sprouting from the root

Growing up with a negative self-image has led to the unimaginable. I hated what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t always feel this way. As a little girl, I was stress-free and didn’t feel the pressure of having to impress anyone. Society put the thought in my mind that to be normal you had to be a size 2, straight-A student, and most importantly White. Kind of impossible when you’re an overweight Mexican girl. From then on out my mental health continued to get worse. The only way to overcome this negativity was through motivation.

Although family can be a great motivator, it can also be an enormous stressor. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do in the world to give them a better life, considering what they have done for me. Growing up, both my parents came from low-income households with strong independent single mothers. Their fathers were not in the picture, but that never stopped them from doing what’s best for their kids. With the hope of giving us a better life, my father worked hard in school so that he could further his education and get a good job. He didn’t want us to ever worry about whether we had food on the table or a roof over our heads. Even though this motivates me to do better in school, it puts a lot of pressure on me. There is always a piece of me that feels like I am going to disappoint my father.

My brother and sister both have felt this same pressure on them. This has caused their mental health to suffer-especially my brothers. I tried explaining to my parents that they were too hard on us, but they didn’t understand. All my parents would say things like, “Why can’t you just be happy?” or “You don’t know what stress is.” The day my mom finally realized where we were coming from was when I told her that my brother had tried to kill himself. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. “I don’t know why you and siblings complain about being stressed if you guys have a great life”. That was the day that I realized my mom wasn’t educated about mental health and the effects it has on people. “I know we have a great life; it isn’t even about that. You guys don’t know how much stress we have and how much pressure y’all put on us” “We don’t put pressure on you guys” “Really? Cause last time I checked, it isn’t normal for kids to feel the need to kill themselves”. Tears rolled down our cheeks as we sat in silence. It was uncomfortable but I knew that from now on things were going to be different.

When my mother was 7 months pregnant with me my father received news that his job was moving him to the United States. After being presented with the opportunity, my family hopped on a plane to head to Wilmington, North Carolina. My parents were excited to start their new lives in the “land of opportunities”. Living in Wilmington seemed like a dream with a safe neighborhood, great school district and amazing weather. It wasn’t until I started school that I realized everything was great, except for the people. Going to school was a living nightmare. The kids would look at me differently and judge me because of the color of my skin. I recall this one time a little boy told me I looked like a “Mexican jumping bean” and asked me if I “swam here”. I didn’t think anything of it because I didn't even know what that meant. I sat there confused as the kids laughed at the racist remark. Coming home I told my brother and sister about the incident that happened in class. They told to me that they were just being bullies and not let it get to me. Now that I think back to that moment it upsets me to think that kids that young could be so cruel.

Throughout the years I grew to ignore the things they said to me and accepted that I was never going to be “normal” to them. After all the hate I still found a way to make some friends and even met more Hispanic kids. Although things were getting better, I still felt that I needed to try a little harder than everyone else to fit in. As if it was my fault that kids didn’t like me. I didn’t feel happy, it wasn’t until the day I came home from school and my parents told us that my dad had been hired at a new job and that we would be moving to Sugarland, Texas.

It was exciting to know that I had another chance at making a good impression. I had no prior knowledge of Texas; all I knew was what Sandy Cheeks taught me off of SpongeBob. Because of this, I thought that it was going to be a hot desert and that I would wear cowgirl boots and shorts to school. I was completely wrong. We moved here during the summer, so it was hot, but it wasn't like a desert at all. Houston was big and bright (something I wasn’t used to since I grew up in a small town). Since I moved there in the summer, I didn’t really have much of a chance to make new friends, so I just had to wait it out until I went back to school. Going back to school was nerve-wracking because this would mean I'd have to make friends again and in the past being Mexican didn’t give me much of an advantage. Being Mexican in North Carolina meant being different, and not in a good way.

My first day at Dulles Middle School was nothing like I'd expected. The diversity in that school was ridiculous. Everywhere I looked I saw a different race. Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, Middle Eastern, it was like culture shock. The diversity I saw was overwhelming, and for the first time in my life, I felt as if I could fit in. It wouldn’t have been a proper first day if something embarrassing didn’t happen. Most of the middle schoolers were used to going off a 7-period schedule. I, on the other hand, was still so used to block classes. So, while everyone was in their 6th-period class I was in my 7th-period gym class. As soon as we figured out what class I was supposed to be in my gym teacher sent one of his students to show me where my class was at. Walking out of the gym the girl began to make small talk, “so are you new here?”, “Yeah, I just moved here” I replied. We had an awkward pause. “Well if you want, we can be friends”. Soon enough we were inseparable.

Before school started my mother had to fill out some papers and on one of the papers it asked what my first language is. My mom obviously put Spanish since that is the language I spoke at home. Assuming I only spoke Spanish, the school put me into an ESL class which is a class for students that just started learning English. At first, I didn’t think anything of it; I just assumed I was put in the class because I just moved to Texas. As the class progressed, I began to feel like the class was too easy, so I spoke with the teacher and requested a schedule change. The teacher began to rant to the class about me wanting a schedule change. “If you think that you are SOOO smart then how about you answer these questions”? She proceeded to ask me questions in front of the class and I got every single one right. That same afternoon I was pulled in the counselor’s office to switch me out.

Once they switched me into a regular class, everything fell into place. The girl I had met earlier was in the English class they switched me into, so I began to feel more comfortable. “Hey! Come sit next to me.” I sat quickly before the bell rang. “My name’s Kaylee, by the way.” “I’m Jonelle.” Soon enough we were inseparable. By the end of the year, I began to feel welcomed in a way I never felt back home. As time went by, I made new friends, friends of different races and cultures. The next year I even worked up the courage to try out for the cheer team and as a result, I wound up with more friends than I could even imagine. Life was going great; I was happier than as I’d ever been. As 8th grade came to an end, my family bought a house a little further down in the neighboring town of Missouri City. Sadly, this would mean I'd have to move to a different high school and leave all my new friends behind. I was scared that all the friends I had made in the past two years were just going to forget about me.

To help me transition into high school, my mom thought that it would be a good idea for me to try out for the cheer team. Sadly, I missed tryouts, so she told me that the high school I was going to attend had a dance team and asked me if I wanted to give it a shot. I always had a love for dancing but never actually took classes, so I decided to audition. Most of the girls that were trying out already knew each other from middle school so I stayed to myself throughout the whole process. At the end of the day, they posted the numbers of the girls who had made the team and I was one of them. I was so happy that I was going to start this new chapter in my life and get to know more people.

Once school rolled around, I started feeling that same sense of being left out. Going from an extremely diverse school to a predominantly black school was difficult to adjust to. I always felt like I was too Mexican for the white kids, too white for the black kids and too Americanized for the Mexican kids. It was a vicious loop. As the year went by, I struggled to fit in anywhere but dance. Dance was my way of expressing how I felt. I had just left a school where I had many friends. After moving to my new school, I barely spoke to any of my friends. This had a huge effect on my mental health which caused me to start slacking in my schoolwork. At this point, I didn’t feel happy anywhere, not even in my own home. Come sophomore year I was depressed, and not even dance could help me. I’d come home crying and begging my mom to transfer me back to Dulles but there wasn’t anything she could do. She would tell me to make the most out of it and just focus on my grades and dance.

I was in a dark place, I felt abandoned, not even my best friend was there for me. She would rather hang out with her boyfriend than me. The worst part was that he didn’t want her to hang out with me because he told her I was a “whore”. When she told me what he said I was devastated, I couldn’t believe some guy was calling me such horrific names without even knowing me. His racism was what kept me and Kaylee apart, he didn’t like the fact that I liked black boys or that I went to a predominantly black school. I truly had no one to talk to, not even my family.  

Knowing how my parents were, I was too scared to tell them how I felt in fear of them telling me I’m overreacting and that I have no reason to be depressed because I have food on my plate and a roof above my head. Instead of asking for help I bottled up my emotions and kept it to myself. I spent my days locked up in my room and refused to eat. At this point, I had lost 20 pounds in one month. To people I looked perfectly fine and happy but, on the inside, I was just rotting away. I hated the way I looked, the way I acted, I hated myself.

As junior year was approaching my grades went from C’s to A’s. The motivation I once had was starting to come back but even stronger than before. I reconnected with my friends Allie and Skyler and I began to make more friends because of them. Dance also helped me find my crowd. It wasn’t just a distraction at this point, dancing was fun and because of that, my team became like another family. The most influential person I met on the team was Ashlyn Sydney Gipson. She reminded me of the importance of self-worth and taught me to never let anybody walk over me. A sisterhood bond formed over the love of dance.

Although my social life was getting better, I still felt kind of lost. Mixed emotions filled my head daily. Was I happy? Was I sad? At that point, I had no clue. My initial thought was that my hormones were out of whack, so I just ignored it and went on about my year. The sound of the bell on the last day of school was like angels singing. That bell meant that as of that moment we were seniors and that summer was going to be the best one yet. I was finally happy and had lots of plans with my friends.

Throughout the summer I spent almost every day at the pool, I mean I was a lifeguard but even when I was off of work. If I wasn’t at the pool, then I was at Allie and Skyler’s house working on a tan or going on late night adventures. Even towards the end of the summer I still felt excited because that meant that this was going to be my last year of high school. The excitement of college was the only thing on my mind. My first week of senior year was a blast.

Towards the end of November, things started to feel rushed. I was so caught up on having fun that I forget that I had to take my SAT. Not only was I behind academically but I started to realize that I didn’t know what I was going to do in life. Somehow, I thought that the second I graduated I was going to be handed a slip telling me what I was supposed to become. I got accepted into Texas State and already had a roommate, but it still didn’t feel right. Was my happiness temporary? Why did I feel like a baby bird being pushed out of its nest with no clue that I had to fly? This wasn’t how I wanted things to go. I was supposed to graduate high school and have my career planned out so that I could make my father proud.

My whole life I was told that happiness was shown with a smile. What if underneath that smile was an unhappy person? No one told me that for one to truly be happy they had to be happy with themselves. This whole time I was letting what people said or thought about me affect my mental health. The key to my happiness.

[ A lot of things went through my mind while writing this memoir. When I first started the outline I wasn't being completely honest with myself. After doing some research I knew that for it to be a real memoir I had to be truthful. The outcome wasn't exactly what I expected but I think it came out alright. In the future, I could possibly see myself furthering this memoir, maybe even post more of my writing. ]