On an Escapism Bender

How watching novelas from my girlhood is keeping me sane.

I made this collage of the show. Felt like a teenage girl hahah.

Vicente Fernandez’s song Para Siempre plays over the title sequence of a novela from 2007 I watched with my mother when I was eleven years old. This was my introduction to romance. Through Mexican novelas, I learned love meant wild passion, serenatas, kissing in the pouring rain and a yearning so intense it brings tears to your eyes as you whisper your lover’s name over and over into the night sky just outside of your hacienda bedroom’s balcony.

A shirtless Juan Reyes is kneading a large mass of dough to make soft, flaky conchas to sell in the panaderia he owns with his two younger brothers, Oscar and Franco Reyes. His strong hands fold over the dough as the camera zooms into his forearms and you can see the way the muscles strain under his dark, golden brown skin, then his bearded face lightly dampened by sweat. I love the pomp and frills of early 2000s novelas.

“Vale más, un buen amor que mil costales de oro.”

I am about four beers deep, it is ten at night and my kids are asleep and I am as giddy as I was when I first watched this novela nearly 20 years ago. I sing along with Vicente Fernandez and am transported into this romanticized version of Mexico and epic love stories I watched with my mom every evening before bed. As a Mexican little girl there was no greater expression of love than a man serenading you with a Mariachi while he sits on a beautiful white horse, one hand on the reins and the other on a giant bouquet of red roses.

I have been on this escapism bender since the onslaught of ice raids began last year. I tried reading romantasy smut, I rewatched the office as I have since I was seventeen when I am feeling disorientated and outside of myself, I rewatched Modern Family, and started the IT audio book after I finished watching Welcome to Derry. I kind of got tired of Stephen King describing the “tits” of every female character we come across and I couldn’t finish it.

One morning while drinking my coffee and nursing my sick kids I was scrolling on tikok when I came across a dubbed chinese drama titled, “Accidentally impregnated by my CEO.” the kind of stuff I usually scroll away from as fast as possible but this time, the tantrum of an old man on a wheelchair convinced he had accidentally bumped into his long lost grandson that neither he or his son were certain ever even existed until that moment gripped my attention. The old man pulls out a hair from the child as he runs off and asks his son to come closer and then quickly plucks a hair from his head and demands his son and their body guards to gather all of the doctors in the hospital to conduct a DNA test on the two strands of hair.

For the next hour or so I am locked into this ridiculous series of events where the child is confirmed to be the old man’s only grandson, the mother ends up being the CEO’s new assistant and eventually is impregnated by him again with triplets this time. A whirlwind of ups and downs and constant miscommunication and misunderstanding that was driving me nuts. But hey, it kept the early morning panic of waking up an immigrant in the United States away for a bit.

That evening a little tipsy from my second beer I showed my partner the 80 part series I watched and told him it reminded me so much of the novelas I used to watch with my mom when I was a young and impressionable girl desperate for a blueprint on womanhood and falling in love. And then I made the decision to start binge watching the one with the shirtless hunky panadero that passionately bites into a freshly baked concha and thinks of his amor imposible, Sofia Elizondo.

Now every night after my kids have gone to bed, I put on a fresh pair of pjs, and jump in bed where I watch Fuego En La Sangre until midnight. I love the drama, the exaggerated acting, the perpetual welling of tears in their eyes always ready for yearning or sorrow — I love the way that Vicente Fernandez starts to sing Para Siempre every time Juan Reyes and Sofia Elizondo come on the screen, when they are lightly brushing their hands together, looking at each other longingly from afar, or sharing a passionate kiss after finally declaring their love for one another in episode twelve when Sofia visits Juan’s brother Franco who is in a coma after getting beat up. The ridiculousness makes me laugh, and I don’t mind watching a shirtless man build a brick cabin or knead dough for pan dulce.

Sometimes I pick up texts on Phenomenology, or migration to help me understand what I am up against. Sometimes I watch people protesting on videos for strength, or write about the unrest in my body and the fatigue I experience every day as an immigrant. Sometimes I send my mother screenshots of ICE viewings in our city, and we talk briefly about how we must move our bodies through the place we have lived for so much of our lives with extra care. She tells me to always keep my gate closed, and I tell her to never open her door to strangers. Sometimes I talk to friends about what it is like to exist in this body, the immigrant body, and it is all so tiresome.

Watching novelas from my girlhood offers some reprieve, my sense of time changes. Nothing is serious, everything has a resolution. The good guys always win even if they lose something along the way. Some evenings I am just eleven years old watching a novela, laying on my back on the living room floor, twirling my hair in my fingers until I am sleepy. It is 2007, and I don’t understand what it really means to have crossed a border yet.