Winter is the worst fucking time for a broken heart. It’s cold. It’s miserable. No one can be bothered to go out or do anything, so you can’t take your mind off of how terrible it all feels. You’re essentially left to reckon with your redefined existence as a new and shiny Lonely Person with a negative two degree windchill howling outside your window. Not to mention that jumping into the single life as a 20-year old college student after about six years of monogamy is a terrifying endeavor by any stretch of the imagination. It seemed like all my friends were masters in casual hookups, the tendons in their thumbs well-trained from seasons of Tinder swiping and here I was, painfully benched, upset when this game that I had known so well for so long didn’t come easily to me when I was playing alone.

“Let’s give it a minute before we admit that we’re through / Guess this is the winter / Our bodies are young and blue”

And there was nothing that I loved more when I was lonely to be made to feel. There was a perverse pleasure I got in having a broken heart for the first time, in finally knowing how it felt, finally knowing what all those songs were about. I had a masochistic urge where I wanted anything and everything I consumed to hurt. I purposely listened to music that made me feel like shit, made me ache and burn. I listened to Julie Byrne and cried, I haphazardly extended Sampha’s meditations of family loss to my own loss of a relationship. I thought that if I did that enough, it could make me feel something comparable to what it was like to be in love again. I watched “Before Sunrise”. I read “This Is How You Lose Her” for the third time. I developed painful, doomed crushes on people who gave me a modicum of attention just to spite myself. I sabotaged every chance I had for myself to heal because I liked the rawness and the edge of a broken heart a little too much. And when I realized I couldn’t sustain myself off making myself feel awful any longer ( I also needed new talking points besides how much it sucked to be single or I would end up with no friends), there was the simultaneous absence and freedom of suddenly having no plan where previously I thought I had it all figured out.

“Why am I so easy to forget like that?”

Winter became spring and spring became summer. I was sad, but not that sad anymore and tired of feeling bad for myself. I was back in Texas. Sun on my back, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to be a shiny and new Happy Person, a bad ass bitch. And while I couldn’t honestly admit I was okay being alone, I wanted the confidence to at least pretend I was. Two records in particular managed to peel back the layers of a lost relationship, shed light on that particular brand of loneliness that teases out past insecurities, and spoke to all-too-familiar fears of vulnerability and intimacy — SZA’s CTRL and Lorde’s Melodrama. Released one week apart from each other, it gave my early summer a one-two punch of fellow Twitter-savvy Scorpios reckoning with the fallout of a broken heart. They became the no-brainer soundtrack to a summer I dedicated to quit wallowing in self-pity.

I devoured CTRL, taking to heart SZA’s conversational musings about love, ain’t shit men, pussy, and the Great Millennial Fear of failing at nonchalance. I listened with the hopes it’d be the album that turned it all around for me. I needed some semblance of order at a time that felt like a freefall, and listening I thought a lot about control, the games we play with it, and how we jockey power in our intimate lives. Throughout CTRL I heard the threatening discomfort of vulnerability, of having someone reopen wounds that you had sewn shut yourself, and the pressure to keep it all together. It held a mirror up to the questions I was too afraid to ask myself, fearing it’d be an admittance of the very self-doubt I was trying so hard to shake off. Who would have control of my vulnerability when I opened up again? What if I’m the one who catches feelings? Do I want someone to lie to me if my booty isn’t gettin’ bigger? Am I being played? What the fuck am I doing with my life? Who will be there to love me while I figure it all out, and am I even worth that love in the first place?

“‘Cause in my head, in my head, I do everything right”

While I don’t like to think about the fact that I’m two days older than Lorde and be reminded of the gulf of talent and accomplishment between us, we share (besides our star sign) the recent ending of a long-term relationship. In Lorde, I heard that strange desire to sit in the heartbreak. But she manages to turn the raw and the salt-in-wound into brimming possibility. She captures the breathless energy and nerves of  a “quiet afternoon crush”, the small pangs of pain and memory that every new encounter carries with it, the rush of a stolen kiss under neon lights, and the drunken nights where all the memories and insecurities come flooding back. Her guttural growl at the 2:33 mark of “Supercut” that invites you to scream along and the desperate plea in her voice when she cries “I’ll love you ‘till you call the cops on me” on “Writer in the Dark” hit an animal nerve, making me want to throw myself on my knees, scratching at the embers glowing hot inside my chest. And watching the videos for both “Green Light” and “Perfect Places” — her exasperated thrashing against the weight of the old, drowning in the beauty of letting go to make room for the new, the frantic rush of running through the streets at night chasing nothing but a feeling — that feeling is what I’d been wanting all along. I didn’t want to make myself hurt anymore. I wanted that out-of-body freedom.

“This time next year I’ll be livin’ so good / won’t remember your name I swear”

I wrote down a list of “resolutions” the other day. I’m shit at keeping them, but I figured it was worth a shot to try and keep myself accountable. Among actually keeping a gym routine, continuing therapy, and embracing the freedom and messiness of hookups and fleeting flings, I wrote down to never forget my worth. Both CTRL and Melodrama were painfully poignant and honest about the moments where we let ourselves be vulnerable, where we grant someone else permission to take our heart in their hands and define our worth, even if for a moment. We carry our past but fear the baggage and any sort of relapse into what we once knew. We crave and lust for intimacy but know damn well how exposed it leaves us. We’re terrified of the conditional, but can’t bring ourselves to commit to the unconditional. And yet, Lorde and SZA manage to dance in that insecurity, this overwhelming expanse of uncertainty,  and rapturously laugh at those who dared to make us feel lonely enough that we forgot our worth. They let us dare to imagine the perfect place (even if we may not know what the fuck a perfect place is, anyways).

I have always felt strangely disjointed while living in the Valley. With both of my parents from the Dominican Republic, being a first-generation American and living in the Rio Grande Valley created a singular yet slightly fragmented way of growing up. Dominican customs and traditions and American ideals intersected among the heavily-influential Mexican culture in the Valley. Even after living in the Valley for over 18 years and being active within our own Dominican community here, it’s an intimidating and overwhelming feeling when you know you’re on the same Latinx wavelength as the people around you, but there’s still a hiccup in your Valley identity because of your similar yet inherently different customs.

I had never been able to truly verbalize this discomfort or pinpoint where it stemmed from, but I knew this feeling of un-belonging to my own community is where my desire to leave Texas came from. As a child, I wanted to become an illustrious pastry chef and study in New York, working towards the ultimate goal of becoming a Food Network star. I had never felt tied down to my hometown with the exception of family, friends, and my pets, and figured I’d have nothing to lose if I left. Though times have changed and though my career interests don’t exactly line-up with my eight-year-old self anymore, I’m still fulfilling my childhood dream of attending school outside of Texas; I’ll be studying Journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois beginning this fall. However, I’m finding it harder than I ever could have expected to say goodbye.

At the beginning of this final summer (because for all intents and purposes, this is my final summer as an official resident of the Rio Grande Valley), I became involved with an internship with the wonderful people at Curando RGV, which describes itself as “an intersectional community organization empowering our people in a variety of ways through activism, the arts, local history, and culture.” I had grown involved with the social justice scene in the Valley, but wanted to find a way to make more of an impact and figured this internship would steer me in the right direction.

Though I selectively chose to involve myself in the Media and Reproductive Justice committees, the internship proved that I would be working in all aspects to help improve the Valley; I’ve been volunteering as a clinic escort at Whole Woman’s Health in downtown McAllen throughout the summer, and as a whole we’ve volunteered at the McAllen Nature Center, visited ARISE in Alamo and saw the powerful and important work they are doing to help low-income immigrant families, and helped collect clothing for Curando RGV’s donation drive for the Refugee Center at Sacred Heart Church. I’ve experienced the Valley in such an incredible way. However, I never thought that the social justice work we were doing would intersect with the one thing I admittedly love most:  music.

I witnessed the power and influence that comes from the intersection of music and social justice at Galax Z Fair — a two-day festival put on by Tigersblood.org that takes place during Spring Break — where the festival and a demonstration involving the Caravana 43 coincided. Galax Z Fair became a space for the family of those disappeared 43 students to speak to an audience of mostly high school and college-age individuals and to alert and educate them on the heinous situation they were enduring and what we could do as a community to get closer to the justice that their loved ones deserve.

“A border culture is a beautiful culture, and I wish more of us here, as well as other alternative media outlets, realized this.” – Patrick Garcia

 At the beginning of the summer, word began flying around that a new, two-day summer music festival was in the works for McAllen. AQUÍnceañera was to be a totally unique festival; a celebration of place and independent sound complete with a brand-new venue devoted to culture, creativity, and inclusion.  In my case, the initial announcement of the festival didn’t relay its immediate importance.  Of course I was excited that there was another festival happening quite literally in my own backyard, but I was expecting something along the lines of Galax Z Fair.

However, AQUÍnceañera strayed far from any and all music festivals I’d attended in the past. AQUÍnceañera was an entity of its own, incomparable and immeasurable in importance to the countless other summer music festivals happening. There may be words in existence to describe what occurred AQUÍnceañera, but I don’t believe there exist words to describe how being at AQUÍnceañera felt.

“In the Valley, nearly everyone is a person of color. And if one throws a local fest, I mean, that’s ultimately what it’s going to be. But the idea of celebrating that element, as well as place, is a narrative I wanted to see revived, reminded, and asserted.” – Patrick Garcia

Walking into Yerberia Cultura for the first time was like walking into a friend’s backyard; it felt like home. Though I attended the first day of the festival alone, I didn’t feel alone in the slightest. I saw the familiar faces of those active in the local music/activist scene, I saw some well-known friends, but the electricity in the air of finally having a safe and familiar venue was intoxicating and enough to make being alone completely comfortable. Throughout the evening, which was filled with dancing to Selena out on the patio and complete with a Donald Trump piñata, I went around asking friends at AQUÍnceañera their thoughts on the festival, which allowed me to see that it wasn’t just me surging with feelings of love and community those two nights.

“It’s important because it’s really easy to lose your culture. […] Here, it’s everywhere. It’s expressed in all the art being made. You’re with your own people and your own culture.” – Myriah Acosta

“I think it’s important because you are celebrating what you are.  I feel like in the Valley we always try to be ‘we want to be like Austin’ or ‘we want to be like San Antonio’, and this is a counter to that. We don’t need to be that; we are something different. In my opinion better, but it’s definitely different, and I think it’s beautiful. There’s nothing like this.” – Edgar Gonzalez 

From Danica Salazar’s throaty pleas of “DON’T FORGET YOUR PLACE” during DeZorah’s final song to Victoria Ruiz’s constant affirmations of love for McAllen and the Rio Grande Valley throughout both Downtown Boys’ set and the days preceding the festival via social media, it was obvious that AQUÍnceañera stood for something far and beyond the music.

The festival did not occur in a vacuum in which music and social issues were mutually exclusive and where we would all return to our daily lives and recount the weekend’s events as just another concert. It became a space where important issues, such as the brutalization of black and brown bodies at the hands of police, feminism, immigration justice and reform, and the the Valley’s first-ever conference for queer people of color, were openly and publicly discussed within and alongside the music and persisted within the festivalgoers.  Before Malportado Kids exited the stage band member Joey DeFrancesco said, “We’ve been all over the country this month and this is the most special thing we get to do.”  In those moments was impossible to acknowledge the beauty and singularity of the place where we live.

I left the venue that night feeling warm and starry-eyed, and that warmth continued onwards into Aquí Estamos, the Rio Grande Valley’s first-ever conference focusing solely on LGBT people of color and the intersections that those identities bring about in the RGV. Full of insightful workshops, knowledge-sharing activities, and beautiful and positive individuals committed to making the Rio Grande Valley a safe and equal space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identifying people of color, Aquí Estamos was a learning experience and a chance to communicate with individuals who we may not necessarily see or hear about in our every day lives. Taking part in such a critical and pivotal movement was a reality check in the practices of what allies like myself should be doing in order to bolster the voices of these individuals and what we as a community must do in order to continue being an equal and safe space for everyone in the Rio Grande Valley.

The humid South Texas air blew slowly and quietly as Romeo Santos’ voice echoed throughout the patio of Yerberia Cultura. The venue was celebrating its opening eve by hosting the after-conference dance party for Aquí Estamos.  As I stood in the circle of dancers, swaying my hips and spinning in time with the music, I soaked in the moment. There was a feeling of lightness, of comfort, of pure joy that I felt dancing under Yerberia Cultura’s hanging lights. I felt a connection with everyone dancing with me, even if I wasn’t necessarily the closest of friends with anyone there. The hesitation and trepidation I previously felt of not being a “true part” of my community dissolved in the night.

I realized a had a true and established home here, even when it didn’t feel like it sometimes, and realized I would miss everything about the Valley. I would miss these South Texas nights. I would miss raspas and elote and marranitos and spiropapas and conchas. I would miss the manager at my local Walgreens that sees me so often he’s started calling me “mija”. I would miss the electricity that erupts and overflows from the crowds at Cine El Rey. I would miss being a part of this community. And within the realization of everything that I would miss, that evening, I felt more present than ever. I felt powerful and whole and at home.

Me sentí AQUÍ.