New Year’s Past vs New Year’s Present

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez @priscadorcas 

New Year’s Eve seems to consistently be the time of the year when I re-evaluate my romantic relationships.  I look honestly at who I want to be down the road, and where I want to go and then I compare that to my partner’s goals and aspirations.  I have done this, almost by instinct, in the past and it has consistently benefitted me.

New Year’s Eve 2008, I had been dating someone I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with but obviously did not.  His name was Jose and we had been dating for three years.  He was my first real boyfriend, my first love, and we went through undergrad together.  But on the first day of 2009, I called as the fireworks were going off, and told him we needed to part ways.  I told him what we both knew to be true: that we had grown apart as we had grown into our own personalities.  We parted on friendly terms and we were both happy to know that we did not carry any ill thoughts toward one another.

New Year’s Eve 2013, I had been married to a man I met and married in 2009.  We were both suffocating in a passionless marriage, and our sexual identities had developed as we had developed.  We married young and, unfortunately, we had become more roommates than lovers.  We realized we could no longer be together and I welcomed 2014 on the floor sobbing into a blanket cuddling my lost love.  We were both so broken and so hurt that we could not love ourselves back together.  Our divorce was long and painful, and I rung in that New Year in shambles.

New Year’s Eve 2014, I had been single for most of that year.  I had been dating about six fuckboys at the time who were all wasting my time and I theirs; seeing as I was not at a point emotionally to be with anyone but with myself.  I called all six of them and called it quits, as the fireworks were all going off around me at 2 a.m. 2015.  I welcomed that New Year with a lot of angst but oddly with a lot of feelings of empowerment.  I was taking back my life, and I was ready to ring in this New Year with a lot of anticipation.

That was two years ago and I have calmed down a lot.  I have learned a lot about myself.  I graduated with my Master’s degree, went to a lot of therapy, and moved back home for a brief period.   I am in a new romantic relationship that I evaluated with much care before getting into, so it does not require the scrutiny that previous relationships needed during New Year’s Eve.  This new love has helped me love myself and the choices I’ve made about my life much more.   I think the “new year” mentality that is usually inspired out of me feels more positive, instead of feeling like I need to really think about my decisions toward my romantic partners I know I already have done that before even getting into this particular romantic relationship.    

Yet, somehow all I can think about coming into January of 2017 is that Donald Trump is about to fuck us all over.  All I can think about is that he will be inaugurated on January 20th.  The sense of renewal that I have previously found on New Year’s Eve mostly feels like a sense of dread.  I am not excited for 201. It feels like all of those years when I dodged men I should have never been with. Each moment of liberation does not matter so long as the white American rural voter decides what new man will enter my life and fuck it all up.

2017: the year that bigoted, sexist, racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, police loving, oil benefiting, sexual assault apologist, Donald Trump will reign supreme.

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez is a chonga Mujerista from Managua, Nicaragua currently living in Miami, FL. She recently graduated with her Masters from Vanderbilt University, and is looking to take some much needed time off to refresh. She is also the founder of Latina Rebels, a blogger for HuffPo Latino Voices, and a columnist/editor at Chica Magazine. Her interests are within biopolitics as it relates to Latina embodiment, specifically concerning models of conquerable flesh around narratives of naturalization for women of color. Thus her work is around reclaiming and upholding embodied resistance, particularly within chonga and chola subcultures. Que viva la mujer!