The Optimism Everyone Called Foolish. La Delulu

Thank you for calling the Tóxica Tarot Hotline. Listen up, because the options can always change.

Press 1 if you're certain it's mutual based on three weeks of eye contact.

Press 2 if you celebrated a job before signing an offer.

Press 3 if everything happens for a reason, and you might be the reason.

If you believed in something before you had proof. Amiga, stay on the line.

I love tarot. That's where all of this starts.

Today's card is the Fool. Card zero. The first card of the Major Arcana.

Look at her. Standing on a cliff. One foot off the edge. Smiling. Bag on her back. Dog at her heel.

She doesn't know where she's going to land. She's going anyways.

Some people say the dog is loyalty. Walking alongside her. Going wherever she goes. Others say it's a warning. Tugging at her clothes. Trying to sound the alarm before the next step.

You're at the beginning. The leap before evidence. The yes before the plan.

In our little Tóxica Tarot universe, the Fool's name is La Delulu. Patron Tóxica of Dreaming.

And it's complicated, because the Fool can be courage. Anyone who has navigated spaces that weren't built for them.

Without the Fool, nobody starts.

In this space, we listen and we don't judge, but we do have a Yolanda Clause that we do need to cover. We cover pattern recognition but not absolution. This is not a hall pass to cause or endure harm.

Okay.

The truth is, La Delulu inherited a reality that cost too much to look at, so she kept Hope as the lights staying on.

La Delulu is the reason somebody packs up and moves to another country with no plan. The reason somebody plans a future nobody around them ever modeled.

Or for anyone who made the moves with a dream in their heart before the math had a chance to catch up.

And now it's time for the Tóxica Cinema segment. This is where we spot the Fool, aka La Delulu, on film and TV.

For La Delulu, two characters who absolutely would have called The Hotline.

Betty in Queens. Elle in California. Decades apart. Same energy.

First: Betty.

Ugly Betty.

If you didn't grow up watching her, you grew up around someone who did. America Ferrera made Betty for an entire generation of Latinas who needed proof we belonged in the room.

Betty Suárez is twenty-two. Mexican-American. Queens. Braces, ponchos, and a confidence she has not earned yet.

She gets hired at Mode. Betty walks in like Mode hired her on purpose, not knowing that she was hired as a prank.

Then there's Henry. The accountant. Cardigan, glasses, feelings for Betty. He also has a pregnant girlfriend in Tucson.

Betty knows about the girlfriend. Betty knows about the baby. Betty also knows, in the version of the future that lives in her chest, that none of that is going to happen the way it looks like it's going to happen.

We've all watched somebody do this.

The pattern costs Betty. Her family stops correcting her about Henry. Her dad stops asking. Her sister Hilda stops trying. Her work bestie Christina won't bring up the girlfriend in Tucson anymore.

The people around Betty ran out of ways to tell her what was actually happening.

This is what makes Betty La Delulu. Not naive. Not desperate.

She believes ahead of the evidence. The job at Mode is hers because in her version, the room finally got smart. Henry is going to choose her because in her version, this is the chapter where the love story works.

The vision is certain. Reality is the part that hasn't caught up yet.

Then: Elle.

Elle Woods.

Legally Blonde. 2001. The movie everyone pretended was about a sorority girl going to Harvard, and was actually about every woman whose ambition got read as a costume.

Elle is twenty-one. Bel Air. Blonde. President of Delta Nu. Fashion merchandising major with a 4.0 nobody around her takes seriously.

Warner Huntington the Third dumps her at dinner. He's going to Harvard Law. He needs to marry a Jackie, not a Marilyn.

Elle decides she's going to Harvard Law to win him back. Studies for three months. Gets a 179 on the LSAT. Submits an admissions video in a pink bikini. Harvard accepts her.

Elle walks in like Harvard meant it, not knowing the room thinks the letter was a typo.

Then there's Warner. Already at Harvard. With Vivian. Engaged.

Elle knows about Vivian. Elle knows about the engagement. Elle also knows, in the version of the future that lives in her chest, that none of that matters. She's here. She belongs here. Warner is going to see it.

We've all watched somebody do this.

The pattern costs Elle. Her sorority sisters stop asking about Warner. Her dad asks why she's even there. Her mom stops mentioning him over Sunday dinner. The Delta Nu group chat goes quiet about him.

The people around Elle ran out of ways to tell her what was actually happening.

This is what makes Elle La Delulu. Not naive. Not desperate.

She believes ahead of the evidence. The Harvard letter is real because in her version, the room finally caught up to what she could do. Warner is going to choose her because in her version, this is the chapter where the high school love story works.

The vision is certain. Reality is the part that hasn't caught up yet.

Joint seal.

Betty believed she belonged. Elle believed she was right.

The room called both of them the joke. Both of them stayed anyway.

Betty Suárez and Elle Woods are La Delulu in cinema form. Same figure. Different costumes. Not crazy. Not naive.

Two women who learned that hope was the only door they were allowed to keep open.

It's older than us.

And this is my favorite segment, the Mythical Tóxicas segment. Tonight, we go to Greece.

Once upon a time, before any of us were here, the gods made the first woman. Her name was Pandora.

Each god gave her a gift: Beauty. The skill of the loom. Persuasion. Curiosity. Charm bracelets.

Just kidding.

I mean, her name means all gifts. They handed her one more thing: a jar, not a box. A marriage gift from the gods. It was a clay storage jar, the kind every kitchen has. They didn't say what was inside.

They just gave a woman the gift of curiosity, handed her a jar, and told her not to open it.

What did they think was going to happen.

She's standing in her kitchen. The jar is on the counter. She opens it.

And everything is escaping: Sickness. Death. Old age. Hunger. Harry Potter charms.

As soon as she realizes, she slams the lid back on. One thing is left inside. Hope.

Pandora kept it inside.

Now look at how the story got told.

For most of history, Pandora was the villain. The reason evil came into the world. The first scapegoat.

Here's what gets me. Nobody blamed the gods. They blamed the woman.

Pandora didn't unleash evil on the world. She inherited a storage jar that already had evil in it. The gods made the situation. She opened it. The evil was already there.

She wasn't the cause. She was the carrier.

Same with La Delulu. We inherited a clay jar from people who couldn't afford to look at what was in it. We opened it because somebody had to.

Hope is still inside.

Three doors. Same room. Tarot. Cinema. Mythology. Different countries. Different centuries. Same pattern.

Alright, so that was a lot. A lot of new perspectives on old information, or maybe you knew all that already. This is it.

I am a Delulu sometimes. So are you. That's not a diagnosis. That's the room we're in.

Nothing has to happen with this tonight. We don't have to text anyone. The pattern will still be there tomorrow. It's been there a while.

We pulled a card. La Delulu. The Fool. Card zero. We named the pattern. We came to know what we saw. That's it.

We're pulling cards and naming patterns. That's the show.

The La Delulu call is closed.

Call back next week when we open the line to La Creída. The prima who walks past the guest list and never gets stopped.

I gotta go. My future husband, Bad Bunny, is on Live, and he's gonna get upset if he doesn't see me.

Not Saints, Ni Tóxicas.