We Can’t Be Friends Anymore
I love New York City and all, but the hustle and bustle of my daily routine has really been getting to me lately. A lot of Mexicans talk about the American dream but for me, all I dream about is being in Mexico. I don’t know if I would feel the same if I didn’t have my citizenship and ability to freely come and go from the States as I please, but at least this is is what I’ve been feeling for some time now.
I moved to Kentucky, of all places when I was 7. My mom was transferred from a company in Ciudad Juárez, where we lived, to Louisville, Kentucky. It was supposed to be for 6 months but she obviously crushed it and was asked to stay permanently. This is how we got our citizenship — it started as a work visa and thankfully, we lived in a simpler time, where the citizenships weren’t as difficult to get. Kentucky will always hold a special place in my heart but by no means does it feel like home to me in the slightest. I also have realized that I hold a lot of resentment towards Kentucky for some of the ideologies it taught me when I was young and impressionable. While I was never, to my knowledge, bullied for being Mexican, it was never something I felt like I should brag about or be proud of.
When I moved to more liberal places like Chicago and New York City, I began to feel immense pride for being Mexican. When I was younger, I felt frustrated and even weird that I spoke a different language at home than I did at school. But when I went to school in Chicago, it was like a super power. My entire tennis team was made up of people from all over the world, a lot from Spanish speaking countries. For those that weren’t, we always loved comparing our cultures and finding similarities even though we didn’t speak the same language. Before I went to college, I did spend a large chunk of each year in Mexico but I would always feel so insecure about my Spanish because I didn’t practice it as much. I started speaking English mostly and Spanglish became my main language. When I would go to Mexico, my friends noticed that my accent started to change. It didn’t sound Mexican anymore and they would tell me that I sounded like the Google translate voice or like a gringa. I laughed at their jokes but their words hurt me, probably more than they ever knew.
I was hurt that my Spanish had changed due to circumstances that were just not in my control. I had to speak Spanish in the States and I didn’t have many people to practice with. This is when I started to lean into listening to music in Spanish. First of all, the beats of the songs were so different than anything I heard in the States because Latin music didn’t have its boom there until I was older. Secondly, I would look up the lyrics and learn the words and look up any words that I hadn’t heard of or that sounded interesting. I learned a lot of Mexican slang this way and later, when I had my college friends, we would learn each other’s slangs. We often joked that our Spanish was so unique because we had Mexican, Colombian, Spanish and Ecuadorian words in our vocabularies, but it was beautiful. I think that’s where I fell in love with diversity. This also was a moment when I realized that I was not very open to diversity before and that I had to change my way of thinking. This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever thought or said but I used to think that people were only gay for attention and that being “born this way” was not possible. Sadly, a lot of people where I grew up thought this way and when I was young, I didn’t know enough about that topic, nor was I even aware of how problematic that type of thinking was. Chicago and New York changed me a lot in so many ways but being more accepting and open to different ways of living and thinking has got to be one of the best things these places have given me. I’m still not perfect and will never be but I’m proud of the progress that I’ve made.
I was having a conversation with a colleague a couple of weeks ago and the Latinos have a way of finding each other. We may not know each other that well but we feel a sense of protection towards each other. I met with this person and we connected on being Latinos in our company, in our country, etc. They were born in the States but their family was from South America, while I was born in Mexico but spent most of my life in the United States. We talked about how our stories didn’t make us more or less Latino than the other, but also shared how similar our upbringings were. We laughed out how sometimes we don’t know how to say Spanish words when we’re speaking English and often we just say it in the American way to make it easier but that we really should just say it how it is.
Speaking to my colleague made me really happy because that was one more person in my Latino tribe at the office but it also made me really sad because there are such few of us. How do we change that? We attend a lot of diversity events and they all say to hire diverse talent. It’s difficult though because when I was a hiring manager, I didn’t necessarily look for a “diverse” candidate or someone “like me”, I just looked for someone that was capable of doing the job I was trying to fill. But we’re not at a place where we can assume that everyone is doing that. There are a lot of unconscious biases that are so deeply engrained in us that it’s hard to break away from that. I struggle with what to do or how to do it because as an officer of my firm (meaning vice President or higher), I feel a sense of responsibility to help be the change that I’m looking for. I hope that one day, I’m not the only Latina in the room or that we don’t have to teach people to overlook their biases. Sometimes I wonder if we should just pretend like nothing is wrong and start from scratch and just treat everyone equally moving forward but that’s not feasible or realistic. I always go back to the Black Lives Matter movement and think about how powerful it was and still is. The main thing that people would say was that all lives matter but that wasn’t the point. Saying BLM, did not mean other lives didn’t matter. But black lives were very clearly under attack and still are. Saying one thing matters shouldn’t threaten the others. Sometimes one group needs a little more attention and protection than the others at different points in time. But it does not mean that they are worth any more or less than the others.
I don’t really like to get political on here but I often touch on heavy topics because they weigh so heavily on me. I try to take each of these types of tragedies or events as opportunities to learn. I am not black but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t care about the BLM movement. Just how men aren’t excluded from the Me Too movement just because they are men. I have found that if you are in a position where you have a voice and the power to be heard, you should use it, even if it is not directly to your benefit.
Back to feeling a sense of responsibility to do something about having more Latinos in the workplace, I try to leverage what I said in the previous paragraphs.
If I can speak up for someone or on behalf of someone when they can’t or aren’t in the room, I should and I will.
I’m busy but I make a huge effort to prioritize time to network with others and not just Latinos but all kinds of people and at varying levels of their organizations. I learn from their struggles and they learn from mine.
I’m peoples biggest cheerleaders. Sometimes it just feels good to hear that you’re doing a good job. Some people need it more than others but just because you don’t need it, doesn’t mean that others don’t. I celebrate everything and I like to make people feel special. It’s the little things that matter.
Those three things aren’t going to change the way our culture’s been for hundreds of thousands of years but it’s my small contribution to the problem. I also think that the way we can contribute will and should change over time. As people move up, their words and actions cary more weight with others and it’s important to recognize that. I also think that our society changes so much and now we’re getting people that moved to the states to flee tumultuous situations in their home countries, we have people that are the first person in their family to go to college, or even people that were born in the States but equally identify with their home countries. It’s not all black or white, right or wrong and I think we try to approach everything with a one size fits all solution because honestly, that’s just easier. But each person has their own story and unique situation that requires different things.
This post went a completely different direction than I planned but I’m not mad about it. This is a topic that has been on my mind a lot and I haven’t really found the words to express how I feel about it. But let me see if I can connected to what I actually wanted to talk about.
I’m on my flight back to New York from Mexico after having been there for a little over two weeks. I feel so at home there and I don’t even live in my childhood home anymore. Usually I have to get an Airbnb or stay at a friends house but somehow, that still feels like home. I was in a couple of different cities and I was so amazed by how hardworking and resilient people were. It made me realize how privileged I really am. My people wake up at the crack of dawn to travel by bus or by foot to get to work in varying conditions. The people around Cancun were working all day in the scorching heat, while the people in Puebla have been dealing with the ash and difficult breathing conditions from the volcano near by. I literally take a $50+ Uber then it rains because I don’t like to carry umbrellas after they get wet. Like, what? Marnie are you ok? That is wild.
Seeing my people made me realize that I need to snap out of it and get my shit together! I say that jokingly and not jokingly. I always say I have impostor syndrome in regards to being Mexican, having lived more than half of my life outside of Mexico. But I can’t realistically say I’m Mexican in good faith with that kind of attitude. Even my friends who do really well for themselves in Mexico, they are so fucking hardworking. Having spent the past week with one of them and seeing how they bust their ass to keep what they worked for was really humbling and also really inspiring. The way they balanced running their company and making time for family as well as dedicating time for their physical health was like watching a superhero for me. Not to mention that they had the added burden of taking care of me while I was there. Because I don’t have a house there anymore, I also don’t have a car, so they provided their home and their employees and their own time to make sure I was comfortable and able to do everything that I needed and wanted to do. Some people are just fucking amazing.
This, now finally leads me to what I actually planned to write about today which is long distance friendships. Any long distance relationship for that matter. It is hard and it takes time energy and effort but it is possible. I go through ebbs and flows of wanting to be really social and not wanting to see or speak to a single human so I am a difficult person to be friends with and sometimes I do feel bad about what I put my friends through. However, the ones that stick around have my absolute full respect because I know I’m not easy. I have some really awful qualities that I hate about myself but I also have some amazing ones and my friends that make an effort to truly be my friend make it so easy for the good qualities to shine.
I grew up living most of the time in Kentucky and the rest of the time in Puebla, Mexico, which is where my grandparents lived. My mom was a boss so she always had to work and in the summers, she would send me to Mexico to spend time with my grandparents and also because it was probably cheaper and easier than sending me to like summer camp for the full summer. I gotta hand it to my mom, not only is she a beast at work, in any job that she has ever had, but she really made it work for us being a single mom. That is absolutely no shade to my dad — I think in previous posts, I’ve talked about the ups and downs of our relationship so won’t get into that now. My mom was always my hero growing up and honestly still is. We have a cool relationship but that is also long distance and it has evolved a ton over time, particularly in the past 10ish years or so when I started forming my own opinions on things and just taking control of the decisions in my life. And that’s my point, your friends have to evolve and grow with you and if they can’t support you in that growth, honestly that’s totally fine but like I don’t need those kind of people in my life.
I feel guilty when I go to Kentucky or different parts of Mexico where I have childhood friends and I don’t tell them I’m coming or I don’t make plans to see them. It’s not cause I don’t love them anymore but I want relationships that make me a better person and that fuel me. Over the past few years, I had a friend that I would see each time I was in their city but somewhere along the way, we drifted and seeing each other felt like a chore more so than revitalizing time with a childhood friend. It hurts me to admit that because I have so much love for that friend but it was a friendship that had run its course, and that’s okay. Not every friendship or relationship has to end in a dramatic argument or anything like that, sometimes people change and you change with them and support them or you don’t.
I think that if you know me very well, you know that I feel things so deeply and that I’m an all or nothing kind of girlie. I really struggle with balance, in anything, and it’s the same for friendships. Being a good friend is something that consumes me but that means I can’t be that level of a friend to every single person that I like, even if I wish I could. It wouldn’t be fair to me or to my friends so that’s why I’ve had to make selective decisions around the friendships in my life.
I have one friend who I actually have no clue how we got so close because we were never in school together and she’s a few years older than me. She has kids and a husband and I have a cat. Our lives couldn’t be more different but if she ever called me I would drop everything to be there for her. We rarely talk and I hardly see her when we’re in the same city but you know what? She just gets it. She knows if I’m in town, it’s probably for a reason because she knows that being there sometimes makes me uncomfortable. It’s not a place I would choose to visit for no reason if that makes sense. I don’t know how to explain it other than by saying that she just gets it and I love that. Do I wish we could talk more and see each other more? Of course. But our lives just don’t allow for that right now and we both understand that.
I used to really struggle with friends because I expected them all to be my friends the same way that I was their friends, but we’re all so different and that’s the fucking beauty of it. Learning to accept people’s love in whatever way they are able to give it at that point in time has been such a liberating thing for me. People can’t give you a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time. It’s just not possible and rather than expecting them to, it’s so much better to just accept what they can give you. If you decide that it’s not enough, then accept that too. Respect your own boundaries but also respect theirs.
I want friends that make me feel light and happy and the past two weeks have done just that for me. I was in a really dark place for the past few months and my coworkers were noticing and I felt it even more. I knew I had to do something to get out of the downward spiral and I’m not saying peace out for 2 weeks but don’t wait til it gets almost unbearable like I tend to do. It’s okay to take time away to reset and do the things that fuel you. For someone that loves spending time alone, I also really love being around good people that care so deeply for me. I really can’t even put into words how happy and fulfilled I feel after these past two weeks but it’s a feeling I wish everyone could experience. There is nothing more beautiful than feeling so loved by so many different people from different walks of life. People that I’ve known my whole life, people that I’ve just met, people that I never talk to but love being with. It was just a very special trip and because of that, I found myself dreading going back to New York. I love New York, but Mexico is home. My friends are my home and even those I wasn’t able to see that made efforts to try to see me, they are also my home. And I am so fucking lucky to have them in my life and accept me as I am.
Xx hangrymarn
