The Tears of my Youth

The Tears of My Youth

 

I remember my very first encounter with depression. I was only five years old. My mother hit me with the belt that day. I don’t even remember what I’d done. She just got so angry and started hitting me the belt. I was so incredibly sad. It wasn’t the pain of the whipping but the fact that she blew up at me and I upset her so much that she had to go to the extent of beating me. She’d never done that. I never thought she’d ever be capable of hurting me in such an awful way because she was always a good loving and nurturing mother. She was my mother and father as my father died while she was pregnant with me. She always had a warm meal and took me to school. She is a woman of faith. She is a strong Catholic and taught me all about God. How could she do this?

I felt so much agony within me. I went and hid under the kitchen table. I stayed under it for hours until the late evening, pressing my knees to my chest sobbing loudly. “How could my mommy do this to me?” I looked up at the picture of Jesus on the wall. I spoke to Him in my mind, “Why, Lord? Why, Jesus? Why did she do this to me? This is the same mommy who reads me Spanish bedtime stories. She braids my hair with pink bows and makes me ruffled dresses on her old, wooden, sewing machine. Why did she do this to me?” I cried out.

I stared at the picture of Jesus. I looked into His eyes. He looked so sad. He had a crown of thorns and blood was dripping down His head to His holy face and His precious hands were nailed on the cross. “How could I be the one crying?” I thought. No one could hurt more than the Savior nailed up on the cross; the Savior who died for my sins. At that moment, I put myself together and said, “I love you, Jesus,” and got up and went off to bed.

That was the first time I realized who Jesus was. My mom taught me all about Him but I never understood the concept of what Jesus was all about until that day at the tender age of five. I accepted Jesus into my heart. From that day on, Jesus became my inspiration of hope, sympathy, and understanding.  My mother came to tuck me to bed that night. I pretended to be asleep. I heard her whisper, “Father, Son, and Holly Spirit. God please take care of my daughter.”

As I grew to adolescence I started questioning my identity and started having insecurities, like being so poor. I remember how poor we were growing up. We lived off Marianna Street in East Los Angeles. It was a barrio full of graffiti, drugs, gangs, and violence. We moved out of East Los Angeles when I was thirteen after a drive-by shooting that almost killed me.

Gangsters broke into my elder brother Jacob’s truck and he heard the racket and went out trying to be brave. When the gangsters pulled out their guns and started shooting. I was asleep in the bedroom and suddenly something told me, “Mari, roll over!” It was sheer instinct. I rolled over and that very moment a bullet went flying over my head. If I hadn’t rolled over the bullet would have hit me in the head. I had no idea what was happening, always having been a sound sleeper. I didn’t think anything of that instinct until years later that it must have been my guardian angel. When I realized what was happening, I crawled on the floor and found my mother and mother and two older sisters and two older brothers lying flat on the ground. They were so frightened but luckily nobody got hurt. When the police arrived, and saw the gunshot over my bed they asked if I was in the bedroom when it happened. I said yes and they said, “It could have killed you. What did you do?”

I responded, “I don’t know. Something just told me to roll over.”

After the shooting my eldest brother Jacob took charge and said he was going to get us out of East Los Angeles. Jacob and my sister Catherine were in their twenties and they had jobs. My mother worked as a caregiver and Avon lady and we collected social security. My family bought a house in the nearby city called Montebello. We had a small, cozy two-bedroom house. It was simply perfect. I remember when we moved in that I thought it was a rich city. The lawns were so green and perfectly cut. There was no graffiti or signs of gangsters. It wasn’t too far from East Los Angeles but it was definitely a better city. For the first time in my life, I felt safe in my home. I didn’t have to go to a school with metal detectors like my old junior high.

It was at my new intermediate school that I met Melissa, Clair, and Allie. They befriended me. It was a time of bomber jackets and burgundy lipstick. It was the time where I began dyeing my hair red. It was an attempt at changing my identity because I really did not know who I was. All I knew was that I wanted to be different. I hated being “Maricela Estrada” and just wished I was someone else. It was a time where I should have embraced my youth, but for me it was the beginning of my manic depression.

Sure, I made friends. I was welcomed into the popular crowd; that is, until the day that I first stuffed my bra. I simply loathed my body. I thought I was too fat and to top it off, I had a flat chest. I was battling an eating disorder. I was always self-conscious about my body. Yes, people told me that I was pretty but beauty would never be enough. I had to be thin. I worshiped the model Cindy Crawford for her beautiful face and hot body. Oh, how I wished I was her! I had pictures torn out of magazines all over my room. She was my idol.

I think that for some period between the ages of twelve and fourteen, I may have been anorexic. I’d starve myself, having nothing but rice cakes and water. Sometimes when I could not take the starvation, I’d have a spoonful of boiled beans. Soon, I was able to see my rib cage and Catherine would yell at me and say that I was getting too skinny. She’d say things like, “Look at you, Mari! Your head is bigger than your body!” However, it didn’t matter how skinny I was. When I looked in the mirror I felt like I looked so fat.

I thought she was just jealous. My mother was also always calling me to eat one of her home cooked meals. She’d tell me that I had to come eat something but I wouldn’t. I had to be skinny. That was the only way that I’d love myself. I had to have the perfect body. I had to be skinny with big breasts. I just had to lose a little more weight and stuff my bra with toilet paper to give myself the perfect body.

One morning, I grabbed balls of toilet paper and started stuffing my bra. It was some progress. I felt good all day at school, but once the bell rang, it led to my public embarrassment. A popular girl named Amber saw the tissue paper coming out of my bra and said, “Oh my God! You stuff your bra!”

At that moment, the bell rang and everyone seemed to turn their heads as she yelled, “Stuffer!” Everybody started chasing me, screaming out, “Stuffer! Stuffer!” They threw balls of wet toilet paper at me and chased me all the way home. I ran into the bedroom and cried my eyes out. I knew that the next day would be a nightmare, and it was. Clair’s dad drove us to school and there in front of school was a group of eighth-grade boys. They started pointing to me and laughing. It was as if they were waiting for me. They yelled, “Stuffer! Stuffer! Stove Top stuffing!” Clair guarded me. She was five feet, nine inches tall and she yelled at them to shut up. During nutrition, two girls, Sara and Gabby, came up to me and said, “Oh, Maricela, you dropped this.” They handed me a ball of toilet paper. The stuffing bra incident followed me all through middle school and this only added to my depression. Clair tried to comfort me saying, “Don’t worry Maricela. By the time you get to high school your boobs are going to grow so  big and everyone will be jealous of you. Little did I know that several years later they did grow and become a double D. If those boy could see me now, I would say, “Eat your heart out boys but you aint having none of this!”

But it wasn’t until the summer of 1993 that I experienced my first prolonged episode of manic depression. I was thirteen years old. I had a little dog. She was a tan-colored terrier named Crystal. She was my best friend and she got me through the attacks of my wicked schoolmates. She’d always love me whether or not I stuffed my bra; she’d always be my best friend.

I tried to develop my own little world. It revolved around my little dog. I’d paint her nails red and dress her with a cute, red turtleneck. When I’d get depressed, I’d call out to Crystal and she’d come running to me. I’d hug her and feel the love that I was missing in my life. It was just me and Crystal.

But one day, Jacob got up early to go to boot camp and he left the gate door open. I was sleeping when I heard a big crash followed by an agonized scream. It was Catherine who screamed and when I ran outside to see what happened, I found that my little dog had been hit by a station wagon. She was limping and bleeding internally. I watched her slowly die and my heart was torn apart.

After that tragic day, I fell into three months of manic depression. I’d lock myself in the bedroom and listen to Morrissey. Crystal died on a Sunday and I would listen, “Every day is like Sunday. Every day is silent and grey”. I’d cry all day and all night and the worst part was that my family didn’t even notice how much I was hurting. They went on from day to day and didn’t notice even one of my tears. I’d experienced depression as a child, but never that severe, never that manic, never that dreadfully long. I would soon find that the black cloud of depression would follow me and the sensation of tears cascading down my cheeks would be part of my life forever.

I used to cry so much. I cried as a child and as I grew up, I started having crying spells. I thought depression would never go away. I didn’t know back then that mental health recovery was possible. I didn’t know that I could actually be happy and successful. I didn’t know that I would become a vessel of hope and inspiration and dedicate my life helping other. This book may sound depressing because it is my diary but trust me my friends, this book has a happy ending.