Writing is how I process what I feel, what I witness, and what I can’t yet name. It’s how I move thoughts from chaos to coherence—not to polish them, but to understand them. It’s how I move through confusion and contradiction, not to find perfection, but to find clarity. I write to let what’s real exist—uncensored, unperformed, and unfiltered. In a world that rewards silence and performance, writing is where I speak freely, where I can tell the truth as I see it in the moment, knowing it may evolve. It’s where I let myself look without turning away.

As Natalie Goldberg wrote, “The writing is not you, yet it is you; it is everything you know coming through you.”  These entries are not performances or conclusions—they’re processes: sometimes incorrect, momentary beliefs or feelings that lead me closer to my truth. They are reflections of where I am, not where I’m supposed to be. Writing, for me, is not about resolution but revelation. It’s how I allow my voice, make room for what’s true, and learn to live with what I see.

I share them because honesty shouldn’t live in isolation. The act of sharing makes the private public—not for validation, but for connection. My words are not instructions or ideals; they’re offerings. I share so others might recognize a thought, a feeling, a fracture, and know they’re not alone in it. These reflections are less about being read and more about being witnessed—about creating space for truth to exist between us, unpolished, evolving, and free.

Thursday, 16 March 2017 

"Stuck"

By: Yvonne Rodriguez 

"I feel like a fraud. Maybe I have for a while. It's hard for me to write these words, to even admit it to myself, but here I am: A fraud. A fake a hypocrite, a liar. Or, am I just confused? I honestly don't even know anymore.

I hate being angry. I hate being mean. I hate hiding it all. Nobody knows. 

I look around at all the people walking around and I wonder: "What are they hiding?" Because I can't be the only one right? No, I'm not. 

I don't know when all this started and I don't know how it got this far, but I just want to stop. I want this feeling (of craziness) to go away.

I feel stuck as well. Stuck at my job, stuck with debt, stuck in an apartment (what feels like the tiniest apartment ever) all day, stuck in relationships (EXCLUDING MY AJ), stuck in religion (not that I don't want to be religious), and stuck in my damn mind ALL DAMN DAY!!! Let me tell you, it is absolutely miserable! But it feels as if I'm stuck in quicksand in the middle of nowhere with no one around to hear me cry; scream, plead, beg for help.

How did I get here? I really just don't even know anymore.

I feel like a stranger to myself. Or perhaps I've never even known myself? That's definitely a possibility.

I don't like it here. Wherever 'here' is."

Reflection 

Monday, 1 December 2025

By: Yvonne Rodriguez, M.Ed.

I remember feeling that way: like I was a fraud. Like someone would find me out—as if it wasn’t obvious to begin with. My performance was sloppy at best. I felt that way because I was still performing, still wearing the masks. And that was killing me.

“Or, am I just confused?” I ask.
Yes, that was part of it.

I WAS confused and conflicted—the authentic, genuine me who was learning/unlearning, fighting to find and be me. Resistant to the performance and mask-wearing, constantly questioning and saying the “wrong” thing. I had a bit of a clue here, but I really just didn’t know.

The “false self” and “true self” had been colliding for quite a while at this point. Winnicott describes as psychological tension that forces awakening: the self can no longer tolerate being split. The anger, the being mean—those weren’t me. Not who I innately am. They were masks to cover sadness, grief, hurt, pain. Masks modeled for me. Masks inherited through silence and discomfort. Masks learned because the people around me didn’t know how to hold difficult emotions—so they taught suppression instead of expression.

Montessori wrote, “The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
But I was raised by people who never received those gifts themselves. Their shadows became my scripts.

When I wondered what others were hiding, I was brushing up against something I couldn’t yet name: the universal performance. The way society shapes us to be palatable rather than honest. The masks we’re all taught to wear to avoid rejection, punishment, shame. Knowing I couldn’t be the only one, but being made to feel like I was—that created the illusion that something was wrong with me.

Piaget would say this was the developmental time when my internal schema stopped believing the illusion that it matched reality—I felt the truths conflicting in my body before I could express or understand what was happening. My mind was trying to assimilate experiences it couldn’t reconcile. I was outgrowing the story I had been given about myself, about others, about the world we live in.

I didn’t understand then how and when it all started, but I have a better picture now.
I didn’t know back then what it would take to make that feeling of craziness go away—to free myself from generations of unaddressed and unresolved pain, hurt, grief, patterns, cycles.

To get there—to myself, who I am under the mask and without the performance—I had to lose, and give up, nothing short of everything.

Brianna Wiest says, “You are not breaking down. You are breaking open.”
That was me. Breaking open.

I felt stuck for sooooooo long—because I was. In every aspect, I was self-sacrificing, masking, performing. I liked the work I did and the family I worked for, but I was always performing and masking to meet arbitrary or harmful social norms and expectations. At the time, they lived in downtown LA, and there wasn’t much we could do. We were indoors most of the day, every day.

I was overwhelmed and overstimulated, confined to a small space for the majority of my days, and I didn’t realize how much transition time and regulation I needed. I didn’t give myself the space to do the things that grounded me—reading, writing, connecting with my partner—and I constantly felt obligated, both at work and at home, to keep up with domestic duties. And I prioritized those over myself every single time.

I felt stuck in every relationship—aside from my relationship with AJ. Though there was much self-sacrifice in that relationship, I was always choosing the right person with him.
Stuck in religion—something I had given 8–9 years of my life to, and the entire time I questioned it. The entire time I sensed something was not right.

Whitman once wrote, “Re-examine all you have been told…”

I didn’t know it then, but that’s exactly what I had begun doing—questioning what I’d accepted as normal.

It saddens me that for so long I felt “stuck” and “miserable” in my own mind, when the whole time it was trying to reveal truth to me. Psychologically, this is the turning point—the moment you realize the symptoms were messages, not malfunctions.

All I ever needed was for the world to be quiet long enough for me to hear myself. But I was overwhelmed by my own inner world because I never had the time, and I never learned how to feel safe in silence or stillness. I didn’t know how to create the conditions where I could actually listen to myself.

I wrote that it felt like being stuck in quicksand in the middle of nowhere with no one around to hear me cry, scream, plead, beg for help.
The only one who could save me was me. And to do so, I had to lose everything and learn to embrace silence.

Silence is terrifying until it becomes sanctuary.
As Sylvia Plath once said, “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
But I learned later that my silence wasn’t emptiness—it was clarity waiting for me to be still enough to hear it.

I felt like a stranger to myself because the person I was was the result of others—adults who raised me, societal norms, expectations.
I was right: I never knew myself because the world was too loud, and I hadn’t yet learned to quiet it so I could hear myself.

This aligns with Montessori’s insight that, “We must give the child the world small enough to absorb.”
But I was handed the world in chaos, noise, fear, contradiction. I never had the space to absorb myself.

And as Piaget would say, self-knowledge is constructed—it must be built, not inherited.
I had to reconstruct myself from the ground up.

I didn’t like the person I was or where I was at.
But though I’ve experienced so much pain from all the loss I’ve endured, I can now say: I like where I’m at. I’m proud of the person I am. I’m proud that I was able to reveal her.

Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
For the first time in my life, I finally feel that to be true—not as performance, but as freedom.

Saturday, 4 January 2026

“You chose to surrender the best thing that’s happened to you...

Running away from your fear was the best you could do.

You made this decision. You chose our division.”

— Division, by Aly & AJ

Yesterday, I was out at lunch with someone and found myself saying the thing I’ve said so many times, still surprised by how true it remains.

I know you can’t rush grief. I know that. And yet I get so, so frustrated that I am still very deeply in love with AJ. Next month it will be two years. Two years of grieving hard. Two years of feeling devastated and sad—while he has been able to move forward the entire time. Whether or not he has moved on internally, he has moved on with his actions: with someone else, building with her and with others, learning how to live without me—allowing others to take care of him instead of choosing the harder thing of facing what was broken and repairing it with me. And I have had to adjust to that reality, even when every part of me resists it.

They responded that if they were in my position, they would take that as a sign that the person didn’t value them.

I understand why people say that. I even understand it intellectually.

I told them that, being honest, I held most of the relationship. I carried most things—the emotional weight, the tending, the remembering, the holding-it-all-together. Later, I realized something more precise: I didn’t need him to do anything or be anything extraordinary. I just expected him to be there with me. To show up. To stay.

There were so many moments when all I wanted was for him to join me in the mundane—laundry, dishes, taking out the trash, sitting in shared silence while life unfolded. I didn’t even expect participation. I would literally say, “You don’t have to do anything. Just sit here and look pretty.” What I wanted wasn’t effort. It was presence. Shared space. A sense of being with me.

I said out loud what I already know: that the weight was never distributed evenly. That I carried the majority while he left me to deal with things alone—emotionally alone, even when I wasn’t technically alone. That he stayed until staying finally cost him something. And when it did, he left.

I know what his choices say.
I know what his actions mean.
I know what the imbalance reveals.

And still, my heart is struggling to catch up with what my rational mind already understands.

What I realized later—after the conversation ended and I was alone with myself again—is that while I often speak about what he didn’t do, I rarely speak about what he did contribute. Maybe because it’s harder to articulate. Maybe because honoring it makes the grief sharper.

He was the person who helped me recognize, appreciate, and believe in the beauty of this world when all I could see was horror. He showed me that I didn’t have to fit the mold, wear the mask, or perform to be loved. He reflected something back to me that I couldn’t yet see or trust: my beauty, my truth, my depth.

He showed me the beauty in myself before I ever believed it existed.

What lived between us was love, yes—but also truth, freedom, and a kind of beauty that extended beyond us, touching the lives of those around us. It was real. It mattered. It shaped me.

And that’s the part people don’t always understand when they say, “If he valued you, he would have stayed.” Because grief isn’t only about being left. It’s also about losing something that once saved you. Something that opened the world when it felt unbearable. Something that allowed you to breathe.

I also admitted something else, quietly but honestly: even though trying to make sense of it happens naturally, I am tired of doing it. I am tired of circling the same questions, hoping they’ll finally resolve into something clean or comforting. This will never fully make sense. I have made all the sense of it that can be made.

Maybe the work now isn’t understanding more.
Maybe it’s accepting that understanding has reached its limit.

My heart isn’t behind because it’s foolish or weak.
It’s behind because it is still honoring what was true.

And maybe that, too, is a kind of courage.

By: Yvonne Rodriguez, M.Ed.

Sunday, 25 January 2026

"I am alone without you..." —Richard Feynman

Saturday, 24 January 2026 @6:48AM—Just waking up

-I had a dream. They—AJ and his current girlfriend—were there.

-I miss waking up next to him. I miss being expected at the end of the day—going home to him, him being my home. I miss calling him to let him know I'm on my way home. I miss him as my destination. I miss being his home. I miss him being the first and last person I see each day. I miss being the person he saw at the beginning and end of each day.

@7:20AM—I don't want someone, I want AJ. More so, I want this feeling, this longing, this desire for only him to go the fuck away.

@7:23AM—I don't want to be here... 

I struggled really hard yesterday.

It was intolerable—like most days are—but this one was extra potent, extra loud in my body and mind. I gave in to my impulses: food and alcohol, the quick comfort, the fast softening. Not because I didn’t know better, but because the pain exceeded what I could hold alone.

I woke up from a dream with AJ and his current girlfriend. I don’t remember any of the details, but it didn’t matter—my body remembered what it needed to remember. Before I was even fully conscious, the thought was already there: I miss waking up next to AJ every day.

I miss him being the last person I see every night.
I miss having him to call at the end of the day—to say, I’m on my way back to you.
I miss him being my destination.
And I miss being his home.

Him specifically. Not “someone.” Not the concept of companionship. Not a placeholder future. Him.

And I hate that I didn’t see all of that for what it was when I had it.

I remember something else too—something that still stings because it didn’t soften with time. After he broke up with me, the more time that passed, the more it hurt to know he was gone and building and sharing with someone else. “Hurt” is an understatement. It felt like the meaning of thirteen years was being rewritten somewhere I couldn’t reach.

There was a time where my mind tried to survive the reality by loosening its grip: Maybe we weren’t meant for each other. Maybe our time came and went. Maybe I should try it too. I was tired of being alone—without him.

And I did try.

There was someone who got me—someone compatible in all the practical ways. Consistent. Communicative. Safe. The kind of man who would have happily taken care of me, who could have taken care of me, including financially. On the surface, it could’ve “worked.” But there was no romantic or sexual attraction/interest, and I realized what that meant about me and what I refuse to become.

Because here’s what became painfully clear:

Even if I’m with someone, I’m alone without AJ.
And—also—there are men out there who would be more than happy to take care of me, and I could choose that if I wanted to stop struggling.

But I don’t want survival-love. I don’t want a relationship I accept because I’m afraid of being poor, afraid of being alone, afraid of the ground falling out from under me. I would rather be homeless than build a life on a lie that costs me my integrity. I’m choosing to break that cycle.

I remember that AJ asked me—post break-up—once: “Doesn’t the WHO matter?”
And from emotion—not truth—I said it didn’t.

But the WHO is everything.

Not because I’m naive. Not because I don’t believe “someone else” exists. I do. I’m certain it exists outside of AJ.

But I don’t want it to be “someone.”
I want it to be him.

At the end of the day, I told someone all of this. They listened without judging me, without trying to fix me, and honestly that alone was more than enough. But they also said they wished they knew exactly what to say, that they just want me to be happy, to stop worrying about him, to find someone who will love and care for me.

Well-intended. Kind. Normal.

And still—when people say that, I hear pressure.

So I told them the truth: knowing exactly what to say doesn’t exist, and it wouldn’t really help anyway. What helps is listening without judgment or fixing, and showing up even when it’s repetitive—assuming there’s capacity, and assuming it doesn’t come with an eventual cost the way it has before.

I told them something else that I need to keep remembering: happiness isn’t an accurate measurement of a life lived well. It’s a transient feeling—weather, not a compass. I wish people didn’t worship happiness like it’s the only proof a person is “doing life right.” We only recognize happiness because we’ve endured its opposite. Night and day.

And I’m not worried about “the dude.” I’m not worried there isn’t someone out there who could love and care for me. I know there is.

What I am doing—what most people won’t—is allowing the feelings and resurfaced trauma to give me information. I’m letting it show me what’s true, what still hurts, where the wound lives, what it needs, and what patterns I refuse to repeat.

But when someone says “just find someone who will love you,” I hear three things underneath it—whether they mean it or not:

I hear dismissal of something real and irreplaceable.
I hear a reduction of a specific bond into something interchangeable.
And I hear the idea that being loved by “a man” should make me happy—as if love is a cure and happiness is the point.

And I can’t pretend that lands as comfort.

As I continued to reflect on how I have—and still do—say things to AJ that I don’t mean, I was reminded of a conversation I’d had earlier this week with someone in the law field about how not everyone is careful with what they say. That conversation immediately brought me back to the words I’ve said impulsively to AJ—things spoken from pain that I can’t take back, and which I admitted in the moment. Words that caused damage. Words he replays. Words that became part of his record of me.

And the worst part is: I can’t change what’s already been said. Once we say something, there's no take backs.

ADHD makes this hard in a way that feels almost humiliating—lack of impulse control, emotional flooding, the lack of pause when the nervous system is activated while simultaneously experiencing shut down. And one of the worse parts is that I do have awareness now. I understand more now. I can name the pattern.

And I still do it anyway. And it's not because I want to or because those words hold truth.

Which means the problem isn’t that I don’t care. It’s that when I’m activated—especially around attachment, abandonment, grief—my system doesn’t wait for my wisdom to catch up. My body speaks before my mind can intervene. Like word vomit (Mean Girls).

So here I am: grieving him, grieving myself, grieving the words, grieving the role of “home,” grieving the orientation I used to have when I belonged somewhere specific every day.

I don’t need to be fixed. I don't need to be happy. I don't need to figure it all out.

I need to be witnessed—by myself most of all—without turning my pain into a moral failure, and without letting anyone else’s discomfort rush me into a version of “moving on” that isn’t true.

Because I’m not lost.

I’m learning. And I’m telling the truth.

By: Yvonne Rodriguez, M.Ed.