortunately

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the worst part about staying too long isn't just the big things - the relationships, the cities, the careers that no longer fit. it's the small heartbreaks too. those situationships where someone figures out exactly how many breadcrumbs to drop to keep you coming back. they text just enough to maintain interest, show just enough vulnerability to give you hope, offer just enough warmth to keep you from freezing completely.

july 2021: my dad and i drove a u-haul from dc to grand rapids, michigan overnight. my things - eight years of accumulated life, hopes, disappointments - rattled in the back like loose teeth. my dad didn't ask questions, just kept driving through the dark, stopping only for coffee and gas. i was a mess.

somewhere in ohio, around 3am, i broke down crying at a rest stop. not the pretty kind of crying - the ugly, snotty, gasping-for-air kind that makes strangers avoid eye contact. my dad just stood there, keys jingling in his pocket, waiting it out.

i wasn't just leaving a relationship. i wasn't just leaving dc. i was leaving a version of myself - the one who settled for less, who confused longevity with love, who thought staying was the same as belonging. the one who'd spent years perfecting the art of making himself smaller to fit into spaces that were never meant to hold him. san diego wasn't just a new city for me. it was the permission i needed to stop waiting for the fair to get better.

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last night, a someone i'd been seeing casually sent the equivalent of an 11pm "you up?" text. it was a dirty meme, hinting at their desire. you have no idea how much i love that - yes, tell me you want me. at any time of the day. it strokes my ego. it really does a number on me… but i know better. once upon a time, i'd have read depth into that shallow pool. i would have spun elaborate fantasies about what they really meant, convinced myself that late-night breadcrumbs could somehow add up to a feast. instead, i turned my phone off and fell asleep. i felt real peace.

maybe that's the real growth - not just learning when to leave the fair, but recognizing when something isn't even a fair to begin with. when it's just an empty lot with twinkle lights, promising magic it never intends to deliver. when the house of mirrors shows you exactly who someone is but you keep looking for a better reflection.

i played that streisand song again today, sitting on in my room. i looked out the window to see the sun painting the sky in shades of pink and orange. a hummingbird hovered near, paused, then darted away - knowing instinctively when to move on. the neighbor's wind chimes sang in the breeze.

this time, the song felt different. not like a question, but an answer.

if you're sitting somewhere right now, clutching expired ride tickets and calling them possibilities - maybe this is your sign.

if you're telling yourself the carnival isn't over while standing in an empty lot - maybe it's time to trust that voice inside you. the one that whispers: the fair is over.

it's okay to go home. or better yet - it's okay to find a new home altogether.

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖

edgard✊🏽🌈

p.s. what's the longest you've stayed at a fair that was clearly closing? drop it in the comments - your story might help someone else find their way to the exit. 🎪

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"okay everyone, close your eyes. breathe into your truth. let your authentic self emerge."

i'm sitting cross-legged on an overpriced meditation cushion in a converted craftsman. the exposed brick walls and carefully curated succulents are screaming "authentic space.” the workshop facilitator - let's call her sage (because of course that's her name) - is wearing what appears to be a $425 free people dress specifically designed to look like something a peasant might have worn in 1800s romania.

"share your raw truth," sage whispers in that hushed, reverential tone that somehow always accompanies expensive spirituality. "what's really in your heart? what is your soul saying?"

she walks around rubbing obsidian. across the circle, someone that (to me) looks like a tech executive in a $200 "artisanally distressed" t-shirt starts crying about his difficult relationship with his tesla. (“elon is a nazi now, i bought my cybertruck before that!”) sage keeps walking around. then, someone else confesses their shame about not making their own oat milk.

i check my banking app: the $175 i paid for this "authentic storytelling workshop" just cleared. that's roughly what my abuela spent on groceries for our entire family for two weeks when i was growing up in puerto rico.

the irony is thick enough to spread on artisanal sourdough toast. with reduced sodium.

the authenticity industrial complex™️

somewhere between 2010 and now (based on my perception at least), authenticity became a luxury brand. like everything else under capitalism, the simple act of "being yourself" got packaged, priced, and sold back to us.

some examples i have seen myself in the wild:

• "authentic" puerto rican cooking class in san diego: $245

• my abuela's actual recipe for pasteles: free (but you have to endure her judging your technique while telling you about your cousin's recent divorce)

• "genuine" handcrafted coffee pour-over set: $179

• my stovetop coffee maker i inherited from 1985: still making perfect café for $0

but it goes deeper. last month, i saw an instagram ad for a "genuine puerto rican experience" tour in old san juan - $399 for one day. you get to "live like a local" (they promise, at least) and it’s all complete with an "authentic street food tasting" at places no actual local has ever eaten at.

meanwhile, my titi vilmarie actually lives her genuine puerto rican experience every day, but she can't afford the admission price to her own authenticity.

funny how colonialism works, right? first they try to erase your culture, then they sell it back to you at a 1000% markup.

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the price of keeping it real

"just be yourself," they say, as if authenticity was a cute outfit you could put on instead of a potentially lethal choice.

let me paint you a picture: it's 2 am at a gas station somewhere between grand rapids and lansing, michigan, circa 2008. i need to pee. i'm wearing nail polish because i had just started embracing my queerness. i spend 20 minutes doing complex calculations:

• how badly do i need to pee? (8/10)

• how many trucks in the parking lot? (4 - not great)

• any pride flags or "safe space" stickers? (lol, no, that was not a thing then)

• likelihood of violence if someone decides my authentic self is offensive? (too high)

i held it until the next “safe harbor”. (shoutout to my bladder.)

"speak your truth," they say. coño, my truth comes with a surcharge and a potential hospital bill.

every queer person i know has a running spreadsheet in their head:

• places we can hold hands

• places we can't

• places we might be able to, depending on the time of day and the alignment of the stars

• places that claim to be "welcoming" but charge us double for the privilege

my trans friends budget for therapy, hormones, surgery, new wardrobes, legal fees - just to access their authentic selves. that's if they can get past the gatekeeping, the waiting lists, and the insurance denials.

i know social media managers who are paid six figures to be "authentically themselves" for brands, while actual authentic voices (like you and me, for instance) are silenced for being "too much."

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the performance of realness: a user's guide

i recently watched an influencer's "raw and unfiltered morning routine" video. you know the type:

• "just woke up like this" with makeup that definitely took 45 minutes

• a "messy bun" that required three youtube tutorials to perfect

• "casual" outfits that costs more than my monthly rent

• "impromptu" coffee moment with perfect lighting and camera angles

• "random" journaling session with carefully arranged crystals and a $75 "authentic" hand-bound journal

production budget? probably around $2,000. authenticity level? about as real as my mom's "natural" hair color. (sorry, mami, te tire pa’l medio.)

also, let me take a break here to say - i follow a lot of fitness influencers on instagram. they all do grwm videos… all the time, over and over again. if i said i follow them because of their tips on form and diet… well, that’s part of it… i would be lying. they’re usually hot, jacked, and handsome. why is it that in their grwm videos, they don’t wake up with morning wood like a normal person? that’s the authenticity i wanna see…

@eddyplolzi guess thats what the only fans is for 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 sorry y’all, i cracked up at my own joke lol

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but the most hilarious part of all of this is not my predilection for an erect bulge, but that i'm complicit in the authenticity industrial complex too. right now, i’m writing about authenticity on a paid subscription platform, carefully crafting my "genuine" voice. the irony isn't lost on me.

but here's what breaks my brain: we're now performing authenticity more elaborately than we ever performed conformity. it's like we've created a new, more expensive closet to hide in - only this one has great lighting and an aesthetic instagram grid.

the authenticity tax: a breakdown

let me show you my receipts (literally and metaphorically):

financial costs:

• "authentic" farmer's market vegetables: $8/pound

• same vegetables at northgate gonzález market: $2/pound

• "genuine vintage" t-shirt: $85

• actual old t-shirt: apparently worthless until someone markets it

• "real" experiences at "authentic" prices: unlimited

• my therapy bills from dealing with all this: don't ask… please

the social surcharge:

• every time i have to explain why i don't "look" puerto rican enough

• every job interview where i tone down my queerness

• every time i code-switch between:

  • professional english

  • casual english

  • puerto rican spanish

  • "acceptable" spanglish

  • what white people think spanglish sounds like

  • whatever language keeps me safe in this particular room

professional penalties: the price of being real at work

remember when i worked in republican politics? every day was a masterclass in the cost of truth. one time, i pushed back on an anti-lgbtq+ hit piece at my old job. i had the audacity of suggesting that maybe, juuuuust maybe, we shouldn't compare queer people to predators.

my boss's response? "if you want a future in republican politics, you need to be more of a team player."

translation: your authenticity is costing us money, clicks, and votes. my salary in that job? $32,000 (circa 2015). cost of staying silent? my entire soul.

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the mental tax: your brain on authenticity™️

the constant calculations are exhausting:

• am i being too queer?

• am i being queer enough?

• am i being puerto rican enough?

• am i being too puerto rican?

• is my authentic self authentic enough?

• is my performance of authenticity convincingly authentic?

it's like starring in a one-person show where you're simultaneously the lead actor, the critic, the audience, and the person who has to clean up after everyone leaves. and the reviews? they're always mixed.

finding real freedom (for real this time)

plot twist: the freest i've ever felt was at 1 am at flicks in hillcrest, dancing badly to madonna with other queers who couldn't afford the admission price to authenticity but showed up anyway. no one was performing realness - we were too busy actually being real.

or at the family gatherings where my titis argue about who makes the best arroz con gandules while my primos play dominoes and talk shit. no one's charging $200 for this "authentic cultural experience" - we're just living it.

or at the kiwanis all-inclusive club of hillcrest meetings in uptown tavern where we're too focused on helping our community to worry about whether we're being "genuine" enough about it.

the revolution will not be aesthetically curated

here's what i know: true authenticity isn't something you can buy at whole foods or learn in a workshop run by someone named sage.

it's the group chat where you can actually say what's on your mind. it’s having friends who love you even when you're not posting your best self. it’s the communities that protect each other without charging admission. it’s the the spaces where you can exhale without calculating the cost.

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while the authenticity industrial complex is busy selling $400 "genuine" experiences, actual authenticity is happening in the margins… and maybe that's the point.

com mucho amor,

edgard

p.s. if you're struggling with the cost of being yourself - you're not alone. your authenticity isn't measured by your ability to afford the authentic™️ lifestyle.

p.p.s. yes, this essay about the commodification of authenticity is hosted on a platform that commodifies personal writing. we contain multitudes, and sometimes those multitudes shop at whole foods while complaining about gentrification. we're working on it.

p.p.p.s. to sage from the workshop: if you're reading this, i want a refund. i could have had a really good mofongo for that price and then some!

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hola mis amores,

towards the end of last year, i had the wonderful privilege of going back home to michigan to spend time with my parents and friends. it was so good to be around people that have known me forever, people that really understand me.

during my time in michigan, i went knee-deep in my old storage unit, which contained the contents of my entire life in washington, dc. during the sifting of boxes and things, when i found my pete buttigieg campaign buttons from 2019. and i just... froze. because holy shit, right? this little piece of metal marked the first time i worked for a democrat after spending years - 14 years - organizing and volunteering and working for republicans. from knocking on doors for mccain in 2008 to working in local campaigns in michigan where the word "democrat" was basically a curse word.

finding this sparked a question in me - how do we end up believing what we believe? i think many of us inherit our politics like we inherit our abuela's recipes. that is, sometimes without questioning if maybe, just maybe, that sofrito could use a little less garlic (spoiler: it couldn't, there is no such thing).

but politics? that's a different story.

so we build our worldviews based on what? vibes? what our parents believe? what made us feel safe when we were young? whatever we told ourselves at night to get some sleep? whatever we tell ourselves so we can fit in this world?

the empty houses we leave behind

when i was younger, i really used to think that my values were aligned more with the republican party than anything else.

i grew up with the myth of reagan. i really thought that the best government is that which governs least. i devoured bastiat, william f buckley, and barry goldwater like it was candy. and i never stopped to really think about what i actually thought… what was actually important to me and my community. qué pendejo era, right?

i kept on devouring the writing of conservative publications and authors, and i became a republican. i never, ever stopped to think if these values were for me - i just was surrounded by it and i gave in.

but here's the thing about values - they're not static. they grow as we grow, evolve as we evolve. and sometimes, that means leaving old ideological homes behind.

i was a puerto rican kid in western michigan in the early 2000’s. it was the start of the bush administration and i was desperate to prove i could be "american" enough. assimilation is a hell of a drug, my friend. it’ll make you want to fit in places that never were going to accept you anyway.1 that’s how i shaped my entire political identity and i didn’t let it go for years.

but here's what nobody tells you about finding your political values: it's not about picking the right team. it's not even about being right (though let's be real, it feels pretty good when you are). it's about figuring out what you're willing to fight for when everything's on the line.

finding your true values

finding your true values isn't like picking out an outfit at target. you can't just grab whatever looks good on the mannequin and call it a day. you can’t keep falling for the propaganda, the narratives, the *gesticulates wildly* everything that comes at you.

it's more like trying to map an underwater cave system while the tide is changing - disorienting, sometimes scary, and you might bump into some uncomfortable truths in your path.

the discomfort is the point. if reexamining your values isn't making you a little queasy, it’s possible that you are not digging deep enough. and just like many things in life, the breakthrough usually comes right after the moment you want to quit the most.

so let me break down the process that helped me find my way - not to certainty (that's a trap, run away), but to something more honest, true, and alive:

1. question everything (yes, everything)

• what do you actually believe vs. what you've been told to believe?

• why do you react so strongly to certain issues?

• what scares you about changing your mind?

2. get uncomfortable (like, really uncomfortable)

• if your political values have never made you squirm, you're not doing it right

• talk to people who disagree with you (not on twitter, por favor - i mean in real life)

• read things that challenge you (and not just the sparknotes/abridged version)

3. look for the contradictions

• where do your stated values clash with your actual behavior?

• what privileges are you protecting without realizing it?

• whose voices are you ignoring because they make you uncomfortable?

this isn't a checklist you can complete in an afternoon. this is more like starting a garden. you have tend it, pull weeds (those sneaky inherited biases), and sometimes replant everything when nothing is growing right.

and yes, sometimes you'll find that beliefs you thought were deeply rooted were actually just sitting on the surface, waiting to be blown away by the first strong wind of reality. that's okay. that's part of the process.

this is a process, not a race to be “right”

the moment i realized i couldn't be a republican anymore wasn't some big dramatic event. it was watching my party deny healthcare to people, hearing them talk about immigrants, seeing them dismiss queer people like me as if we were theoretical concepts rather than human beings. it was watching donald trump come down the golden escalator at trump tower in 2015 and knowing in my gut that very moment that he would win. it took a build up of years and years of incongruence and misalignment to finally get me to break out.

it was death by a thousand cuts, each one a moment where my proclaimed values crashed head-first into my lived reality.

but here's what really keeps me up at night: what beliefs am i holding onto right now that future me will look back on with horror? what am i getting wrong today?

because let's be real - if you think you've got it all figured out, you're probably missing something crucial.

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these days, i'm somewhere between market socialism and zapatismo, with a healthy dose of "what the fuck is wrong with our two-party system?" thrown in for good measure. is that messy? hell yes. contradictory? probably. but it's authentic to who i am and what i believe right now.

and maybe that's the point. maybe our political values shouldn't be these fixed, unchanging things. maybe they should evolve as we evolve, grow as we grow, change as we change our minds about what's possible in this world.

so here's my challenge to you: take a hard look at your political values. not the party you vote for, not the slogans you repost on instagram. think of the deep-down, gut-level beliefs that drive your views about how society should work.

ask yourself:

• what am i afraid to question?

• who am i trying to impress?

• what would i believe if nobody was watching?

because here's the truth: your political values aren't just about you. they're about the world you want to help create. they're about who gets to eat and who goes hungry, who gets healthcare and who suffers, who gets to live with dignity and who has to beg for basic human rights.

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let me know in the comments: what political beliefs have you outgrown? what values are you questioning right now? what scares you about changing your mind?

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖

edgard✊🏽🌈

p.s. if you're in the middle of your own political identity crisis, welcome to the club. it’s normal, it’s part of growing and evolving.

p.p.s. and if you're still holding onto political beliefs that don't serve you, remember: it's okay to leave that house. it's okay to build something new. it's okay to admit you were wrong. trust me, i would know. 😉

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the nine inch nails and johnny cash both start out singing, “i hurt myself today”. and i guess i start this blog today with that same sentiment.

this one will be short and sweet. but first, some context.

over these last few weeks, i’ve lost my fucking mind. i gave in to every drop of desire and ounce of lust for someone… and it’s been fun. but it’s also been a neverending litany of anxiety. i sleep with someone, the connection is electrifying - and somehow, despite knowing better, my heart and my mind have to conflate the titillation and lust with genuine attraction… and… dare i say? even love? it can’t be.

i’m not gonna lie, i’ve been down this road so many times. it’s ridiculous that i keep falling for the same shit, knowing how it always ends. falling into the same familiar pattern.

i knew from the start that nothing more could develop but lust. i knew it. it was established. yet… here i am. again.

i like feeling like i am after someone. i like the chase. i like to be romantic. but at the same time, i really feel like i have to be in control and when i’m on that romantic vibe… control is the first thing i lose. control of myself, my feelings, my lust, my everything.

i can’t stop thinking about this person. and we have only hung out a handful of times. every time our bodies have collided, it’s been so satisfying and beautiful. i haven’t had this in such a long time. i didn’t even know it was possible anymore for me to feel like this, as if life wearing me down had numbed me somehow, grounding my natural “loverboy” tendencies into powder, into nothing.

so in a fit of pique, i wrote this person a haiku about how much i wanted them. and i sent it to them. i’m not gonna lie, the reaction left much to be desired… yet again.

at least i liked the haiku. and here it is:

untitled

warm beneath my lips,
your skin, a whispered scent -
craving your sweet salt.

if it’s not obvious that i have an oral fixation and my encounters with this person have consistently led to me devouring every part of their body with reckless abandon… well, i hope it shows now.

let’s keep this one between us, shall we?

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i’m embarrassed that every time this part of me comes out, it gets met with absolute indifference. maybe i should stop writing haikus for people. or maybe when i do, i should simply keep them to myself.

“well that was totally normal to do. yep,” i tell myself.

i’d prefer if they told me that the haiku sucked.

anyway, mis amores - i hope you’re having a better time than i in your romantic endeavors. please don’t lie to yourself. it’ll cost you everything, every single time. and you won’t be able to see the truth when it’s there.

con amor y verguenza,

edgard 💖

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hola mis amores,

have you ever driven past an old apartment, wondering about the life you left behind?the arguments that echoed off those walls, the dreams you whispered into that pillow, the version of yourself that woke up each morning in that creaky bed?

i have… and let me tell you, it's a strange feeling. it’s like looking at a faded polaroid of yourself with a hairstyle you'd rather forget. or in my case, a political ideology i've outgrown.

i scribbled these words in my journal late one night, the ink barely dry on my democratic voter registration card. the irony wasn't lost on me – a former republican, now embracing a political identity i once opposed.

but here's the thing about change: it's not a light switch. it's more like a sunrise, gradual and sometimes imperceptible until suddenly, you're bathed in a new light.

for years, i wore the republican label like an ill-fitting suit. i smoothed out the wrinkles, ignored the pinch in the shoulders, convinced myself it was tailored just for me. but with each passing year, each new experience, each conversation with someone whose life looked nothing like mine, that suit transformed into an ideological prison.

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picture, if you will, the house of my former political self. in the living room, a portrait of reagan (may he burn in hell for all eternity) hangs askew, gathering dust. the kitchen, once stocked with half-baked trickle-down economic theories, now stands empty. and in the study, bookshelves once lined with ayn rand novels have been cleared to make room for james baldwin, bell hooks, franz fanon, and audre lorde.

now, i understand the instinct to judge. hell, i judge my past self often. that guy who argued passionately for trickle down economics (which btw - is proven not to work), convinced it would lead to job creation and economic prosperity?

i want to grab him by the shoulders and yell, "despierta, pendejo!"

but then i remember – that version of me was doing the best he could with the information he had. that version of me was trying so hard to fit into america, into blood red western michigan. i try to find a lot of compassion for that eager kid that just wanted to fit in and make an impact.

a pew research center study tracking partisan identities between september 2018 and july 2020 found that about 9% of voters who affiliated with or leaned toward one party in 2018 had switched to the other party by 2020.

i'm part of that statistic, but numbers can't capture the seismic shift in worldview that accompanies such a change. it's not just checking a different box on a form; it's renovating your entire belief system.

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i remember the exact moment the foundation of my old political home began to crumble. it was 2015, and i was at a campaign event. a woman approached me, tears in her eyes, clutching medical bills she couldn't pay. "how does your party's healthcare plan help me?" she asked. i opened my mouth to recite the usual talking points about free markets and personal responsibility, but the words died in my throat. in that moment, i realized i was trying to wallpaper over a gaping hole in my political philosophy with empty rhetoric.

growth isn't about disowning your past. it's about acknowledging it, learning from it, and then packing up your boxes and moving to a place that fits the person you've become. it's about recognizing that the american dream my parents chased when they left puerto rico isn't accessible through the policies i once championed.

but here's the kicker and i know this might ruffle some feathers – i don't feel perfectly at home with the democrats either. truth is, i deeply dislike that the american political system is a clusterfuck, forcing us to choose between two flavors of neoliberal ice cream when what we really need is a whole damn political buffet.

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in so many other nations, people enjoy true multiparty democracies where a spectrum of views is represented. meanwhile, here we are, stuck in a political tug-of-war where many feel unrepresented.

if i were to put a label on my current political stance – and oh boy, do i hate labels – it would be something like a mix of market socialism with a heavy dash of zapatismo. yeah, i know, it sounds like the political equivalent of a smoothie made with kale, avocado, and a sprinkle of revolutionary pepper. but hey, at least it's nutrient-dense and fights against systemic oppression, right? (i’ll have to write more about my own political beliefs later.)

so yeah, go ahead and judge that old version of me. knock yourself out. criticize his views, question his choices, roll your eyes at his naiveté.

but know this: you're swinging at shadows. that edgard doesn't live there anymore.

and the current edgard? they’re camping out in the political wilderness, trying to build a new home that truly fits. he's still figuring things out. still growing, still learning, still fucking up sometimes. but they’re also braver, kinder, and a whole lot more comfortable in their own skin (and their political affiliation).

to those who might say, "you've betrayed your principles," i say this: principles should be a compass, not an anchor. if new information, experiences, and empathy lead you in a different direction, isn't it more of a betrayal to ignore that evolution?

so here's my challenge to you, dear reader: the next time you're tempted to judge someone for their past, pause. ask yourself: am i seeing who they were, or who they are? am i fixating on an empty house, or am i open to meeting the person standing right in front of me?

because let me tell you, the view from this new place? it's pretty fucking spectacular. and there's plenty of room for all of us here.

in the coming weeks, i'll be sharing more about my journey from republican to democrat, and beyond into the realms of political ideologies that don't fit neatly into any box. it's messy, it's complicated, and it's probably going to piss off people on all sides of the political spectrum. but it's real, it's mine, and i'm done apologizing for the road that led me here.

as we puerto ricans say, "lo que pasó, pasó" (what's past is past). but that doesn't mean we can't learn from it, grow from it, and use it to build a better future.

stay tuned, mis amores. 💖

edgard✊🏽🌈

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p.s. if you're in the middle of your own political identity crisis, know that you're not alone. change is scary as fuck, but it's also where the magic happens. trust the journey, even if it takes you off the beaten path.

p.p.s. to everyone reading this, regardless of your political stripe: i see you, i respect you, and i'm not here to change your mind. i'm just inviting you to consider that maybe, just maybe, our political landscape could use a little more color than just red and blue.

tl;dr: being non-binary is like playing hopscotch on a minefield of societal expectations, but with better outfits and more existential crises.

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let’s start with this: whatever you think about gender or what you think i should be… you can wrap it in sandpaper and shove it. with no lube.

now that you’ve gotten some sass, can i go on? you know you wouldn’t have me any other way.

okay, now… a story. it’s a saturday afternoon in san diego. the sun is shining and the sky is clear, beautiful, and blue. i'm strolling down mayland street in university heights. i’m jamming to the usual or maybe i had spotify’s dj x on. i don’t remember now. a neighbor i vaguely know spots me and waves. as i get closer, his eyes widen. he's never seen me with facial hair before. his brain short-circuits as he tries to compute this new information.

"hello... sir? ma'am? um... sir ma'am?"

we both crack up. i'm laughing so hard i can barely breathe. "sir ma'am is fine," i manage to wheeze out. and just like that… i've got a new title!

welcome to my world, amiguis. welcome to the wonderful, queer, and wtf-inducing experience of being a non-binary person in a world that is very much binary.

this interaction was hilarious and positive. my neighbor and i shared a genuine moment of connection and humor. but let's be real - not every encounter goes this smoothly. sometimes, people aren't just confused. they're threatened.

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you see, for those of us who don't fit neatly into the categories of "man" or "woman," everyday interactions can feel like navigating a minefield. will the person i'm talking to be cool? will they be confused? or will they react with hostility to something they don't understand? what fuckery will they project onto me?

it's exhausting, exhilarating, and sometimes downright scary. but it's also liberating. every time we step out into the world, we're challenging assumptions and expanding possibilities. we're living proof that gender isn't binary - it's a whole damn spectrum.

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pronouns

now, let's talk pronouns. for those who slept through grammar class (no judgment, we've all been there), pronouns are those handy little words we use instead of names. you know, "he" went to the store, "she" bought a cake, "they" devoured it whole. simple, right? for us non-binary folks, pronouns are like the spicy sauce of language - they can make or break the whole dish.

me? i use they/him pronouns interchangeably, but i prefer 'they'. it's like having a favorite child - you love them all, but one just hits different. when i introduce myself, i usually say "my pronouns are they/them" to keep it simple. but here's the kicker - despite my clear preference, most people default to 'him' anyway. it's like they hear "they/them" and their brain autocorrects to "oh, he must mean 'him'."

it's frustrating, to be honest. using someone's correct pronouns isn't rocket science, it's basic respect. yet, more often than not, it feels like people aren't even trying. it's as if the concept of 'they' as a singular pronoun short-circuits their linguistic processors.

newsflash, folks: 'they' has been used as a singular pronoun since the 14th century. shakespeare used it. jane austen used it. if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for your cousin's non-binary friend at thanksgiving dinner.

some advice

look, i get it. change can be hard. but is it really that difficult to refer to someone the way they've asked to be referred to? it shouldn't be an adventure every time someone opens their mouth to talk about me in the third person. it should just be... normal.

so next time you're not sure about someone's pronouns, just ask. trust me, we'd rather you ask than assume.

and if you forget? no biggie. just correct yourself and move on. we're not looking for perfection, just a little effort and respect.

after all, isn't that what we all want? to be seen and heard for who we really are?

growing up in puerto rico, gender roles were as rigid as the stick up your tío's ass at family gatherings. boys played with cars, girls played with dolls, and god forbid you showed any interest in crossing that line.

i remember being five years old and desperately wanting a polly pocket toy. i wanted to play with my female cousins and i wanted to set up a family with two dads in the game. but that was too much for people.

fast forward to now, and here i am, a 37-year-old non-binary person living my best life in san diego.

it's like i've gone from black and white kansas to technicolor oz, except instead of munchkins, we have drag queens, and instead of a yellow brick road, we have rainbow crosswalks. 🌈

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but even in this queer utopia, navigating the binary world can be... interesting. take dating apps, for example. trying to explain your gender identity in 150 characters or less is like trying to summarize "game of thrones" in a tweet.

"non-binary disaster pansexual with a penchant for dad jokes and existential crises. swipe right if you can handle my pronoun indecision and incandescent random rants."

somehow, it just doesn't quite capture the essence, you know?

but here's the thing about being non-binary – it's not just about pronouns or bathrooms or confusing the hell out of well-meaning strangers. it's about freedom. it's about looking at the boxes society tries to shove us into and saying, "nah, i'm good out here." it's about creating your own path when the existing ones don't fit.

it's also about community. finding your people when you don't fit into traditional categories can be tough, but when you do? it's magic. it's like finding a family you didn't know you had.

shoutout to all my enby siblings out there – y'all make this journey worthwhile.

now, i'm not saying it's all rainbow flags and gender euphoria. there are days when i wish i could just blend in, when constantly explaining my existence feels exhausting. there are times when i look in the mirror and think, "who the hell are you?"

but then i remember – i'm me.

i'm edgard. i'm they, he, fluidity and change personified, and that's pretty damn beautiful.

serving gender fuckery

so, to all you beautiful binary and non-binary folks out there, here's my guide to existing while genderqueer:

1. embrace the confusion. your existence is a walking, talking gender studies seminar. own it.

2. find your people. whether it's online or in person, community is key.

3. experiment with expression. clothes, hair, makeup – it's all fair game. gender is a playground, not a prison.

4. be patient with others, but not at the expense of your own wellbeing. education takes time, but your identity is not up for debate.

5. laugh. a lot. because sometimes, the absurdity of gender norms is honestly hilarious.

6. remember that you are valid, you are worthy, and you are so, so needed in this world.

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at the end of the day, being non-binary in a binary world is a wild ride. it's challenging, it's liberating, and it's absolutely necessary. we're the glitch in the matrix, the question mark in a world of periods and exclamation points.

we're the ones saying, "hey, maybe there's more to this whole gender thing than we thought."

so the next time you're not sure whether to say "sir" or "ma'am," maybe take a breath and remember – some of us are neither, some of us are both, and some of us are still figuring it out. and that's okay. more than okay. it's pretty freaking amazing.

now, if you'll excuse me, i have a pressing appointment with my closet to decide whether today is a "funky earrings and flannel" day or a "flowing skirt and combat boots" day. gender expression roulette, anyone?

stay queer, stay questioning, and for the love of all that is holy, stay hydrated.

con amor,

edgard💖✨

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hola mis amores,

the first rule of workplace crushes is simple… don't. (i’ve historically called this the “don’t shit where you eat” rule.)

the second rule? definitely don't fall for two coworkers at once.

but here you are – your bisexual heart doing gymnastics every time he walks past your desk looking like a whole snack, while she's in the break room making your coffee maker sound like a spotify lo-fi playlist. suddenly your 9-to-5 feels less like 'the office' and more like season 1 of 'the crown' where princess margaret had to choose between peter townsend and her royal duties. (except instead of the crown, it's your paycheck on the line.)

mi gente, today we're diving into what happens when your workplace becomes the backdrop for your own personal telenovela – except instead of dramatic close-ups and evil twins, you're stuck between the finance department zaddy and the marketing director of your dreams.

the spicy dilemma 🌶️

our dear reader, let's call them "bisexualhotmess," writes:

"i'm crushing on two of my coworkers. one man, one woman. i'm talking, flustered when i'm near them and when i'm their partner, i'm usually quiet bc i don't want to say anything stupid. the guy i'm really just interested in fooling around with, he gives off extreme sex appeal. the woman is someone i'd probably want to wife-up not gonna lie. though neither have shown really any remote interest in me. is it worth still asking? lol"

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oh, mi amor. your workplace really said "why choose one type of chaos when you can have both?" (and god, do i deeply relate!)

let me tell you a story about why workplace romances are messier than trying to eat a mallorca without getting powdered sugar everywhere. back in 2012, i was working at a cellphone store in grand rapids, fixing phones and running the office.

one of my coworkers had been flirting with me for weeks – you know, the type of flirting that starts with innocent coffee breaks and ends with both of you knowing exactly what's about to happen.

one night, we got scheduled to close together for the first time in forever. and well... let's just say the phone accessories section gained some interesting energy that evening.

but here's the thing nobody tells you about workplace hookups: the aftermath is worse than a caffeine crash. i spent the next two months jumping every time someone walked into the break room, terrified they somehow knew. work became this pressure cooker of secrets and side-eyes. what started as hot and exciting turned into this soul-crushing anxiety that had me updating my resume at 3 am. i ended up leaving the company because the weight of it all was too much.

so trust me when i say – i get it. i really, really get it. but also? maybe let's learn from my mistakes and not turn your workplace into a telenovela set, yeah?

the office romance reality check 📊

here's some tea that might be hard to swallow: workplace romances are complicated af. according to a 2023 survey by the society for human resource management, while 75% of workers are open to workplace romance, only 25% say they are currently open to being involved in a workplace romance themselves. why? because:

• power dynamics are messier than my abuela's junk drawer

• breakups can turn your daily grind into daily torture

• hr policies exist for a reason (and that reason is usually someone else's messy drama)

• workplace gossip spreads faster than a bad reggaeton remix

Get more from 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐚 in the Substack app

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the bisexual breakdown 💗💜💙

let's address the bi elephant in the room: crushing on multiple genders simultaneously is our superpower and our kryptonite. but here's what i'm noticing in your letter:

• with him: it's purely physical ("extreme sex appeal")

• with her: you're thinking long-term ("wife-up")

• with both: you're getting tongue-tied and flustered

this tells me you're dealing with two very different types of attraction. it's like comparing "bridgerton" to "normal people" – both are hot, but one's a steamy fantasy while the other's a deep emotional journey.

the strategic approach 🎯

before you turn your workplace into the next viral reddit post, consider these steps:

1. reality check yourself:

• are you genuinely interested or just bored at work?

• could this be a "grass is greener" situation?

• are you ready for the potential fallout?

2. assess the signals:

• have either of them shown any interest?

• is there a company policy about dating coworkers?

• could this affect your professional reputation?

3. consider the consequences:

• best case: amazing romance

• worst case: unemployment + heartbreak

• most likely case: awkward elevator rides until one of you quits

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the verdict 🔨

is it worth asking? mi amor, let me be real with you.

if it's just physical attraction, keep it in your spank bank. workplace hookups are like microwaving fish in the break room – someone's gonna get hurt and everyone's gonna talk about it.

if neither has shown interest, start with friendship. build a connection. see if there's reciprocity before you risk turning your workplace into a bisexual soap opera.

your workplace is your income source first, potential dating pool second. don't shit where you eat unless you're prepared to clean up the mess.

survival strategies 🛠️

if you decide to proceed anyway (because let's be real, sometimes the heart wants what it wants), here are some ground rules:

• establish clear boundaries from the start

• keep it professional at work

• have an exit strategy (both romantic and professional)

• document everything (in case things go south)

• consider looking for a new job before making any moves (just in case)

in case you do decide to go this route, i have some reading from you from that you would/should probably check out:

Banana Delivery

Why You Need To Fuck Your Boss

Two days ago, in the middle of the night, I watched a movie I never heard of, Secretary, staring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. I went into this blindly like I do most of my life lol. I didn’t watch the trailer or read reviews, I pressed play and made sure my phone was on do not disturb. The best movies you watch are nor…

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2 years ago · 41 likes · 15 comments · Corey Banana

Banana Delivery

Why You Need to Fuck Your Boss Pt 2

If you don’t have thick skin and a brain that works, please leave my substack. I am creating a family here and this is a safe place for my substack cousins (that’s the name I gave y’all lmfao) If you are new here, I ask that you put your emotions aside and increase the logic God gave you. Sometimes I won’t break a sc…

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2 years ago · 199 likes · 43 comments · Corey Banana

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖✊🏽🌈

edgard

p.s. if all else fails, maybe consider joining a gay sports league or downloading hinge? sometimes the best workplace romance is the one that never happens.

p.p.s. and remember what my abuela always says: "mejor sola que mal acompañada" (better alone than in bad company) – especially when bad company can affect your paycheck!

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hey bellezas!

i've been sitting here in my parent’s living room in michigan, wrapped in a blanket my mom crocheted years ago, trying to find the words for something that's been keeping me up at night. (and no, it's not just my dad's legendary snoring echoing through these thin walls.)

we need to talk about substack, community, and what happens when your digital home starts feeling less like home.

here's the thing - i disappeared for a while. finals, work, life... the usual suspects. but something else has been gnawing at me, something that makes writer's block look like a minor inconvenience.

substack recently partnered with "the free press" - bari weiss's publication that's about as "free" as those trial subscriptions that mysteriously charge your credit card after three days. it's a right-wing outlet masquerading as "independent journalism," packaging conservative talking points in a wrapper of intellectual aesthetics.

but that's just where the trouble starts.

scrolling through this platform lately feels like walking through a funhouse mirror version of what we thought this space could be.

i've seen posts promoting eating disorders getting amplified. content advocating harmful ideologies slipping through the cracks. men unrepentantly advocating for pedophilia. and the moment - the very moment - someone sees my they/them pronouns on my profile? ay dios mío, my notifications turn into a masterclass in missing the point.

it's like showing up to what you thought was a community potluck and realizing some folks brought poison to the table.

this matters because spaces matter. platforms matter. the choices these companies make about who they amplify, who they partner with, what they moderate - it all matters. we're not just talking about algorithmic choices or business decisions. we're talking about the shape of our public discourse, about who gets to feel safe in digital spaces, about what stories get told and how.

i keep thinking about something my abuela used to say about choosing your battles: "a veces el silencio es complicidad" - sometimes silence is complicity.

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so here we are, at a crossroads. do i stay and resist? create counter-narratives in spaces that seem increasingly hostile to my existence? or do i pack up my digital casita and move somewhere else? (spoiler alert: there might not be a perfect platform out there, but maybe perfect isn't what we're looking for.)

what i know is this: community isn't about the platform - it's about the people. it's about you reading this right now. it's about the conversations we have, the stories we share, the space we create together.

i don't have all the answers yet. but i'm thinking deeply about where to go from here, and i want you to be part of that conversation.

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖

edgard ✊🏽🌈

Refer a friend

p.s. to my san diego people - miss you all! can't wait to be back in hillcrest on january 3rd. keep the city weird for me. 🌴

p.p.s. if you have thoughts about potential new platforms or what you value most about this community, drop them in the comments. your insight matters more than you know. ✨

p.p.p.s. and to those who came here just to hate - i have another saying: "el león no se preocupa por la opinión de las ovejas." look it up. 😘

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hey mi gente!

somewhere between submitting my final paper and boarding my flight to grand rapids, i realized that endings rarely announce themselves. endings tend to sneak up on you disguised as ordinary moments, like the click of a submit button or the jingle of storage unit keys.

but let me back up for a sec.

it's been a minute since i've written here - not because i haven't wanted to, but because sometimes silence is a symptom of something deeper. between school finals turning my brain into puré de papa and life commitments that feel like they're multiplying faster than my tía's chismes, i've found myself caught in a strange creative paralysis.

the semester that almost broke me (but didn't)

remember that feeling of running behind a train, desperately trying to grab the caboose? that was me this entire semester - caffeine in one hand, anxiety in the other, somehow managing to pull off a 4.0 GPA. ¿cómo lo hice? honestly, i'm still trying to figure that out. turns out desperation is one hell of a motivator (please don't try this at home, te lo suplico).

my last submission for the semester happened last week, i turned in a five-page organized rant about how the gop uses color-blind racism to advance their political messaging. fueled by way too much cafecito and deep dives into eduardo silva-bonilla and táíwò's "elite capture" plus omi & winant's "racial formation in the united states." got a 100% on it! (attached below if you want to see your boy in full academic mode).

Edgard Portela Paper Color Blind Racism

191KB ∙ PDF file

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not to be left behind, work's been its own kind of chaos - the type where you find your phone in the fridge and your coffee in your bedroom. así de mal, fam. work decided to throw in some spicy end-of-year drama (because why not?), and just when i'd catch my breath thinking "okay, i got this," midterms would pop up like an unexpected 'we need to talk' text. then finals hit me like a caffeinated freight train.

somehow i've been:

• working full time (screaming internally)

• maintaining my fitness (mostly… ish?)

• showing up for kiwanis (sometimes late, but present!)

• writing an album (in theory)

• passing my classes (actually though!)

bendito, looking at this list now, i'm either incredibly resilient or absolutely unhinged. maybe both? probably both.

winter in michigan: a cold reality check

now i'm back in grand rapids, where the winter air doesn't just chill - it judges. three years of san diego living has turned my blood into horchata, and my midwest winter survival skills have apparently expired. 🥶

but the cold isn't what scares me.

there's a storage unit on the outskirts of town that's been holding my breath for three years. inside those walls sits the carefully packed remains of my washington, dc life - the one where i thought i knew what "forever" meant.

funny how we pack away heartbreak, isn't it? like if we wrap it carefully enough in bubble wrap and packing tape, maybe it won't break further.

mine has been sitting there since 2021, when i fled to san diego with my entire life fitting in three suitcases and a u-haul truck. I left behind eight years of "us" and a future i thought was set in stone. a future i thought i wanted.

inside that unit wait things like photo albums from when happiness felt permanent. the kitchen gadgets we bought planning dinners together. birthday cards signed with promises that had expiration dates we couldn't see. and… the coffee maker that brewed our last cup together.

the price of keeping ghosts

for three years, i've been paying monthly fees to keep these ghosts locked away, as if i could somehow preserve the good parts and keep the painful ones from seeping out.

but here's what palm trees and pacific sunsets have taught me: sometimes the heaviest things we carry are the ones we can't see, and sometimes letting go requires actually letting go - not just changing time zones.

next week monday, i'll open that metal door one last time.

i started this process with my dad - he picked me up in dc and drove us in the u-haul from dc to michigan. and now i’m going to end it with him too, he’ll be helping me clear shit out. it feels very much full circle, a closure, a… complete end to the story.

this is not about the monthly payments anymore (though mi cartera will certainly appreciate the break). it's about finally accepting that chapters end, that objects are just objects, and that keeping them won't keep the good parts alive any more than letting them go will erase that they happened.

what we keep, what we set free

we all have our own versions of these metal boxes. the storage units of our lives, so to speak, an attic of oblivion.

some of us pay monthly fees to climate-controlled facilities. others keep their boxes locked away in closets, in dresser drawers, in carefully-avoided folders on our phones. in spotify playlists we can't delete but never play. in routes we take to avoid certain streets, certain cafes, certain memories.

maybe true growth isn't about learning to live with our ghosts - it's about learning when to set them free. it’s about knowing when to look at the physical remnants of a past life and say: "te agradezco todo lo que me enseñaste, pero ya no te necesito." thank you for everything you taught me, but i don't need you anymore.

next week monday, i'll open that metal door one last time. i'll probably cry. i'll definitely laugh at how young we were, how certain we were, how beautifully naive we were about forever. i'll touch each item one last time - not to remember, but to release. not to regret, but to recognize how far i've come.

because this isn't just a storage unit anymore - it's the last page of a chapter i've been too scared to finish reading. and next week, finally, i close the book. not because the story wasn't beautiful, but because new stories are waiting to be written and… well, i’m a writer. i need to get to work.

tell me, mi gente: what are you holding onto that's really holding onto you? what beautiful ending are you avoiding because you're afraid it might hurt? what would freedom feel like if you finally let go?

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maybe we can't all drive to michigan and empty out our storage units together. but we can share our stories. we can witness each other's courage. we can remind each other that sometimes the heaviest doors lead to the lightest feelings.

let's be brave together. not because it's easy, but because we deserve the space that opens up when we finally let go.

your turn, belleza. 💖

edgard ✊🏽🌈

p.s. if you see me ugly-crying in the storage facility parking lot on monday, no you did not! pas du tout!

p.p.s. and if you see me stress-buying comfort food at meijer after, also - mind your fucking business, hahaha.

hola mis amores,

"we tell ourselves stories in order to live," joan didion once wrote.

as i sit in my favorite university heights café, good omen coffee, watching the kaleidoscope of humanity swirl around me, i can't help but reflect on the narratives i've spun for myself over the years - the tales that have molded my worldview, my values, and my very sense of self.

what is my personal philosophy? coño, that's a question big enough to choke on. but maybe, by poking at it together, we can unearth some universal truths about what it means to be human in this messy, terrifying, exhilarating world of ours.

the interconnectedness of all things

let's kick things off with a fundamental belief i hold dear: we're all tangled up in each other's business, whether we like it or not.

this isn't some woo-woo nonsense pulled from the bottom of a crystal shop clearance bin (though i've certainly had my phases out here in california, don't get me wrong). it's a gut-deep understanding that our actions send out ripples we can't always track or predict.

i first caught a whiff of this truth as a young pathfinder (think of a boy scout) in the central hispanic seventh day adventist church on burton street in grand rapids, michigan.

we were drilled to "leave a place better than we found it," a simple idea that's burrowed its way into the core of how i move through the world. the pathfinder law told us to "do my honest part" and "go on god's errands." while i've ditched the religious wrapping, the chewy center of these teachings still sticks to my ribs: we've got a job to do in making this world a bit less of a dumpster fire.

radical empathy: seeing through others' eyes

this sense of being all mixed up together feeds into another big piece of my philosophy: radical empathy.

by "radical," i don't mean extreme. i mean getting down to the roots (radix in latin) of our shared human mess. it's about constantly pushing ourselves to see the world through others' smudged glasses, to seek understanding even—especially—when it feels like pulling teeth.

this isn't a cakewalk, mi gente. believe me, i know. as a queer, non-binary, pansexual puerto rican trying to make sense of life in the united states, i've had my fair share of people looking at me like i'm a math problem they can't solve. but i've found that approaching even those who side-eye me with genuine curiosity and a dash of compassion often leads to surprising breakthroughs.

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the art of self care & boundaries

now, don't get it twisted. radical empathy doesn't mean letting people use you as a doormat. which brings us to another crucial bit of my life philosophy: boundaries and self-care are non-negotiable.

for years, i thought being a good person meant always putting others first, sacrificing my needs on the altar of the greater good. but you know what? that's a one-way ticket to burnout city, and let me tell you, the tourism board there sucks! i've learned—often by face-planting spectacularly—that you can't pour from an empty cup. taking care of yourself isn't selfish; it's the oxygen mask you need to put on before you can help anyone else.

the pathfinder law yammered on about "caring for my body" and "keeping a song in my heart." while i no longer buy that these commands come from some cosmic sky daddy, i've come to appreciate their practical wisdom.

self-care, joy, and resilience aren't luxuries; they're the bare-bones toolkit for not losing your mind in this chaos we call life.

it's funny how the seeds planted in those formative years can grow into sturdy trees of understanding, even as our beliefs evolve. the pathfinders may not have known they were schooling us in philosophy, but here i are, unpacking those lessons years later with you.

navigating morality without a divine compass

now, let's wade into the murky waters of morality and ethics. how do we sort the "good" from the "bad" in a world without a divine rulebook?

for me, it boils down to a simple question: are we making things suck less? actions that dial down the suffering and crank up the flourishing for the most beings possible (human and non-human) fall into the "good" category. those that cause unnecessary harm or throw wrenches into the gears of thriving? that's where we plant our "bad" flag.

applying this principle is about as straightforward as nailing jelly to a wall. life is a constant juggling act of competing needs, unintended consequences, and tough calls.

that's why i believe in embracing the gray areas, in constantly poking holes in our own assumptions, and in being willing to pull a u-turn when new information comes screeching around the corner.

and i think on this one i get to name myself as someone who can speak on the matter.

this tightrope became very real for me during my journey from card-carrying republican to proud progressive. it wasn't just about “switching teams”; it was a fundamental realignment of my values and worldview.

as i came to terms with my true self, i came fully into being. i embraced my full, queer identity. this was when i found myself questioning beliefs i'd held for years.

but the real catalyst? the man i loved for nearly eight years. through him, i learned to see the world through different eyes, to question my assumptions, and to embrace the grey areas of life.

let me share with you two pictures to illustrate:

on the left, a fresh-faced republican ready to change the world. on the right, the same smile but with eyes yet to be opened.

little did i know, my biggest change would come from within.

life has a funny way of redrawing your map when you least expect it. these photos aren't just memories; they're mile markers on a journey of self-discovery, love, and the courage to change.

quien lo diría - sometimes the longest distance isn't between two parties, but between who you were and who you're becoming. 🗳️💖

as i gained new information, i chose to change my mind, even when it was tough. it was like building a bridge while walking on it, each step a mix of terror and exhilaration. in the end, this journey taught me that growth often means making imperfect choices, pushing forward while committing to keep learning and fighting for what's right. it wasn't a clear-cut path, but it was a crucial step forward in a world that rarely offers simple solutions.

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creating meaning in a purposeless universe

this brings us to the head-scratcher of purpose. what's the point of this whole circus if there's no cosmic ringmaster, no divine scorekeeper?

here's what i've cobbled together: meaning isn't something we stumble upon like loose change on the sidewalk. it's something we forge in the fires of our choices, our relationships, our creative flailing. it's not about uncovering some pre-existing cosmic to-do list; it's about writing our own story that adds a spark of light to this often-dim world.

for me, success isn't about how much cash i can stuff under my mattress or how many instagram followers i can amass. it's about living with my cards on the table, cultivating connections deep enough to drown in, and leaving a trail of tiny improvements in my wake. it's about never stopping the awkward dance of growth, learning, and facing life's curveballs with my chin up and my heart cracked open.

grappling with godlessness: terror & freedom

as someone who's agnostic on my best days and atheist on my worst, how do i make sense of existence without a cosmic parent figure?

honestly, it's a mix of pants-wetting terror and fist-pumping freedom. terrifying because we're faced with the vastness of a universe that doesn't give a flying fig about our existence. liberating because it means we're the authors of our own story, fully responsible for our choices and the mess they sometimes make.

the absence of a divine plan doesn't make life a pointless game of cosmic pinball; it makes our actions the only points on the scoreboard. in a universe without predetermined purpose, every act of kindness, every pursuit of knowledge, every moment of genuine connection becomes a middle finger raised to the void, a declaration that we were here and we mattered.

Get more from 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐚 (they/him) in the Substack app

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building a better world, one action at a time

this perspective colors how i think we should treat each other. if this life is the only rodeo we get, if there's no cosmic justice waiting in the wings, then it's on us to create a world that's not entirely made of sharp edges and broken glass.

it means rolling up our sleeves and getting to work against systemic oppression, turning up the volume on voices that usually get drowned out, and building a society where everyone gets a fair shot at this whole "thriving" business. but it also means approaching this work with the humility to know we're all stumbling around in the dark, capable of both breathtaking kindness and spectacular screw-ups.

i don't have time for purity tests or cancel culture. my philosophy embraces the fact that we're all works in progress, walking disasters capable of beautiful transformations. justice, to me, isn't about punishment or settling scores. it's about fixing what's broken, learning from our face-plants, and creating systems that lift us instead of grinding us down.

embracing uncertainty & change

and speaking of life's tendency to go off the rails, let's talk about embracing uncertainty. because if there's one thing i've learned, it's that even our best-laid plans often end up looking like a toddler's crayon scribbles.

my philosophy involves cultivating a kind of bendiness in the face of life's storms. it's about setting intentions and working towards goals, sure. but it's also about being ready to improvise when life rewrites the script, finding the hidden doors in our setbacks, and trusting that we can figure things out as we go.

i often think about how my younger self would have reacted to the idea of being out, proud, and living my truth in san diego. what would edgard chiquito say? it would have seemed as likely as sprouting wings and flying to the moon. but by staying open to change, by listening to the persistent whisper of my authentic self, i stumbled into a life more vivid and fulfilling than anything i could have sketched out in advance.

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a philosophy for living: my eight guiding principles

so where does all this rambling leave us? with a philosophy that's less about carving commandments in stone and more about scribbling guidelines in the margins:

1. remember we're all in this mess together; try to leave things a little better than you found them

2. practice seeing the world through others' eyes, but don't let people walk all over you

3. create your own meaning; it's the only game in town

4. work towards a world with less suffering and more flourishing, but embrace the complexity

5. be ready to dance when life changes the music

6. live with your true colors flying, and help others do the same

7. stay curious about life's big questions; certainty is overrated

8. find moments of awe in this weird, wild world and the potential of human connection

it's a philosophy that nods to life's chaos, that leaves room for growth and change, that tries to balance taking care of our own stuff with giving a damn about the bigger picture.

is it perfect? hell no. am i always able to live up to these ideals? también no. but that's the whole point. this philosophy isn't a finish line; it's the stumbling, laughing, sometimes-crying journey itself. it's a constant process of learning, adjusting, falling on our faces, and getting back up with grass stains on our knees and new ideas in our heads.

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so, mi amor, i invite you to poke at your own personal philosophy. what stories are you telling yourself? what north stars guide your wandering? how are you making sense of this wild, glitching simulation we call life?

because here's the thing: in a universe that often seems as random as a game of cosmic pinball, our personal philosophies are acts of rebellion. they're how we find patterns in the static, purpose in the daily grind, and connections that make us feel less alone in the vastness.

we may not have all the answers, but in the asking, in the endless wrestling match with life's big questions, we stumble upon what it means to be human. and that, to me, is a magic trick worth learning.

you know, this was a great exercise in really thinking through what i believe. what do you say i come back and keep letting you know what life is teaching me on this once in a while, eh? share your insights with me too - i want to learn.

hasta la próxima, mi gente.

con todo mi amor y un poquito de locura,

edgard 🌈✊🏽💖

p.s. if this resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself! sharing is caring, and also good karma. who knows, you might save someone from a dreary afternoon of existential dread.

p.p.s. leave a comment! tell me about your own life philosophy. or your favorite type of cheese. or that weird dream you had last night. i'm not picky, i just like hearing from you.

p.p.p.s. if you made it this far, congratulations! you've just read the equivalent of a small novella. treat yourself to a cookie. you've earned it.

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hey mi gente!

i got some exciting updates about the album that have me bouncing off the walls like a kid who's had too many malta indias!

first up – drumroll please – i'm thrilled to announce that i'm collaborating with the ridiculously talented ru ramo as co-writer and producer! if you don't know ru yet, trust me, you will. her production style is exactly what these songs need and our creative chemistry is chef's kiss.

even better? i've secured some seed funding! 🌱 this means i can actually do this thing properly – better recording equipment, proper studio time, and maybe even some fancy water instead of my usual tap water and coffee diet during sessions!

speaking of the album, "to build and defend my happiness," let's talk about what's brewing for the album cover. y'all know i love making people slightly uncomfortable (in a good way, i promise).

remember that iconic willie colón and héctor lavoe album "lo mato"? the one where they're spoofing that national lampoon magazine cover with the gun pointed at the dog? ("buy this magazine or we'll kill this dog" – the audacity! 😂) well, willie and héctor took it to another level with "lo mato si no compras este LP" (i'll kill him if you don't buy this LP).

here's where it gets interesting – and a little twisted, not gonna lie. what if, for my album cover, i was both the person holding the gun AND the person at gunpoint?

because let's be real: who's my biggest enemy in defending my happiness? looks in mirror oh... right. it's the bitch writing this post.

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it's the part of me that:

• falls into the same toxic patterns

• people-pleases until i disappear

• mistakes emotional manipulation for love

• puts myself at other people's feet hoping they'll pick me up

want to be part of this journey? your monthly or yearly subscriptions directly fuel the development of this album. think of it as being part of the "to build and defend my happiness" street team! plus, subscribers get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, demos, and maybe even some embarrassing studio outtakes (no promises on the last one – i have a reputation to maintain! 😂).

Get more from 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐚 (they/him) in the Substack app

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october 2025 might seem far away, but trust me, we've got so much to share between now and then. stick around, this is going to be one hell of a ride.

what do you think about the album cover concept? too intense? just intense enough? drop your thoughts in the comments – especially if you've ever been your own worst enemy. (and if you haven't, please share your secrets!)

hasta la próxima, mis amores! 💖

edgard✊🏽🌈

p.s. don't worry, no edgards were harmed in the ideation of this album cover. yet. 😉

p.p.s. serious talk though – your support through subscriptions means the world to me. it's literally helping build this album from the ground up. gracias por todo. 🙏🏽

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hi bellezas,

over the last 37 years of my life i have been through quite a bit of therapy. during these endless sessions of talk and analysis, i discovered that i believed that life was something that happened to me.

i thought life was a series of events, good and bad, that i was meant to weather like a lone tree in a storm. bent, but never broken. resilient, they'd say. but resilience is exhausting when it's your only mode of existence.

it wasn't until i found myself standing in the middle of my first empty san diego apartment in october 2021, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and the echoes of a life left behind, that i realized something profound: i had chosen this.

just months earlier, i was living in washington, dc, in an eight-year relationship with someone i still love to this day. but in the latter years, i descended into a dark night of the soul, shrinking and hiding in plain sight. i didn't feel like myself for a long time.

the pandemic had a way of bringing issues to the surface, especially when cooped up in our apartment. during this time, i attempted suicide and no one knew until i revealed it years later. what started as a chasm turned into an abyss that swallowed everything. i left my boyfriend and dc behind in 2021 in what was my own independence day on july 4th.

every decision, every step that led me from the familiar streets of dc to the sun-kissed shores of california, was mine. the realization hit me like a wave, both terrifying and exhilarating. i wasn't a leaf in the wind; i was the wind itself.

we often underestimate the power of our choices. we like to focus on big, life-altering decisions like moving across the country, ending a relationship, or changing careers. i know i tend to focus on those big events or actions that cause the most impact. certainly, these have the chance to make or break me. yet, i keep finding the older i get that it is the small, daily decisions — the ones that seem almost inconsequential — that truly shape our lives over time.

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antoine de saint-exupéry, a revered french author, poignantly captures this concept when he says:

"what saves a man is to take a step. then another step. it is always the same step, but you have to take it."

this idea tells us that we need to recognize the significance of each action we take, no matter how minor it may appear to us.

every choice, every step, contributes incrementally to our journey. honestly when i realize this, it’s immensely intimidating. it really places things into perspective and gets my ass into gear. with every step, i see it’s not just about reaching the destination but the work and transformation that happens on the way. if you really think about this, this simply means that what you do and what you think has great impact. everything suddenly gains new meaning and purpose.

the decision to smile at a stranger, to speak up in a meeting, to write that first sentence of a long-dreamed-of novel. these aren't just actions, they're assertions of our will upon the world. they're us, painting our existence stroke by stroke, choice by choice.

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but with this power comes a weight. if we are the architects of our lives, then we must also bear the responsibility of our creations. it's easier, sometimes, to believe that we're powerless. to say "it is what it is" and shrug off the burden of choice.

yet in doing so, we deny ourselves the very thing that makes us human: the ability to change, to grow, to become.

i look around my current apartment now, no longer empty, but filled with the trappings of a life i've built. i built this. each object i have in my room is an intention, a testament to a choice made, a path taken. the puerto rican flag hanging proudly on my wall, with the pride colors intertwined - a visual representation of the person i've chosen to embrace and be.

we are not leaves in the wind, nor are we immovable mountains. we are rivers, carving our paths through the landscape of existence. sometimes we flow around obstacles, sometimes we wear them down, but always, always, we are moving forward of our own volition.

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so the next time you feel powerless, remember this: you have more agency than you know. every word you speak, every action you take, is a choice. and those choices, however small they may seem, have the power to change your world.

embrace your agency. wield it wisely. and watch as the world bends to the force of your will, one choice at a time.

because, mi gente, we are not just characters in the story of our lives! we are the authors, the narrators, the protagonists. and it's high time we picked up the pen and wrote the chapters we've always dreamed of.

so, what will your next sentence be? let me know in the comments below what you think, feel… what has this stirred in your soul?

cuidate,

edgard 💝