mex jew fairy, at your service

hi. happy sunday, precious babies.

what i will relay here is a very nuanced journey with lots of depth. what first may seem like a disdain of my jewish roots can’t be taken at face value. i continue to find myself back here, wearing my jewish star necklace, again and again. when i speak on recoiling at my own weirdness, i ultimately open up to her graces, with more gratitude now than ever before. i am in love with me— this heart, this mind and these feelings. ok? ok :)

ALSO, you little freaks, these heavy experiences are not my whole life. generally speaking i love that i am the weird girl who puts both her palms on the tree to talk to it. most days i feel beautiful as i am laying out in the sun like a little worm in pure bliss. for some reason, writing is often my time to let the heaviness out, to reflect on my shadows and possibly even heal them. sometimes my art is an expression of grace, others, it’s an opportunity for me to make sense of the places cobwebs grow.

hehe, ok, you know those clips in a tv show where the main character is staring at the screen, everything behind her is stopped in time— maybe it’s a school lunch fight—and you see a still photo of kids with food in their hands and hair— and she is talking to us saying “i bet you’re wondering how i got her, well, let me tell you"— that’s me, to you, today.

it’s 2024 and i feel like an alien amongst humans who know exactly what they’re doing. i see the pretty girl i knew in high school at the store with her pretty fiance and their pretty baby. in contrast, i go home to sit with a burning candle to write psalms. it’s 2024 and i put back on my jewish star necklace that my wonderful grandma gifted to me at my bat-mitzvah. it helps me feel close to her as well as my ancestors.

not long ago, a very close loved one told me a lot of her friends make fun of how spiritual i am. moments like this, though innocuous and innocent to everyone else, jerk me back into feeling like an alien planted onto this foreign planet. this isn’t the first time i’ve been relayed messages of that nature. in elementary school, my best friends would call me weird while tapping on my head. they loved me, i went with them to visit their families out of state during thanksgiving, it truly was well.

being othered as weird my whole life has not caused damage to me, i love it, truly—however it does remind me that resonance will be felt with God and nature before other humans at times.

internally, as i lived polarized on the spectrum of weirdo to normie, i was also straddling another duality— mexican v jew. this experience of being a mixed ethnic girl > woman is something i don’t speak of often. my dad, a mexican, experiencing blatant racism just based off of his name— my best friend, a brown woman, with sharp physical contrasts to the all americana girl— they are the ones who deserve to hold this conversation most. but, today, i wanted to take up a little space and speak on how my own contrasts have effected me.

the first juxtaposition that made me question my ability to belong was within my own jewish community. from mother’s day out as a baby at the temple up until 8th grade, i grew up in a shtetl. meaning, i only knew jewish people, other than my mexican family who i visited in the summers. i went to school, sunday school, played sports, camp and all after school activities at the jewish community center.

i was only one of 2 kids in our whole tiny class of 13 kids who had a parent who wasn’t jewish. mind you, my dad wasn’t just a gentile, he was mexican. along with being mixed, i wasn’t the child of rich parents, like most of my cohorts in class. my best friend’s parents were surgeons, successful entrepreneurs and rabbi’s— my family members were high earning professionals and mavericks of their domains. in my humble home, my parents didn’t go to college, frankly i don’t even think my dad finished high school. my mom owned a small business and my dad was ultimately a construction laborer. ~ shout out to my dad for teaching himself english so he could work in the service industry with american visitors in mexico— and for reading text books about anatomy just because he never went to school, and for studying every construction text book at home depot so he could be a self taught jack of all labor trades ~

i can hear the general population of society grimacing at what i’m saying. like, “ok, carly, me and my family of 5 lived in a 2 bedroom apartment.” hey, i hear you, but this is my unique experience.

being jewish yet othered was something i always felt, even though those who loved me, loved my fully. 95% of my community accepted me with open arms, but just like the comment section, sometimes we notice that one nasty person amongst dozens of kind ones. one day, i heard my great aunt whisper to someone at a family dinner after she introduced us “her dad’s mexican, but we still love her”. the thing is, i was mostly accepted, however my dad was not. my grandparents begged my young 19 year old mom not to marry him— this unedutacted, dirt poor mexican man— my father. though they ultimately moved passed that (sure, jan), my dad stayed away from many of our family events. the rift was clear, and i felt its crack in my heart. he ultimately never chose to become an american citizen, dying on his green card. i believe these relationships are at the core of that choice.

it was when my grandma died and she left me her diamond wedding ring from my grandfather that i trusted she did love me the same as the other grandkids, who grew up in affluent, well educated households. though i don’t hold the way they treated my father—and me by extension of being his seed— against them, it shaped all of our lives.

after my grandma and father passed, i was able to confront the landscape of my jewish upbringing being mixed ethnic and the ways it’s weaved into my blood and bones. my dad was my best friend in the whole entire universe, but he had secrets. i wonder if that was why the rift within us all was there— not (only) because he was a poor, gentile, mexican man, but because of the man he was— completely and utterly imperfect, and they saw that (in his honor, i want to say, he leaped and jumped levels of healing from where he came from). alternatively, i sometimes imagine what would have become of him if he was fully loved and accepted when they all became family. gosh, that’s for another day. the rivers stemmed from a different root than i imagined they had my whole life. it makes some sort of sense now. but, i was still half him, and that was the red white and green letter i wore on my heart from the moment i was born.

being a mexican amognst jews feels safe for me now, but being jewish has never felt this strained. i actually will not get into this part of my identity today, as it deserves a whole other essay, but let me just say this— if you don’t like me simply because i am jewish and you don’t know my politics or anything about me, fuck you :-)

as for being a weird, spiritual fairy, well, that’s one aspect of myself i am still sort of ashamed of. i can’t quite wrap that part up in a bow because it’s still a mess. no atom in my body wants the house in suburbia with the white picket fence, the husband who goes to the office from 9-5, the two weeks of vacation and the 2 kids, but i am jealous of the ease of those people who have it— no, i am not envious of what they have, i just sometimes crave a simple path. but then, i open my eyes and see that the life path i have unfolding in front of me is a blessing and a gift, and i wouldn’t have it any other way. i thank God for this life i have been given, that i have chosen, and i carry on with grace.

i love you. thanks for being here.

i’ll probably archive this soon because i low-key took my family out to wash, and i am so, madly in love with my gradnma; if i am going to speak on her legacy i want to also honor her. but, nonetheless,

domingo is for lovers

carly yolanda trujillo