Speaking Without The Real Words by Lizmarie

Speaking Without The Real Words by Lizmarie - August 2026 Scholarship Essay

I can’t embrace what my identity is supposed to be just because I'm too scared to “fail”.

I’m Dominican, proud of my country and culture and the in-betweens, but I'm missing the most important part, communicating.

At every family party, relatives would ask me the usual: How’s school? How old are you now? But for some reason, I didn’t know how to respond. They were asking me in Spanish. I now realized I really couldn’t speak it. I can see the confusion on their faces when I not-so-gracefully try to respond with a questionable accent.

Every day that I can’t pronounce that one word feels like another step backward to connecting with my father. He tells me how proud of me he is but I know internally he grapples with the fact that I struggle to be connected to my roots, which are his roots. He tells me I should try, actually try to learn instead of hiding behind the fact that I can't, but he can't see my effort. I want to know about his childhood and all the funny stories he has, but I can't. Seeing me wince when he asks for my response in Spanish builds a concrete wall between us, making it even taller than it was before.

I can feel the steady rhythm of the guira and the twangy guitar lines. I feel at home when I have mangu y los tres golpes. But when it comes to talking about these things in the native tongue, I just can't do it. I can hear the words in my head, the way they're supposed to be said, but when I open my mouth, familiar waves of flushed cheeks, red hot ears and teary eyes wash over me. I shouldn't be embarrassed to try, but the sinking feeling that surrounds the word “failure” creeps around me. This isn't how it's supposed to be.

I feel so connected yet disconnected with my culture, like there is a huge hole in my identity that I can fill but choose not to. It feels easier to be Dominican from a distance. I can't fail at that.

I hated knowing that I didn't know something. The word “failure” paralyzed me, so I became obsessed with never encountering it ever again.

I gave everything I had into school. My GPA was high and my test scores were good. I did it well, but I was still that insecure little girl stumbling over her words at family parties.

Trying to grow as a person with this failure looming over me proved to be difficult. I didn't realize I was trying to change using insecurity as fuel, not the genuine desire to improve myself.

This one grand failure I was too afraid to face taught me that I needed to reinvent the way I look at success and see it as a way to find myself, not a way to cover my insecurities.

This shift in my mindset changed how I showed up for myself, particularly in creative spaces. During my recent music fellowship, I realized that feeling unable to express myself was the reason why I felt so out of touch with my culture. I realized that music is a language everyone can speak and understand.

I was in a place where only the music I played mattered. Every Monday, I would get on the 1 train and end up somewhere where I actually found an authentic version of me, and the musicians around me were only interested in this version. I could pick up my guitar and all of a sudden express feelings and struggles I could never articulate, in a way anyone could understand. I approached music as a free space, understanding every note has its place, even ones I once thought didn't belong. I wasn't running away from failure like I used to before, and instead I found myself leaning into it. It was a productive struggle which pushed me to not only become a better musician, but also to redefine success for myself.

Music uncovered words I once struggled to find before. They were just notes on a fretboard instead.