Prose, Unbound

The Itch

Carrie Villarreal

“No,” I said. They were out of their fucking minds if they thought I would actually agree to their request, but I was perfectly in my right mind to tell them to go to hell.

~~~

Don’t get me wrong. I acquiesce — a lot. I don’t like to cause trouble. I don’t like to rock the boat. Confrontation causes an allergic reaction and makes me itchy all over like when I rub up against poison ivy. Sometimes, I get a little fidgety, a little itchy, from chafing against conflict’s oiliness. 

Sometimes, a rash breaks out. Sometimes, I lose a little time recovering and come to with oddities. One time there was a deep scratch running along the inside of my bicep. One time there was a split upper lip. One time there was a busted knuckle on my right hand. One time there was some blood on my shirt but no obvious wound it could have come from.

~~~

“It’s simple. The answer is no,” I said, scratching at a spot just below my elbow while a blooming redness raced across the right side of my chest.

I really do try to be a decent person, but sometimes, people just don’t fucking listen.

Featured image by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

Teaching

Fellow Educators, Let's Take a Beat

Carrie Villarreal

Before we begin, let’s take a beat.

Breathe in through the nose.

Hold it.

Let it fill you with energy.

Slowly exhale, breathing out through the mouth.

Okay. Let’s go.

Today is day two of remote learning for many, and for many, this day was preceded and followed by announcements from municipalities, especially in Texas, with “Stay Home, Work Safe” orders which set off another wave of panic and uncertainty. Needless to say, our efforts at being present in the learning is scattershot, at best. At least, I know it is for me, and I consider myself to be a damn good teacher and technologically savvy. 

As an instructional coach, I have been providing support to teachers since last Thursday when the call came down the shift was taking place. In these short few days, I’ve gleaned a few bits of wisdom from both interactions with fellow teachers and administration.

  1. Allow space for the learning to happen: The way we do this is by focusing on the learning process and the feedback cycle as students move towards mastery. This also means bye-bye to traditional “grades” (which I’ve never been a fan of anyway). We have an opportunity to teach as we’ve always wanted now that the state standardized test requirements are waived, so focus on giving productive feedback to measure learning, not a numerical value.
  2. Give up control: You can’t micromanage this process. You will have to give up control. Teachers, you can’t expect students to adhere to strict due dates. Administrations, you can’t expect teachers, especially those with young children, to adhere to strict schedules and traditional “hours of operation”.
  3. Try something new: This is kind of a no-brainer as it is all new. However, we are in a watershed moment, fellow educators. This will forever change the face of education. We are either willing to get with the 21st-century, or the 21st-century, our schools, and our students will get on without us. Take the time to learn the technology we’re being asked to use to provide high-quality remote instruction because they’re not going away. (gasp I think this means worksheets are finally dead!)
  4. Remember to breathe: At the end of the day, the week, or quarantine, the major thing we provide is a sense of normalcy, a sense of safety, and there is nothing in education that measures the impact this has. 

Is it going to be easy? In a word — no. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard and riddled with potential pitfalls that fray our nerves. I mean, it’s downright scary, if you think about it, but it always is when you stand on the edge of an unexplored frontier. However, if we allow opportunities for growth, if we give up the urge to monitor every moment, if we learn from trying different things, and if we just remember to pause and breathe, we will see that that fear can be excitement — if we only let it be.

Featured image by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash

Poetry

Caviar

Carrie Villarreal

“I want to watch the world burn,”
he said, eyes alighting —
the color of newly minted
golden eagles and chardonnay.
Burnished mischief.

“Let the poor eat each other,”
he said, lips simpering–
the taste of sanguine blood
on a white hospital gown.
Cruel antipathy.

“Humanity, in all its petty indifferences,
blatant ignorances, and misplaced allegiances,
deserves what’s coming,”
he said, heart pounding–
the sound of cosmic
drums of conflict, drums of war.
Incarnated vanquisher.

“My death, my darling,
I would do anything for you,”
she said, sword brandished —
the feel of cunning steel,
keen to find a bosomed home.
Suicide.

Featured image by Jean Philippe JACOB on Unsplash

Poetry, Unbound

Avocado Toast

Carrie Villarreal

I have these moments
where I experience the paradox of
words coming into being
at the precipice of their inception
and words dying,
supernovas of cultural extinction.

I wonder if that’s how the Aztecs felt
the moment āhuacatl lost its life —
lost its ability to testify
to the avocado’s testicular formation —
when the Spanish conquistadors
grew enough balls to sail across the seas
and dominate a people
they should’ve left well-enough alone.

Aguacate they called it
refusing viable auditory nuances
of Nahuatl testimony.

These days, we call it “avocado”
because everything sounds
(and tastes) “better” with white-bread
when you crush it against the
English tongue in this country.

Featured image by Nur Afni Setiyaningrum on Unsplash

Musings

Opening Another Door

Carrie Villarreal

About 15 years ago, I decided I should die. I was failing at everything: relationships, school, health, finances, and happiness. Somedays, I would swing high enough I could see a way out, but that zenith never lasted long enough for me to memorize the path out of the darkness. So in one of those valleys when the shadows deepened into an oozing gloom, I decided I should just get it over with and die, save myself and the world a lot of trouble. But try as I might, I failed at dying, too.

Talking about that time in my life is still difficult and isn’t something many people who know me know about. (Though, I guess now it’s out there in the public domain. So there’s that.) I don’t talk about it because most people are looking for something “happy”, especially when they’re scrolling through the internet in a time of crisis. People look for hope, and I don’t blame anyone for that. I do the same. It’s a coping mechanism. However, I think, now more than ever, we need to destigmatize talking about mental and social-emotional health because there are only so many things that corgi videos and chocolate will fix.

Writing is my wellspring of hope. I wrote yesterday about putting on a brave face even though there are some Grand Canyon like cracks beginning to show under the strain of pandemic. However, today was not a great day, and I started the day with anxiety medication for breakfast after my husband showed me eBay posts where people are auctioning a 4 pack of toilet paper and the bids are pushing it above $200. I. Just. Couldn’t. Deal. So down the hatch went a couple of pills. I have absolutely no shame in admitting that.

The day kind of spiraled out of control after that as my husband introduced new guidelines on mail handling, using separate hand towels, and washing produce with soapy hot water. I am ashamed to admit I lost it with him. I started to feel like I was an unwanted contagion in my own home. I snapped and snarled and huffed and sighed. I cut him with words because I was in an emotional free fall.

I don’t do well with sudden change. Never have. I like things orderly and in control — a rhyme and a reason for everything. I will notice the smallest item misplaced or missing in a room, and I will be uncomfortable until it’s righted or returned. (I know this hints at some major underlying issues for which I am compensating, but that is another blog post.) You can imagine, then, how I am handling the constant capriciousness of the last two weeks, and how I will respond to the inevitable inconstancy of the coming days and weeks (and months). 

I get COVID-19. It’s a virus. It’s predictable. It’s logical. It’s constant. Its sole function is to infect and replicate.

What I don’t get are people. They’re erratic. They’re illogical. They’re volatile. They have no sole function, no true purpose, and they often undermine their own well-being. It’s frightening.

In keeping with my stance that communication helps all things, I explained this — that it’s the scarcity of resources and the reactions of humans, not contracting coronavirus, that terrifies me — to my husband tonight while apologizing for the way I treated him today. In talking with him, I realized that he is dealing with his own fears and that it’s not his fault that our fears, and therefore priorities, are different. I explained to him that I am not afraid of dying, but what I am afraid of is sinking into the tar pit of depression that poisons all the vibrant life around me — that I am afraid that my relationship with him will succumb to human panic and perish as everything did almost 15 years ago.

I don’t know why I didn’t die all those years ago, and I guess it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. What I want you to take away from all this is not for you to reach out to me about how I’m doing. I have my good days and my bad days, but I have a support system that is looking out for me. Not to mention, I have 26 letters that can construct all manner of constant comforts. What I want you to take away is the lesson of turning to your support system and asking them “What do you need to feel safe right now?”. Because chances are, they are probably not doing so well, and we need to let them know it’s okay to not be okay and to talk through whatever comes.

Featured image Nathan Wright on Unsplash.

Musings

A Brave Face and A Weary Soul

Carrie Villarreal

I have started and deleted and started and deleted this entry about ten times now. I’m trying to be witty and turn a clever phrase, but to be honest, my brain is a bit short-circuited. I envisioned sitting down to write about my first day of instructional coaching via digital distance, which went quite well because I have some of the best teachers on my team, but my mind and fingers keep taking me somewhere else.

I consider myself an extroverted introvert. I receive immense pleasure from “me” time, whether it be curled up with a book in the bath, curled up with the remote on the couch, or curled up underneath a fluffy blanket taking a nap. I am a queen of “me” time. However, I don’t like to feel lonely. Don’t get me wrong, I like to be alone, but there is a difference in those two words — alone and lonely. Being alone doesn’t make one lonely just as being lonely doesn’t mean one is alone. I need people. Hell, we all need people. “No man is an island” and all that. Even with my husband and sister-in-law at home with me, I feel lonely — loneliness that exhausts the soul.

It may or may not be a surprise, but I put on a brave face a lot of the time because no one wants to hear when they ask “how’s it going?” that you are a terrible fucking mess on the inside. How do I know this? People usually ask this question when they have their bag on their shoulder or they’re cruising by your room (or cubicle or what-have-you) or when you’re passing each other on the way to somewhere else. Before someone can point out that I’m “people” and call me a hypocrite, I am guilty of this, sometimes, too.

Right now, I am putting on that brave face but it’s starting to crack. In the 5 years I have been with my husband, I have never seen him get so much as misty-eyed — not once — not even when we got married and that was pretty damn magically emotional. Today and yesterday and somedays before yesterday when we sat down and made plans in the event one of us contracted COVID-19 and succumbed to the infection he has been more than misty-eyed, and I have been there to tell him we will figure it out no matter what comes. Soon, I’ll have to put that brave face on for my students because they will need to see it. They’ll need to reclaim some steadfast normalcy in a world that’s swinging from uncertainty to uncertainty. They’ll need someone to tell them we’ll figure it out no matter what comes.

Last night, my husband and I went for a walk, and we hypothesized about the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and how long recovery will last. It was a macabre subject, but talking through things helps us deal, helps us take back our lives while we’re isolating and social distancing. Ultimately, we couldn’t come to an agreement on how long it will take the economy, educational institutions, and supply chains to stabilize, but we quickly agreed that the effects on social-emotional and mental health will be far-reaching and long-lasting.

And so, I am weary. But I write because it’s one of the ways I reclaim my sense of balance and push back the veil. It’s how I slow down the violent vacillations of the world and reinforce that brave face.

Featured image by Photo by Elisabetta Foco on Unsplash

Poetry, Unbound

Devil's Trills Sonata

Carrie Villarreal 
I dreamt a symphony 
of sleep paralysis last night, 
and in this dream, 
Tartini came to show me
how to dance the waltz of virtuosity.

Agile fingers tripped along
the string of my being,
their allegro moderato promenade
striking carnal chords of hunger.

While I rode this cresting wave —
this swelling expectancy of ecstasy —
the devil trilled the
the bitterest pleasure
in my ear, and
I reached for you
in the liminal space
between the notes.

The reverberations of sound
held in abeyance
resonated within my diamond core
and shattered,
pulling me out of myself and
into the cosmic embrace.

Featured image Photo by Josep Molina Secall on Unsplash

Musings, Unbound

A Brave New World

Carrie Villarreal

I love dystopian fiction. Can’t get enough of it. I’ve been reading it since I discovered Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in high school. Admittedly, it was the only school-assigned book I read that year (sorry Mrs. Roos). What can I say? I had my priorities mixed up like most high school students, and I, oftentimes, continue to have my priorities mixed up as an adult. In my 36 years on this earth, I still have yet to really figure out what it means to be human. And now figuring out that crucial element seems to be a Herculean task.

Two weeks ago when my husband said, “Here’s the grocery list for the week. I put on extra because we have to be ready for coronavirus,” I laughed in. his. face. Like the good-natured man he is, he weathered my criticism, and I humored him as we picked up a much larger toilet paper package, extra bags of dried beans, some canned and frozen vegetables (an oddity since we always buy fresh), two extra packages of spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, and a huge bag of frozen chicken breasts. On top of our weekly essentials, it was a shopping trip that cost us upwards of our total monthly food budget. I scowled and derided his “hypochondriac over-anxious” reactions, but he calmly replied “If I turn out to be wrong, at least we won’t have to buy groceries for a while. We can’t really lose.”

One week ago, as my husband and I sat at the dining table after a late breakfast, the news alerts on our phones go off: “WHO declares COVID-19 (coronavirus) a pandemic”. Within a few hours, the university I attend and others in the San Antonio area extended Spring Break for a week and hinted at extended closures. My social media feed blew up with posts both expressing concerns about the impending crisis and spreading the idea of a “Democratic hoax” to which “liberal snowflakes” were overreacting. The stock market started hemorrhaging which cast uncertain economic forecasts on people who were already scared that the big bad “P” word had been used. That’s when my husband looked at me, and instead of saying “Told you so” and making me eat crow (which he totally could have), he asked, “Have you heard about Italy?”

Five days ago my sister-in-law who lives with me became ill: cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, and slight fever. She sought out medical advice and tested negative for strep and flu, but the doctor told her she likely just had a cold and that she should self-quarantine to be on the “safe side” because it wasn’t likely she had COVID-19 and she didn’t qualify to be tested anyways. As she sat down with me and cried out of fear (she’s asthmatic and frequently uses a nebulizer by-the-by), everything became real for me. It was a sobering moment for my ego.

Now, everything is uncertain — the state of education and whether my job will even look the same in six month’s time, the health of the economy and whether another recession will wipe out finances again, the supply chain of stores and whether I currently have enough toilet paper to last me until things stabilize. Schools are closed and stores are shuttered and restaurants, bars, and nightclubs have had their “last call” for now. Things are quiet, and I’ve had time to reflect. I have been foolish in my personal fallacy which I have waived about with mortal bravado. I have been wrong for a long time about many things — most recently that about COVID-19 and the need to take it seriously. 

Today, I’m eating the crow my husband was too kind to ask me to eat two weeks ago, and I acknowledge that we, as a human race, are truly entering a brave new world… and we are not ready.

Featured image by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Poetry, Unbound

The Call

Carrie Villarreal

Amidst the tempest-tossed
shore of forgotten eons,
cosmic evil slumbers.
One eye turned to the
unfathomable depths of depravity
which masquerade as his pleasant dreams.
The other,
turned towards humanity,
awaits the coming storm
whose gales will
strip away the light and
usher forth the
Stygian darkness.

And try as I might,
that infernal part of me
harkens to the call.

Photo by Andrei Lazarev on Unsplash