I thought I missed you

I look at you through my memories, and my heart aches for you, but my feet planted in this ground, no longer know the path to get to you.

When people ask me where I am from, I tell them the truth. The color of my skin and my accent reveal my secrets to the audience of the world. How would I be able to hide the scars that left my country within me? I was so little, I remember so little, but there are moments in time where these roots guide me. They control me. 

The last time I was, “home”, I was an eight year old girl. Not one single word of English was able to roll out of her mouth smoothly. She was just barely starting to write in cursive. She was doing her Spanish Spelling Bees. They robbed her. 

My parents did her a favor, they brought her to the land of the dreams. My parents worked so very hard to take care of me and to give me everything that they could. I love them with all that is within me, but they didn’t know about the nightmares that found me all alone in a hidden closet. After fifteen years, it is impossible to remember the street that you used to live in. You no longer remember the aromas of your home, and not to mention the names of the neighbors you used to see every morning. 

The hallways of your school are no longer understandable, a maze developing in your memory. 

Tears rise in your eyes, but not because you remembered that one favorite class but because you were ashamed after asking a child if he knew where the bathroom was.

The first idea you had thought of when dreams came about homecoming, were rivers of joy flowing. You thought you missed it. The swings of the playground are a reminder of your innocence, but they are no longer red like you had pictured them. The slide is yellow now instead of silver and you no longer have to wear those knee long skirts that everybody hated. The cafeteria lady no longer makes the donuts that you had dreamt of tasting. No one recognizes anymore who is the girl in the hallways. 

You open the door of your childhood room and you see the boxes. The stand filled to the brim with Barbie movies is no longer there. Your room is not pink. There are no teddy bears and no sign of me. This whole city no longer includes me. The illusions that I had painted are smeared by my reality, this reality that is looking directly at me. 

This is all my fault. I feel guilty for erasing this part of me. I accepted the embrace of another country and have forgotten all about my own. I chose to let go of these memories that at least constructed some forgotten part within me. How I speak to my mother, the shows that I watch, my everyday conversations, my own self-talks, they are all in English. The music in my phone also forgets to represent where I am from. Even my dreams, none of them are in Spanish.

I am starting to feel the pressure in my chest that urges me to run. To get on a plane and avoid facing all of this. The truth, because to be blankly honest, I do know that I wasn’t born where in the States, I know that my hair isn’t the same dirty blonde tone as the cheerleaders, my eyes aren’t that same pale blue color and for the love of god, how do they enjoy eating peanut butter with everything.

I look up to the same models they follow. I know word for word all the lyrics to every Taylor Swift Album and I could definitely write a much better essay in English. I mix up my words at home, completely tongue twisted, stuttering my way through sentences because I am trying to not speak Spanglish. Homecoming was supposed to be a reminder of that hidden part inside of me, I thought I missed it. It is the little things that bother me. That the people and the places I left are no longer the same, wasn’t there a bakery right at the corner of the street before turning? 

Please do not get confused, I am thankful I can stand again the soil that once raised me, but it no longer belongs to me. 

It is so bittersweet.

I am standing in the place that I missed, but I still miss it. People do not talk about this. About what it is like to witness how you are not missing the object itself but a memory. I know this sounds confusing, but think about it. When we say, “I miss my mother’s supper”, we don’t have to be craving her bowl of rice, we could be craving the memory of eating the rice. Of seeing it’s smoked that signals it was just prepared, just for you to eat it. The memory of seeing how she hands you the plate grinning. Sure, you might miss the taste of the rice a bit, but I personally do not think it has nothing to do with the rice itself but instead remembering what the experience was like. I feel that way now. I miss the eight year old girl that didn’t know about the darkness waiting for her out there. I longed for the place that she existed in, but not the place that my eyes are currently seeing. 

This is still a place that nevertheless, calls me. Draws me in. It is like a whisper, you can barely hear it. This shushed tone lures me to stay still, to breathe in the air around me. It's there, it's finding me. I am an adult now. I did not grow up in this country that birthed me, but the child that is still somewhere deep inside me is found, it is smiling.