I am a 23-year-old immigrant Latin liberal woman. I left home and embarked on the most amazing and lonely adventure of my life when I was 18. I moved to another country to pursue dreams I couldn't reach on my own land. I came to a place everyone who never stepped on once thinks it's the best country in the world. I came by myself. I experienced xenophobia since day one. I experienced loneliness, sleepless, hungry, pain. So much emotional pain. I also experienced happiness, success, and love. So much love.
I graduated from college. I became someone I am proud to be. Is it always enough though? Five years after packing my bags, I feel as lonely as I was when I cried myself to sleep for the first time away and realized no one could hear me even if I screamed.
This whole place is a bubble. It breaks you once you step in. It enchants you in a way you don't want to get out. It is tricky, very tricky. I didn't come here to make friends. I came here to work and get paid for how much I work, not how much a company thinks it will be enough to make me come back tomorrow. I came here to stop worrying if I will have enough to pay my bills at the end of the month, or enough to eat at the end of the day. I came here to be able to buy my sister a birthday present.
It's 2017 and the United States of America had one of the most controversial political battles of history last year. So yes, I am allowed to be mad. Everything I built and worked for in the last five years was thrown into a dumpster as soon as a choice was made. The "majority" picked a side and I was affected by the outcome. Let me be mad and don't tell me I am not allowed to be. Years of a struggle I didn't expect facing, for nothing.
I am so extremely thankful for everything I got to live, don't get me wrong. I am thankful for every single experience this place gave me. It made me into a decent, loving human being. It showed me who I didn't want to be and who I would love to become.
It is the end of a personal era. The end of hoping for an "easy life." It took a while, but I realized I will never have it easy. Third world country Immigrants were not meant to have that. And you know what? We don't want it. I will walk through the rocks, I will dodge the bullets. Hit me. Hit me as much as you wish. I was not taught to sprint away from hate. I was taught to face it, fight against it, overcome it.
It is the end of a war for me. It sucks to have lost. But it won't make me lose myself. In my life, there will never be a lack of hope because I will never stop believing in all the good the right people can bring in someone.
In two months or so, I will embark into an airplane again. This time with the weight of failure in my backpack. This time with a cruel disappointment explicit in my face - I honestly thought this was a better place. I will leave with tears, but I will grow with them. The "American Dream" existed at some point in my life, I must admit. It stopped being real a while ago, and I know it won't ever exist anymore. I have another dream now and I just call it "My Own."
