Jada Vazquez

Falling Into Consciousness

Coming back I thought I found myself,believed I was stronger than ever, a perfectly balanced version of myself. Reaching the divine feminine, half gladiator half goddess, fully woman. I was powerful in ways unbeknownst to men, my immortality inflates my confidence, clouding my consciousness. My only weakness, I believed, would be my own smarts or, outwardly, love.

But like Icarus I flew too close to the sun, glimpsing the fleeting euphoria of it all. Crashing hard into the dense brick of all-consuming fear. How the mighty have fallen, thrown into the darkest shadows of lurking, mythical beasts. My strength is purged, evaporating quickly as the fruit of life is withheld against my own will.

I don’t know when the end will come, if my power can persevere as my body weakens. Reaching for my body as she begins to part, between heaven and earth, God speaks. Her voice is authority, her messages unclear, spoken in riddles and tongues: I cannot tell you what lies in the future. The strings play loudly, and the demons and gorgons fight for control as the angels cover all that lies below. This battle has been fought many times before, in lives previous to this one. Yet still I breathe. Though my lungs burn and my chest heaves, I am still in this body, Loaned for a while longer. Decorating and deterring my corpse as I search for safety outside this head of mine.

Radical Acceptace

Words on a page ,a guide to life. The Bible, Quran, Torah, Tao te Ching, Vedas, and ancestral scripture, each read and dissected by the questions that crowd my brain. For a long time I was searching for answers to these questions.

I didn’t know then that the answers were within me from the beginning, given by a force beyond my understanding, graced by the wind, the moon, the sun, the water, and the land. The cycle repeats and sustains itself for generations, maintains itself even after civilization ends.

I’ll never know all the answers. It’s a truth I try to live with. I’ve learned I can’t control situations, can’t manipulate the past or future. I aim to be like water. To move with the tide, no longer against it.

My tears deserve to fall, and to dry. My laughter deserves to fill rooms, to clench my abdomen. My heart deserves to love, not just others, but myself. My strength is fueled by love, and sometimes hate, too, and sometimes just a tired body trying to make it through the day. I’ve almost drowned trying to fight against it.

But in the here and now I experience life. Life in all of its extremities. Immense sorrow, guilt, joy, love, remembrance.

Perhaps this is the beginning of radical acceptance.

Jada Vazquez (she/her) is a first generation student in her final semester of college. She primarily focuses on journalist writing and poetry/ lyrical essays. As a freelance journalist her work can be found in a random assortment of places.