Mavii is one of my fun friends whom equally, emotionally crashes from being the brightest bulb to feel, secretly, dim. We either GO OUT or fucking extinguish. It is the burden of being deemed the ¨fun ones¨ of a group: it is rare someone sees that, perhaps, you are functionally sad. We roll through life trying to smile through our pain because no one is going to see, fix it, and we do not want to feel it. Thus,  I was both inspired and reality checked by her boozy comment. 

There is nothing like an open bar for people to unleash their opinions. It was an open bar a bald record executive declared me ugly, and at another open bar, where an influencer asked me why Puerto Ricans are dirty. Something about all that free liquor makes people free in the mouth, and, for Mabi, she was holding something in. She slurred, ¨You are very generous with people!¨ I smiled assuming it was a compliment, as it was one of the the top yelp reviews of my personality as a child. In a family that was crossed between being absolutely hilarious and a batch full of rage issues, having a sweet, generous little girl was refreshing. The problem is that, in being deemed different, I was not allowed the basic emotion of anger. Even the attempt of tantrum was cut, and I often got chided for what I could have said than what I did. In a way, it put my earnestness on mute. 

She continued, ¨You let everybody in! And I’m surprised!¨ At this point is when I realized what was admired in me as a child had become a warning label about me as an adult. ¨You need to stop that! Not everybody who knocks at your door, should be opened, ¨she declared, of which I changed the subject. Yet, it stayed with me because if there is one thing I can hold onto and wedge into the depth of my soul, it is a fleeting comment. All my life, I was taught that everyone’s opinion is valid, but growing up is me learning that that is NOT true. Some people´s opinion is plain stupid or ill-intentioned, but Mavi was not wrong. Like most women going through a bad break-up , she was swimming in the wisdom that enlightens every woman leaving a toxic ex. For her, in me being the usually single friend amidst all my friends´dating and marital escapades, she had grown both an admiration and protection over me that manifested in her refusing I marry an asshole, of which I have dated many. 

When I look at my life, I feel it has run on a ¨Knock Knock Basis,¨ of which anybody that wanted to enter did. My openness was praised, and hammered with a parental adage: ¨You take people for who they are… you do not demand of them.¨ It was a truth that was to taught me, like many lessons, the wrong way or from the wrong messengers. You do take people for who they are, but you also choose better people. Mavi was just not alluding to my generosity, she was alluding to the fact that I accepted everyone with warmth and a belief they were innocent until proven guilty. The problem is I ended up murdered. It was a sign of immaturity but what is the ego if not our inner child’s yearning to be loved by those that abandoned it.

As my friend, sometimes, I forgot Mavi went through things with me. Earlier that day, she explained how sad she was I did not send her a ¨happy birthday¨ text. It was a forgotten detail I would have been hurt by, as well, and proved something I was beginning to see as I stirred from my year long depression: you hurt the people that really love you by hurting yourself. 

I grieved the times the people I loved did not love me but the people that did love me back I made as tossable as those others made me. In essence, I let everybody enter, but I had my few I, wrongfully, shut out, and I could not understand why I was so infantile and messy. I, more than anyone know how precious it is to give your heart, which is why I do not understand why I did not receive theirs. It was a sign of immaturity but what is the ego if not our inner child’s yearning to be loved by those that abandoned it.