Dear Stranger,

What have I got to lose? At a dinner party where everybody talks in an amusing language, I try to keep up. At the uptown country club, this «jibara» is lost with the nicest strangers she’s ever met. Questioning why this growing feeling doesn’t happen at my hometown.

They sent me far away, maybe they made a mistake. You make me feel like a home, far away from the one that is suppose to be mine. They said not mutter a single word of leaving, but dearest stranger, I could never lie to you. I wish I was with you.

I am proud of who I am, I am amazed of what I have become. I know damn well I’m one of the brightest cookies in their burnt batch. They keeps burning us, but I’ve learned how to turn off fires to avoid their remarks for a silly mistake. Put my hand on the stove upon their orders too many times, sacrificed meeting with friends to avoid receiving what they called feedback again.

Living in their shadow was fading into an oblivious familiarity. I thought the pressure was suppose to transform me into a diamond, instead I continue to be crushed by the weight of responsibilities without the title nor money.

Do you mind if I cry, dear stranger? I’m afraid I’ve lost the opportunity to grow under magnolias my blazing stars. I could have done so much more, if I had the courage to escape the dried up purple glowing vines between my feet.

My friends back home tell me I am too weak, but I am positive «pendeja» is thrown behind my back. Cause I let the monster haunt me every night, lurks through my stuffed animals and reads the empty diary entries I neglected from my depression. If this is my hero arch, can we skip to the ascending action?

I long to be happy again hanging with my best friends, we were a berserk bunch back in 2016. I counted twelve of us at the Christmas party, but now we’ve faded into four disciples waiting for an Easter resurrection of the connections we’ve lost. If I ever cried because of them, it was only because of my friend’s friends ‘cuz they hated me for believing in God and following what in the Bible we read.

High school isn’t so different from this place, dearest stranger, there’s still cliques you cannot trust full of mean girls and jocks. Either the anti-bullying campaigns did not reach their district or they were bullied themselves for talking or looking at odds with the society from their time. Now they hunt new targets when they don’t speak their language of the gins, margaritas, MJs, and antidepressants. I pray for them to find some type of new happiness.

I thought I was bilingual, but I’ve learned how to be polyglot. Sweet talk at this place, trash-talk at the closest bar, but keep quiet of your affairs cause they’ll rip you apart when you talk shit of their favorite boy. No, I can’t report any of this to counselor, they’ve said so before «forgive and forget» the scholar even wrote: these men and women don’t deserve to respond, isn’t it enough to believe the word of a protestant?