By Refresh Editors Welcome to that odd stretch of the year after the holiday season where either freezing temperatures or the lack of celebratory occasions are liable to make the days feel dull. This particular passage can be hard to navigate, but I’ve often thought of it as a very interior season: a time past the bluster of New Year’s Resolutions and before the year is old enough to reminisce on. It’s a good time to dive into some personal…
by: Veneranda Aguirre You ever heard the term fugazi? It’s Italian-American slang for a fake diamond. I knew words like that growing up because I was precocious since infancy. I could speak in full sentences at 18 months, but only in Spanish. I absorbed everything, apparently. Even celebrities on TV. One night my father came into my nursery after working two jobs. Since he was rarely home when I was awake, I didn’t recognize him. And I started to cry. “I’m…
by: Veneranda Aguirre You’re a 16-year old girl who lives between the middle class American and upper class Mexican cultures that exist in your border town of Nogales, Arizona. You’re on the pretty side, 5’6” and 150 pounds. You’ve always been a giant compared to the kids your age, which is just one of myriad ways that you don’t fit in. Not even to your own family. Your family nicknames are Thunder Thighs and Bubble Butt. Because you’re a Latina….
by Veneranda Aguirre Depression first hit me when I was in fourth grade. I didn’t know it was depression. People didn’t talk about it back in the 1980s. And they certainly didn’t give the diagnosis to children. But as a child with undiagnosed autism, I suffered from massive anxiety and depression that kept me up at nights, crying into my pillow out of frustration and fear. As I grew into an adult, depression morphed into irrational anger. If I couldn’t…