Who am I
Was a question that resonated so strongly for me throughout the pandemic. The forceful introspect some of us were privileged enough to endure. I could not help overthinking this one simple question that led to many other questions. Am I a good friend, a good daughter, was I ever a good sister or a bad one, was I neither growing up?
Am I impulsive, am I intense? Is it true, am I funny…Did those girls, those boys really think I was pretty? Am I pretty? Am I smart? Most importantly, am I interesting? Do I really like to cook?
We are so many things and we are not always those same things. This one question is expected from us as an elevator pitch for others, usually reducing us to our names and our professional endeavors. Often the answers are tailored made for greetings and first encounters. For me, due to my studies abroad, I am constantly Honduran, here, and now, I am a researcher and a feminist, which helps others answer the reason of my displacement. But does it really? Before I was ever a researcher, I was just a girl that really wanted to live abroad. Therefore, I am now a migrant; and attached from birth, I am a woman, and I will forever be a woman that encounters everything through those categories and within what my gendered body entails.
While quarantined and bearing a strict lockdown for more than 70 days in my childhood home back in Honduras, I was Nicole. I was more than ever, living intensely as my mother’s daughter. Learning more about her, her childhood, and her life before me. I was no longer friends with my high school peers. Maybe I felt disconnected to them. I only remained Javi’s friend and refused to be the person I used to for so many years. I was just a Salgado, a niece, a plant enthusiast, a reader, an observer, a woman thirsty to connect. I was in a committed relationship with the sun, sunbathing daily and escaping winter memories while trying to understand the pandemic. Most days, I portrayed an interviewer of women enduring corona with less advantages than I was given. Their stories made me face my privileged life. I was encountered with that privilege. I was worried, I was drained. Sometimes unstable. I was hopeful. Honduras made me feel like nothing else does, transforming those identities into abstracts and introductions I have not yet aspire to explain.
Then, the universe provided me with a different opportunity to survive the pandemic in Germany. Continuously defined by my Honduran passport. I was more than ever that, but with a foreign residency card. I was, there and then, a girlfriend and devoted partner. I was a friend, a writer, and a hopeless romantic. During this phase, I was a woman that terribly missed home. I was a dancer, a cook, I was committed to pleasing, to making it work and biking while it was warm and sunny. I was impulsive, I lived with a boy, I was happy and towards the end I was sad, hurt and even at a certain point, homeless.
In my third attempt tolerating a corona lockdown, I am no longer homeless. I am blessed, I am a roommate with fascinating roommates. A friend with enormous support. I am independent, I am single. I am still romantic, yet sometimes a bit cynical. I am mostly a friend. I continue to be a feminist. A raging one. I am connected through a distance. I am a woman that hates winter. I am more than ever, patient, a yogui, a pendel user. I miss the sun, it defines me. I am obedient. I accept things. I am a dedicated poetry reader. I am in a healing journey.
If this experience has taught me anything is that I am forever dynamic, mutable, transiting different roles, through different times and with different people.
I am currently transiting being Latina, a migrant, a mestiza, a LADINA
I want to believe I continue to persistently be a friend, a daughter, a sister. Just now, I happen to be a restricted traveler.
I will someday be a partner again, perhaps a mother.
Understanding that a shift in identities, it’s just a mere product of transiting life has helped me survive it all.
We are evolving and changing. We are never only a few things, we are a complex result of not only what happens to us, but what we make of what happens to and through us. Whatever identities we might be struggling with such as divorced, unemployed, single….and all those that society has deemed from appropriate, are only that… Temporary shifts of life teaching us and inspiring us to heal.
I am much more than those identities; I am, more than anything, drawn by being kind, honest, authentic, loving, empathetic. Particularly to myself.
I am curious, I am a witch, a fan and observer of life, I am a soul, I am shifting, I am altering myself.
I am resilient, I am a survivor.
I am what I have endured and what the women before me fought for, I am what I think I'll become...
I am ever-changing, I am brave, I am grateful.