Marisol

I've been here since I was six. I'm 21 now, so 15 years. We moved from Highwood. I don't know why they let a six year old and eight year old pick which house they wanted, but my parents let me pick the house. It was this one in North Chicago, one in Waukegan, one in Highwood… and they asked “which house do you like best?”

And the best part of growing up in North Chicago?

The culture, for sure. This environment really created who I am today, so no regrets. I like where I am.

When we left, Highwood was mostly Latino. It has gentrified to more white now, that I've seen. I went to this one preschool; every mom had to bring in a food for snack time. And my mom was like, “Oh, we're gonna make tuna salad.” But some of the white kids were expecting tuna and crackers, and with us, it was with jalapenos, tomatoes, and onions. And they were like, “Oh, this is so gross!” But half of the class was Mexican, so they're like, “This is delicious!” Even then, that’s when I kind of started seeing differences in culture.

I used to be scared of my culture, but now I’ve embraced whatever I am. I remember in high school, kids would be like, “They're so weird!” And I'm like, “That's not weird. Culture isn't weird.” I'm not embarrassed of it. I'm happy to be open and brought up how I am. My cousins were raised in majority-white neighborhoods, and I know they kind of are afraid to speak Spanish. My identity of being Latina did not get erased, compared to if I got raised somewhere else. 

Your parents work in nursing homes, and knowing what hard work that can be, you still chose to work there for a time.

Yeah, 100 percent them. They know me too well that I'm not one to... if they told me not to do it, I was going to do it anyways. They told me stories all the time… even though I feel I talk about the bad stuff, I guess it's because of the timing. COVID. Of course, I'm going to experience more bad stuff, because it's a pandemic. Of course I'm not going to have too much fun. But even then, I had a lot of fun with my residents. When I was going to college, they helped me study. There were like, “Marisol, you gotta pay attention!” Those moments are the ones I mostly remember. Being with my coworkers, just laughing, and dancing with my residents.

But you started your nursing home work during the worst part of the pandemic, and at just 19 years old. 

I was in the caller rooms making the last phone calls. I worked in Activities. For that department, it means you have to deal with anything all the other departments don’t, so we do it. So I would do their last phone calls. And you know, they knew they were gonna not survive, or if they weren’t, it was just a simple phone call to say, “Hey, I'm feeling better.” It was either happy ones or bad, like those phone calls.

That’s a lot for a young person to handle. How has that experience affected or influenced you?

I feel like now I’m more grateful of life. One hundred percent sure that where I'm growing up right now, it's 100 times better than in my homeland. I see that I'm blessed for where I am. They made me just realize all my life presents. I love them, and some of them I still talk to. They say, “Oh, you gotta go to college because you don't want to end up here. You will need to do better. So you can provide for your family instead of them providing for you.”

It really did change my perspective of the world. I'm pretty sure before I came in there, I thought “Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna play games with residents!” And I did that. But then they put me on suicide watch. Then I had to make sure that somebody doesn't pick up their leg because they have phantom leg. And even just emotionally, just being there for somebody to hear them. I was their therapist at times. I was playing the role that their family couldn't. But I loved doing it, because at least I was the last person to show them love before they had to leave.

What’s your take-away from that experience? What was your life lesson?

Life is short, death will happen, we don't know when we're gonna die. And it can be in the most gruesome way. So you better do things now, because you're now young and healthy. And you never know, because there's even young patients in there. 21. She was bed-bound, she could not move or anything. And when I look at that, I'm like, “Dude, that could have been me. That could have been me, my family member.” 

But when you return to college, you don’t plan on going into the medical field.

Hopefully, I want to be in Human Resources, because I want to be in Inclusion and Diversity for a top 100 company. To make sure that we keep on the conversation. A company has so much responsibility, so they need to be held accountable for making sure that they're including everyone. We need to make sure that we also include people of all disabilities, genders, ideologies. I feel like all offices should be inclusive. It doesn't matter if you're leftist, or far right, far left, in the center, up or down, left and right. Doesn't matter.

Do you have a credo or a model that you live by?

Do good. Be good. Die happy.

My mom hated that I got a piercing on my nose. She hated that have split-dye hair, and remember her saying “Are you gonna dye the other side? It looks incomplete!” And I would laugh about it because I don't really take people’s insults to heart. People used to bully me about how I look. That's where trying to be… you're gonna regret not being yourself. If it’s because you're in a super, super conservative home and you can't be yourself, then do what you need to do to get out of there. Or, surround yourself with people who will love you for how you are because that's the thing that sucks more: not living your truth. You need to live your truth.

My greatest fear is not living myself truthfully, for sure. Because I see a lot of my [nursing home] residents saying “Oh, I wish I would have dated this person.” “I wish I would have came out younger.” “I wish…” All these wishes. We all have wishes and I feel like even when we die, we will never have our bucket list complete. But I feel like as long as you lived it happily and you lived it truthfully, then you know, it's okay. You did what you could. Even in the worst situations, you could change it any day, any minute: you could change your perspective. You gotta always change, and be open minded too.

Do you have a secret talent?

I play trumpet. Although it's not a secret. So I can think of another...

Why trumpet?

I was in fourth grade and the teacher didn't have enough trumpet players. I originally wanted to do flute or percussion, but there were too many of those, so “You're gonna play trumpet!” And my parents are like “Yeah! That's so Original Mexican!” Like, you know, every trumpet player can make any music in Mexican culture, so that's even more perfect. They bought me the instrument and everything. It just took off from there.

What are you most proud of?

I really don't get defeated easily. Like if somebody bullied me and said: “You look ugly.” I'm like, “Okay, and?” I'm gonna take that with a grain of salt. I know other people are like: “That is so mean. That's so rude. That's gonna stay in my head forever." I'm like: this brain has too much going on– and that's a great thing because I can forget about it.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.