Malas Palabras

Bad Words | Friday the 13th

The lady who sells the eggs texts me as she’s leaving the ranch, asking how many I want this week. I still have fruit from last week’s basket — and it has been…next level. Particularly la papaya, which, for reasons, is a very bad word. My people call it fruta bomba, and if yours do too, you know my standards. If your fruta bomba has never looked exactly like this, in color and in texture, you won’t relate to the rest of this story and for that I apologize, but do continue. 

After the debate, we decompress by eating mangos. They were so good, my camera never got to eat. I’ll document it here as Top 3 mango experiences of my 28 years of mango loving life. Marcello says mango is the best fruit by far. I know he’s objectively right but I don’t outright agree with him. He INSISTS. Mango, mango juice, mango this, mango that. Mango supremacy. 

I’m thinking about guanábana (soursop) and maracuyá (passion fruit). I’m thinking about the fruta bomba we had the day before the mangos. But he says it’s not even a QUESTION. He’s not wrong. So then who is?

Whitney Cummings says the key to self awareness is maintaining a level of presence that cannot be obstructed by disingenuous intentions or manipulation. What she actually said was to stop lying. I like this because I used to lie a lot, for no reason, but also not for fun. There’s a difference. I write down what Whitney Cummings says about lying because the type of lying I’ve usually experienced is the guilty kind and not the creative kind. Lies for jokes. For example, in high school my friend told me that his parents were swinging with another friend's parents — our friend, who, to add an extra layer of absurdity, came from a royal French lineage. He let it marinate, for months, maybe even years, and I love him for it.

Maybe lying isn’t so big and bad. Because lies can be smart and funny and what’s bad about that? Every time I make up or alter my own memories, I lie. Every time I’m overly agreeable, I lie. Every time I tell the nail tech I love it, when my hands looked like shit, I lie. Were those lies harmful to the receiver? Hardly. But they stack up on top of one another. If lying isn’t the problem maybe loyalty is. Because the lies that hurt the most are often a result of betrayal, self inflicted, or not. We’re I’m so obsessed with lying when we I should be obsessed with loyalty. If I remain loyal to myself, I won’t lie at the nail salon. But I don’t care that I lie at the nail salon, that’s not the point.

Maybe it’s the past. The consequences of certain lies. How it all comes back, triggered by a scent, or a sound, and a fully formed betrayal plays out from start to finish, when you most and least expect it. The lies you know are true, the ones you never confirmed, and those denied to your face — they remain alive in a purgatory that haunts you.

I think part of true self-awareness is knowing which lies are harmful and which are harmless. Which ones make you very funny and which make you a loser. The loser lies are superficial — leasing a car you can’t afford to keep up with people who don’t care about you, telling them you bought it. Welcome to Miami. Weak, but also, not the point. To lie about something that happened for the bit, for the chisme, is gold.

Speaking of lying and liars, I’m purposely avoiding my home country until after the election. Not that things aren’t getting messy here, they are. But it doesn’t feel like my mess. My mess exists on social media and in family group chats and otherwise is pretty far away. It feels healthy to put my phone down and be, quite literally, in another world.

Our duende hid my kindle yesterday. I knew it was him because we checked under the bed three times and this morning when I woke up it was there. If you’re wondering what a duende is, it’s a humanoid dwarf legend. Is dwarf a bad word? Is it okay that I’m saying duende? Is it okay to blame my lost items on Mexican folklore? I really hope my duende doesn’t read this Substack. When Paula, my cleaning lady and also my best friend here, told me about her duende in Puebla she asked me if I wanted one. I told her NO Pau. Ni te atrevas. 

Now that you think I’m nuts, I’m just going to lean in. Tuesday’s full moon is kicking off eclipse season, cue the unhinged and the unexpected. I already deleted Instagram, from my phone, which means this post will reach far fewer people, probably for the best.

I’m detoxing. Mind, body, and home. I’ve been meaning to do a parasite cleanse, for all of us, and apparently the full moon is the best time to do it. We’re using papaya fruta bomba seeds and chlorophyll this year, cutting out dairy two days before and two days after. I cleaned out and reorganized both nightstands. Do you want to know what I had in the second drawer of mine? INSURANCE PAPERWORK. From 2021. In my top drawer — a rogue $100 bill.

I have rosemary, nettle, and chamomile leaves for the steam bath my acupuncturist prescribed me four full moons ago, but I just never got around to it.

My astrologer says that learning what feels wrong for you is also a win. For the past two years nine months and two weeks, following a devastating and largely unresolved treason within the family, I've been waging an exhausting mental crusade against 'liars’. I called them. About the fraud. They denied it. Every time I’ve convinced myself I have moved past it, forgiven them in my heart, prayed for them, it comes back. Every few months and when I can’t sleep at night, it comes back. And so I seek all these healers and do all the things to release myself, until I do. And I will. These things take time.

Anyway, back to the mangos. Marcello is enjoying them the way one does, when the mango takes you to another dimension. Lost in the pleasure, forgetting the stance he had so adamantly taken moments prior, he says este mango sabe a papaya. The mango was so good it tasted like the papaya from the day before. He’s Mexican, it’s not a bad word here.