To my six-year old self ~ A mi yo de seis años

My six-year old self,

28 years, 10 months, and 6 days—that’s how long it’s been since you left Colombia heading to the USA.

After years of trying to find a group of friends who accept you as you are, you finally do! And it feels great. Outings after church, retreats, fun trips—it all makes you feel included and loved. The time comes to say goodbye, your friends plan a going-away party, and you don’t want the day to end. How can you keep the memories engraved in your heart forever?

You take out a blank notebook, and everyone writes their best wishes. They tell you to never change. They express how great of a friend you’ve been and ask you to never forget them. As you read those words now, you picture yourself in that moment. You remember someone saying they’d see you in 30 years—hopefully married, with children. Immediately, you replied, “No way! I’ll be back in a year!” Could he have been a prophet? Because next year marks 30 years since your departure with no return, how can this be? Three decades of your life in a country that has become your home—but that denies you the possibility of legalizing your status.

You find yourself in a new country, a new culture, and you wish you had paid more attention in English class back home. For the first few years, all you could think about was the day you’d return. When I turn 18, you’d tell yourself. Then you’d be an adult, making all the decisions. Not! It doesn’t work like that in Latino families—at least not in mine.

A new school year has come. It had only been a couple of months since you moved and you had managed to learn a few words in English, but not enough to carry a conversation. On the first day, you walked to school with your brother and sat in the admin office the entire day, not knowing what to do or how you’d get registered. Staff came in and out, and no one cared to find out why two students were just sitting there.The next day, you packed lunch so you wouldn’t starve. After you ate, the principal must have wondered, Why are these two students sitting here again? He approached you, but you couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He signaled for you to follow him to the cafeteria—he was trying to buy you lunch. You were desperately trying to say you had already eaten when you realized he was standing in the middle of the cafeteria, yelling to see if anyone spoke Spanish. As the embarrassment flooded your faces, you looked at each other and thought: We are never coming back to this school!