Media Pendeja

Hi all!

Before I get into it today, I have a confession… I do peek at the regions reading my blog. The majority of you are from where I would expect, but there are some fun surprises in there.

Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up is because of today’s title/topic. Sangre pesada translates to heavy blood. If you speak Spanish and have a better translation for this term, great, let me know!

Tener la sangre pesada is essentially being mean, obnoxious, or unpleasant to be around. The phrase can be used to refer to a person who often has a bad attitude.

The closest thing I can compare it to in this moment is having a RBF. The key difference here is history/earlier interactions. RBF takes a person’s looks in quickly to create an assumption while the use of the phrase heavy blood (this sounds funny, sorry) would be used after interacting with someone more than once.

When I was growing up, my mom would tell me to adjust my attitude. She said I came off as “pesada”, a shorter version of the idiom we’re talking about today. It never really bothered me, although I think it was meant to bother me. To her credit, I definitely did have my asshole moments, especially in high school when it felt like I knew everything until I realized I truly know nothing. I prided myself with speaking my truth. That was my version of rebelling, as corny as that sounds.

I grew up with, and I say this with all love, people pleasers. My parents love keeping the peace. My parents don’t know how to say no. My parents overcommit. My parents will neglect their own needs. It was so very tiresome at times especially when they volunteered me (or siblings) for ad-hoc activities to continue this people pleasing. As a result, I learned to love speaking out. I’m not very loud, but it was nice to voice and set boundaries with others. It was so amazing to start saying no to things and stand by that decision. It felt great to quit things just because I didn’t want to participate anymore. It wasn’t all perfect, though. By trying to not be a people pleaser, I overcorrected. I wanted to land on assertive, and for a few years, I was just uncooperative and self-centered. ¡TENÍA LA SANGRE PESADA! My mom was right. 😱

I’m better now.

As I’m getting into my later 20s, I have landed mostly on genuine. Hoy no creo tener la sangre pesada. If someone were to ask a favor from the younger me, I would have said no outright if it didn’t benefit me in any way. If someone were to ask a favor from me today, I still know I can deny the favor, but I also want to support the people I love (or at least like). Who would have thought you get joyous when helping others?! OH! + I bite my tongue now. What really helped me with this was by acknowledging that I am, in fact, of little importance. I’m still working on controlling facial expressions, but one step at a time. 🙂

I still have my “heavy” moments, it happens, but I try to get back to my most authentic self as soon as I can.

Here’s to all the pesadas y los que las soportan!

-IC