Being an immigrant is strange.
No matter if you’ve been here for over a decade, if your kid was born here, if you see this as home or you don’t ever want to go back.
Wherever you go, people still see a foreigner.
Everything gives you away…
your skin, your height, the way you talk, even the way you walk.
People will always ask you about your accent. “where’s it from”
“where are you originally from”
“how come you moved here”
You’ll have to tell the story over and over again.
You’ll have to explain why you chose to leave,
why you chose this place,
why you chose the rain,
as if the weather was more important to you than being in peace, than making a living, than staying alive.
If you’re from Colombia, as I am,
you’ll get the cocaine joke a hundred too many times.
You’ll get it so much you’ll run out of smiles and then
you’ll still smile some more
because you know,
you want to be polite.
You’ll make sure you’re always nice, and that you always do everything right.. you don’t want to live up to those stereotypes.
Your parents will always be too far.
You’ll only get to see them again a handful of times.
And then one day
they’ll be gone,
and you’ll feel guilty you left them behind.
Your son won’t have the family you had.
He won’t have 15 cousins, 10 second cousins, 20 second uncles and aunts.
He’ll be different to you.
He won’t be scared.
He won’t be humbled by danger, by scarcity,
by death.
He will be free and perhaps he’ll be oblivious.
He will have more privilege so you’ll have to double down on social studies so that he’s also aware.
He’ll speak two or three languages but maybe struggle to fit in.
He’ll know he’s different,
he just won’t be as different as you are.
He might not get told the fucking cocaine joke.
He might not even be asked where he’s originally from.
And even if he does,
Even if he knows,
he won’t … feel it.
He won’t REMEMBER
For better
and
for worse.
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