Ode to My Back
You’ve had to carry the consequences and tension / Of pursuing a dream that requires you to be fully human in a White dominated capitalist society
This week, we are thrilled to share the fourth installment Norma Ramirez’s series of odes. Introducing her poem, Norma writes:
Ode to My Back is the fourth poem in this series where I attempt to capture the cost of pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology as an undocumented student in the United States. I wrote it after I had passed the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) and before taking the California State Exam. This was a time of awe, disbelief, and a place where I was safe enough to feel some of the anger that I was not allowed to feel while I was in grad school.
“Ode to My Back”
It would be so easy
For me to overlook you
On Friday,
I have the next exam
And it will essentially complete
The Dream
I will be a Licensed Clinical Psychologist
(In California)
Being so close,
The question keeps circling me
“How did I even manage to make it?”
Already, less than 1% of Latinx earn
A doctoral degree
To that subtract those 9 numbers
And it doesn’t add up
I have friends who were denied
And know that the majority of graduate schools
Do not open their doors to
Undocumented students
And why would they
When the majority of us barely
Make it out of college
Then there’s me
It’s true that I am “smart”
It’s true that I put in the work
And
It’s true that I learned the system
But
I have always been aware that my “success”
Was never about merit or worthiness
If that were true
Then all of the undocumented students
That have reached out to me looking for answers
Would have gotten them
And they would have had an abundance of support
Instead,
I have the heartbreak of telling them
That there is no path
And furthermore,
If they are lucky enough to get in,
That they’ll be asked to carry so much more than any one of their peers
And more than any one person should ever have to carry
You’ve had to carry the weight of being a mirror
Where your very presence made the very people
Who proclaimed to care about the horrors being done to us
Uncomfortable
Because, suddenly, when they were no longer in a clear position of power
And you were their peer, their student, their trainee and not someone they “helped” once a week
Seeing their privilege, racism, and blatant incompetence was undeniable and unbearable
You’ve had to carry the weight of being a bucket
Where they would dump their outrage, projections, and tantrums
And then they would try to scoop out some kind of assurance and endorsement from you
To ease their guilt, fragility, and shame
You’ve had to carry the searing realizations
That a lot of the time “nice, White Christians” were worse than White non-Christians
And that your survival depended on whether they felt like helping you or not
That Whiteness isn’t a matter of skin color, but ideology and way of life
And somehow I was a bigger threat to most people of color and thus rejected
So that by the time I graduated, I ended up with more white friends
Than I would have expected
You’ve had to carry the consequences and tension
Of pursuing a dream that requires you to be fully human in a White dominated capitalist society
And of not knowing how it was destroying you from the inside out
Because “survival mode” was the only mode we could be in
And how evil it is to be part of a system that perpetuates this trauma
And even more evil that there isn’t a clear way out because no one has the energy
To do the work to do something different
So you carry the weight of being tethered to the dynamics that allow for such horrific violence to exist
Rotating from victim, aggressor, perpetrator, survivor, and liberator
And then came the lawsuit
The lives and well-being of 800,000 human beings and their families
While never forgetting the 11 million
How was I not crushed by the weight of it all?
I don’t know
Sometimes, I think that God protected me
Sometimes, I think that it’s a sick joke
But
Always, Always, Always
I’m aware that “not being crushed” is relative
Does having a beating heart after all of this really equal life?
Propina
If you missed the first three poems in this series, you can listen to and read them here:
Describing the full series of poems, Norma writes:
I wrote these poems as a way to capture the cost of pursuing a doctorate while being undocumented in the United States. Once I had graduated, I realized that I need to reflect and process the past 7 years to allow space to heal. In the process, I also got licensed and that also brought up more feelings and dynamics. So, the series is a bit developmental, capturing pieces of the past, the present, and wonderings of the future.
Norma’s poetry series will continue next month. In the meantime, if you have a poem, story, image, or general idea you would like to share with La Cuenta’s readers, please get in touch.
We’ll see you next week!