I made a blog and have my own website!!

Hi All,

Thank you so much for all the support and all the great conversations we have had. Thank you so much for witnessing my growth over the years, always giving me tips to improve my writing, and encouraging my skills.

I have decided to take blogging professionally and have created my own website. This wordpress was my outlet, my online journal, so that someone somewhere out there can know my story. Now with my blog, I am more selective in the stories I tell and spend a lot more time with them. On my blog I speak about fashion and identity by providing tips on how to expand your closet, weekly looks for inspiration, personal narratives, and I have even created a platform for people who identify as Dominican American to share their stories.

My blog is mane-attire.com and I would love if you all could go take a look and please please subscribe if you enjoy it. It will mean the world to me!

Best,

Jamerly

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Hello All

I have recently started a fashion blog where I am exploring my identity through hair, clothing, and personal anecdotes. For the last month I have been working on this blog and a lot of great things are happening. I am so thankful to have you all as a family, but this is to inform you all that I am going to be active on my other blog and not on wordpress.

Please please please please visit my blog and if you are more interested and want to see where the blog goes from here, please please please subscribe!

The blog is mane-attire.com!

Disclosure

This year I performed my first poem and it was liberating. Not only because it was my first time but because I was with amazing people. I participated in a project produced and directed by Marcella Adams called Disclosure where students of color at the college expressed their feelings of loneliness, self doubt, stereo types, expectations and fairness as it pertains to White supremacy.

It was liberating to finally share my story and how I felt on a predominately white campus and it was exhilarating to perform a poem for the first time with my two best friends on the stage. Lets put you in the setting.

You walk into a dark black room with dim lights. The black seats are designed in a circle with the chairs facing the inside of the room. There are stands in between the seats one for each side of the compass (north, south, east, and west). The performers are sitting within the audience. The show starts off with each performer saying a line from our poem that represents the most important messages of their stories. Mine was “My brown hands became a color I no longer recognize as my own.” By this time the room has filled with discomfort and eyes are wider than ever, ready to listen. The walls seem to be caving in at the echoes of the stories as you hear about lack of opportunities for those who didn’t make it to college, lack of fairness, achievement gap, lack of respect, and neglecting of Black love.  By now, you feel overwhelmed while your shoulders cary each tear you have seen the performer cry. You look to the side of you and you see an audience member crying anf acknowledge that in this moment it is okay to smile, laugh, and tear up as the performer does. In the south part of the room you hear a voice interrupting the claps for the last poem that passed and you listen. And she speaks. And you watch as she fights through her tears and hopes that the light is dim enough so that no one sees the redness on her face or her knees shaking. And she begins.

You know what's the difference between a scar and a paper cut. 

A scar leaves a mark behind, and it reminds us of an experience we had. 

somewhere people can point to and ask what's that, 

to hear the story that comes with that imperfection. 

But that doesn't mean we wont  do it again 

because we enjoyed the danger feeling.

Because your brown hands could ruin the prettiest and most precious thing on earth

The brownness of your fingertips stain the purest white

its so inorganic that the stain is permanent

Unable to be forgotten by those who have been near it

Your touch everlasting

So promise me you will keep your hands to yourself

No Toces No toces No toces

I told you to stay away

You weren’t suppose to do that

The world is not meant for you to touch it, the world is meant to touch you in ways where rape sounds and feels like consensual sex

As if everything you have and everything you are is not enough to be heard or respected (all together)

As if you asked for it

A paper cut is different. It stings to the core because you never expected the paper you touch everyday to hurt you. It’s a result of a normal thing.While washing your hands you forget that it’s there only to remember when the water seeps through the open holes of the bandage you tried so hard to cover it up with.

Your brown hands should not touch anything but it should take in everything that touches you

Because that’s the best you will ever get

My brown hands settled

In a world that identified my fingertips as chains

Compressed together as if the world was a sacred place

And I will never be heavenly

I walk with grace while the heaviness of ancestry tries to tie me to the floor

I am Suffocated by the very things I thought of as precious

Mistakes

Vulnerability

And Voice

Yet you force me to participate

it’s 20% percent of your grade (two people sounding like a professor)

As if that’s supposed to mean anything

“I would like to hear your voice in your paper” (two people sounding like a professor)

I get my voice back, It’s a C

As in good enough to pass but not good enough to stand on my own

The note in red said I am available Mondays and wednesday

1:30 to 3:00

I am here

You say, I know you can do better

But what I understand is

I know you are teachable

You took my softness as an antonym for strength

You eliminate my brown hands and make them write white so I can pass your class

I’m sorry I meant educated

My brown hands became a color I no longer recognize as my own

Don’t touch it don’t touch it don’t touch it

Paper cuts happen when you try to do routines too quickly. Only to continue your routine again and no one will ever really notice because paper cuts are never as serious as scars, but who made up that rule anyway.

I am here, 1:30 to 3

Poet: Jamerly De La Cruz

Hearted Ramble

 

If you would ask me how to say I love you I would remain speechless. I would not know how to move the muscles in my face to form the shapes that would allow those words to slip out. I no longer know what it means or in which language would it mean more. The one that I am more fluent at, English, or the one that carries my heritage, ancestry, and story, Spanish. If I did find a way to say it, I am not sure I would know what it means. I would not be able to assure myself that  I did what you asked and maybe that is the point of it all. When its time for me to say it again I would understand it in all world languages, I wouldn’t even need to hear it. It would slip through the wind as you open up the door for me, it would touch my skin as you move closer, it would be jumbled in every single curl as I apply all the gels and creams that enhance them. It will be in between my teeth as I laugh and in between my fingers when I cry. I love you would be my older sister, brother, mom, and dad because your love will remind me of all of them. It will never be questioned or antagonized. It will be appreciated and felt. It will be loved back and never second best.

 

The Summer My Life Starts

I sat in between yesterdays and tomorrows saturated in what could’ve been and what never was. I sat in between the you I thought you were and the me I lost while I was with you. I lost my ambitions, writing became hobby and no longer my voice. What became of my voices was a black hole swallowed by white noise. My opinions laid on a cloud I watched float away. I lost everything I was with you and couldn’t find her no matter how many times we sat and talked about it. But on the day I pushed you away for the seventh time and you were with her,   I realized I could never lose you, you were never mine. But I always yours.

I sat in between who she is and who she was , trying to find myself in bed sheets, empty conversations, and train stations where I watched the clock for your arrival.  I guess she stayed where I should have left. In beneath the conversation of the weekend “nothing happened with her.” It was hilarious  how everyone was in your room while she was there and I always stayed behind closed doors.  We were the big dipper, only easy to recognize at night if you were actually looking for it.

I sat in between being good but not enough. Where you held my hand in the world and watched it as if you had a birds eye view, making sure no one saw us. Where I was not good enough to be exposed to the world but a day after we broke up she was holding your phone advertising your engagement of time spent together. How when speaking about her flirtatious comments underneath every single picture it was “thats for the birds and I see a future with you.” How you were the one that mentioned children with me. How you always introduced me to the past of your life and talked about sacred stories you said you never told anyone. Or how I would say something and you would ask me if you ever told me that before because my words and your stories fell  in line so perfectly. I sat in between nights waiting for your text and knowing you were with her and not saying anything.My mouth duck taped with uncertainties of you I could never prove true.

I sat in between thunderstorms and rainbows waiting to see if the rain would drown me, if the loud noise would make me death, and if the brightness of colors would blind me. And it did. My brain was wrapped in the sunflower you sucked the pollen off of so that you could eat. While I laid weaker and the brightness of my yellow dimmed a little. The pedal closest to the stem where our extra seeds lay fell in three strokes and I watched it as you laid buzzing beside me.  The pollen you took were in your hands and you took it off with a pink towel.

I sat in between rough ending and new beginnings. On the day we parted, my sunflower grew brighter while it rained and shined. The world gave me everything I needed at the same time and I knew the darkness was you. The me I left in your bedroom that November leaped into my arms and latched on to my soul. She told me that the beauty in all this is that we get to grow together again. And on that day the world opened up a life that I could have never imagined with him. One of endless possibilities and eliminated limitations. One where I could scream, “I am beautiful” and the world would say “Yes you are.” One where my sister texts me you are a priority not an option. Where friends share ways to make our lives full of adventures. Where cousins say Fuck him and  six year friendships say that we will explore singularity together and enjoy summer.

I sat in between people that understood me and realized that I  was never a black hole, a cloud, a big dipper, or a sunflower. I was a caterpillar, eating enough of life to get ready for the new stage. When my own body weight was too much to carry I slept on a tree upside down. My skin wrapped itself around me and the self doubt embodied was eliminated. After a complete evaluation, the green, and brown, and black became a soup of cells that were once my muscles, bones, and organs. The cells rearranged themselves and gave me antennas so that I am able to sense the world and embrace balance and orange, brown, white, and black wings that are stronger than any thunderstorm or rainbow.

And in this moment I knew this would be the greatest summer ever. The summer my life starts.

 

In Between Hope and a Dark Place

I sat in between Saturday and Sunday, a limbo of a day that did not exist hoping that it would. Monday’s usually came too soon and my motivation for finishing my spring semester was running low. I even went out of my way to create a group message to tell my siblings and my brother’s wife that I was dropping out. I couldn’t stand being in between a thin line of doing my best and still not being good enough. At this point nothing made sense anymore and going to class consisted of headaches and misunderstandings.

At this very moment, I may have been more in tuned with the reality of myself than ever before because for the first time in four years I thought about how my father’s move from New York to Florida impacted me. I was in the theatre waiting for my friend’s directed scene to come up when the inspiration to write hit me and it hit me all at once.

 

I never wrote a poem about you and I could tell you now that it’s because I never knew how to deal with it

I asked you to take me to the mall

You smiled and told me we had to go today which I was excited about because usually you’ll say one of these days

But the response was nothing I was expecting

“If we don’t go today we will never be able to go”

I never heard any plans about you leaving

I stared and you choked up

You hugged and I said I will visit you

People asked where you were and I told them Florida

They would ask when is he coming back

And I would say he’s not

Everyone thought I was acting, that I wasn’t hurt

But I wasn’t hurt

Not until now in this very moment

When I can’t find enough glass pieces to put myself together

When I lose myself in the finger of others until they take me out

Pinching me with a tweezer

I never told you I still resent you

Because I don’t

I never told you I still hold you in my memories

Because I don’t

I never told you I want to see you

Because I don’t

But I still look at you and smile

Because you’re my dad

I hold on to your voice as it quavers when you ask for me to come home

But between the old house you left me at, the new house you found yourself in, and the school I am force to call mine

I no longer know home

I knew something was wrong with me. I knew I was lost and trying to find pieces to pick myself up. Or maybe I was really really right and after four years I am able to exhaust all of my feelings of past experiences or at least this huge one. And it was difficult to write. I still have not finished the piece above and probably will not for years. My emotions are unsettled in a sea of uncertainty of a world I am required to be certain in.  But between confronting old heartbreaks and trying to prevent a new one, I could not get through a class or a homework assignment without the feeling of being left. It rolled over into my relationship where I started to constantly leave because it is better to leave than to be left, right? I hated everything and every one for a while. Keeping up with my assignments was the least of my worries, until it had to be my only worry.

I needed to do great for my dad. He left his home twice for me. He came from Dominican Republic so I could have the American Dream and left New York because the American Dream did not seem plausible here. He picked up and left and I needed to pick up and do better. I needed to prove to myself that I was possible and prove to my parents that the American Dream is real. They came here for a reason. I needed to reconfirm their purpose and make sure they received all the wishes they had hoped for when they left their home. Maybe my father doesn’t know which household is home either. Maybe he carries home with him.  I started thinking about who I wanted to be in five years and what accomplishments looked like now so that I could be that version of me. I knew I had to focus on school and finish as strong as I could. I started seeing a learning specialist who helped me organize my time and things started making sense again. I picked up my life as much as I could in the three weeks that I had before finals. I am still waiting for the results.

Sometimes in life, we find ourselves in black holes we too often do not notice in our tracks beforehand, and its difficult to find a way out once you are in them. Sometimes it feels like thats where you belong because why else would you be there. But through the times I was there this semester, I realized black holes are a galaxy, another way of living. An exhausting way of living. It wraps its arms around you and calls itself home. Every smile, hug, and laugh just a cover up like bricks outside of your home. They are a portrait to the outside world, but no one really knows whats going on inside. The windows are not wide enough for others to see the full picture. You wonder how the outside world is so happy while you are drowning yourself in your own tears. You spend your time trying to find angles where you can catch a peak of the outside world without people seeing you, so walls become your shield. You realize,  you cant fight for happiness or truth. We acknowledge happiness because it is the feeling that comes in between hope and a dark place. It is the light leaving a dark hole, a miracle short lived, but always remembered. And truth is an opinion, something some one is willing to hold on to as a belief the consider sacred.

So in this crazy semester, I learned the two things that I thought of as untouchable,  happiness and truth, were make believe. A version of my own perspective. My father never told me why he left and I will never know what caused me to look back at this semester so horribly, but I do know I ended up respecting that I did not need to know every one else’s truth and I appreciated happiness much more.

Almost done

Hello all, 

I am almost done with the semester! I cannot wait to get back home for the summer and write and hear your stories ! 

Jamerly 

You lost trying

  

Shades, Colors, and Complexities

Today I went to places I use to go to before I lost myself in the world. I found my legs taking me to the pond as my tears fell from my cheeks and I just sat there crying, choking in pain of untold stories. I have never been so disappointed or felt so helpless for myself in my life. Its noticeable. Through conversations I get the “I’ll call you later” and “why aren’t you laughing.”

My lack of conversations are reflecting on my grades. Going away to college is going to ruin you or that boy is going to distract you and soon I will prove everyone right. But I do not want those things to be true because I am better than that. But honestly, I think I just reflect too much on the negatives because I want everything to be perfect and perfection does not exist and it never will. Perfection is the definition of realities that only exist in daydreams.

I am starting to learn that B’s are acceptable and I should definitely try harder but not beat myself up about it. And a B could be a grade A accomplishment if a B was my goal. I am starting to learn that I need to appreciate the good and understand relationships are about compromise. I know he wants to give me the world, but he must give himself the world first and frankly, I need to find the world for me. I have to learn to accept myself and then maybe accepting the way people react to me will not be difficult.

I am starting to understand that the world is too complex to look at it so simply. Right and wrong are just misconceptions that we use to justify behaviors we cannot understand, kind of like black and white. How many times have we referred to these shades as colors. People may just say, the world is what it is. In reality, the world is what we make it. Look around. How many things can you identify as an invention humans have built? I look at myself and realize I am not just black and white. I am all shades in between and all colors that exist. I am not to be defined so why am I so wrapped up in my identity?

Today I went to places I use to go to before I lost myself in the world and found the world in me, filled with shades, colors, and complexities.

Update!

Hello All!!

I am so excited for the updates that I am working on for my blog. I cannot wait for you all to see it. I have decided to really take an intensive planning and updating period so that I will not have to take another update break in A WHILE!

I have decided to officially start my blog back in April. I know it is a long time, but I am really working on this. It would have been sooner but I am also a college student and I am trying to stabilized my opportunities for the summer. I promise it will be no later than the first Monday in April.

I hope you all will love it as much as I do.

All the best,

Jamerly