Protecting Your Energy: Notes from a First-Generation Latina 

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Since I was a kid, people have told me I overthink. They’ve said I’m in my head too much, as if there is a proper amount. As an adult, a dear friend suggested that I didn’t need to smoke weed; I was already meta.  I bring this up because the go-to response for creatives like me (a poet, mostly) experiencing PTSD and other trauma responses from watching active ICE raids on the internet has been to protect our energy. Protect your energy, they say. Get off of social media, they say. Maybe, don’t watch crime shows, they say. While these aren’t ill-intended pieces of advice, I’ve been exploring what it means to be someone who turns inward for answers when the outside world is scarier by the minute.

What kind of poem would suffice in a time like now? What can a creative community do right now?

Protecting Your Space: Notes from a First-Generation Latina
Protecting Your Energy: Notes from a First-Generation Latina

When my friend referred to me as meta, I liked the term. It sounded like a clean way to describe someone who self-evaluates. However, according to Google, the word has several definitions.

META:

Adjective (*my personal favorite*)

meta (adjective)

  1. (of a creative work) referring to itself or the conventions of its genre; self-referential:
  2. “The enterprise is inherent “meta” since it doesn’t review movies; for example, it reviews the reviewers who review movies.

My therapist used to say, “It is okay to have strong feelings; try not to dwell on your feelings about those feelings.” I appreciate this nugget from my therapist and often remind myself of it. Likewise, in Joseph Nguyen’s book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, Why Your Thinking is the Beginning & End of Suffering, Nguyen says that while we can’t control our thoughts, we can control what we think about those thoughts. It’s the thinking that is the problem, not the thought. When I read this, I laughed out loud. What does that even mean? What does it mean to have to police your inner dialogue? If this idea sounds familiar, that’s because it’s described in The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, from 2006, a self-help genre I explored when I first started seeing a therapist. Nguyen, Bryne, and my therapist reiterate the idea that our response to suffering is only a reflection of an understanding of our inner world. They say that for those of us who think too much, our battle is with overthinking and not, let’s say, reality

When the world falls apart in reality, is the question we should be asking ourselves, “Is the only thing that I can control the extent to which I will allow this to affect me?” My natural response to that question is another question: What happens to our society if we all respond this way?

I’m interpreting the following Google definitions of meta as next steps for those (like me) who overthink. 

META:

combiningform (also from a google search*)

  • denoting a change of position or condition:

“metamorphosis” · “metathesis”

  • denoting position behind, after, or beyond:

“metacarpus”

  • denoting something of a higher or second-order kind:

“metalanguage” · “metonym”

When I started writing poetry in second grade, I was in process. I didn’t know how to express my emotions in grammatical English, and my Spanish felt imperfect. Poetry was my avenue to write a line, incomplete as it was, and express something that my soul was feeling. Even then, I knew I was processing. Since then, I’ve found peace in the creative communities and spaces I’ve been in where other overthinking thinkers find solace in processing emotions. For those of us who find a certain something in the metalanguage of a poem, I can say, I see you.

What kind of poem would suffice in time like now? What kind of answers can I find in creativity when shutting off the world is self-preservation and diving into activism and politics feels toxic?  For a metacarpus understanding… can I turn to science?

Meta:

combiningform

chemistry

  • denoting a compound formed by dehydration:

“metaphosphoric acid”

In a further definition, metaphosphoric acid is a colorless, vitreous, deliquescent solid that sublimes upon heating. (yep, also google)

I’m no scientist, but I know what it feels like when my emotions sublimate upon heating. I know what it feels like to live within a terrorized community. I know that many marginalized community members experience complex post-traumatic stress disorder from staying in fight-or-flight– from needing to stay vigilant for an entire childhood or lifespan. Is our understanding of what we should be doing next, in-and-of-itself in need of a metamorphosis? In other words, I don’t feel comfortable sticking my head in the sand, and there must be something I can do to help while protecting my energy. Can metamorphosis exist while protecting our social-emotional safety?

Awards Night: Tennyson High School RSS Recipients RSS 2024
Awards Night: Tennyson High School, The Rosales Sisters’ Scholarship Award Recipients 2024

While in community with a friend, she said, “Let’s just work on our piece of the nightmare.” That felt like an actionable step. In the past five years, my actionable step has been helping first-generation and immigrant students get to college with unrestricted scholarships. Now that we face an administration dead-set on rolling back any progress we’ve made toward equity, the only thing I can think of doing is focusing on my little piece of the nightmare. Limiting social media, crime shows, and click-bait are all essential steps to staying centered right now. I’m suggesting that we not forget to work on our little piece of the nightmare. If there is a cause you were fighting for or even lightweight supporting before this administration, now is the time to double down. Contribute anything you have to give: time, resources, social capital, or otherwise. If you know someone in the trenches, an ally with the bandwidth and privilege to go all-in, support them. Ask what they need and provide it. 

The fact is, I overthink, dwell, and ruminate. I also care deeply and creatively, and I strive to be a community member who contributes and supports other community members. Imperfect? Yes. Trying? Yes. Trying imperfectly? Absolutely. Lastly, while we must protect our inner worlds, we must also protect each other. That’s what community is, after all. For me, that’s the alpha of any metamorphosis and any revolution: community. 

 

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