18 Years Away
Beyond what’s right or wrong, I am moving into what’s possible.
I wish I could start this like a fairy tale. Conversely, I wish I could write it as a reliable narrator in a history book. I can’t do either. I want to tell you it was beautiful and that everything was joyful, but that would be incomplete.
I cannot divorce myself from the emotions of this trip and can’t water down the facts to make this story digestible. Everything was absolutely breath taking, but Peru has left me shattered. I am discovering pain in places I didn’t know even existed inside me.
I want to tell you the truth: Everything in me cracked when abuela placed her fragile hand on my cheek and said, “I wish you would stay,” both of us knowing she’s aging and I’m ill and these opportunities are limited. All I could do was promise to try my best to beat the odds again. After 18 years of separation, I wonder if she believes me.
How much capacity do humans have for change and survival?
I can’t give words to the warmth and sensations that ran through my body as I hugged my mom when I landed. It had been almost 4 years since she moved back to Peru and we had seen each other. Her tears landing on my shoulder and my inability to cry or speak created quite a scene. A few people filmed and photographed us.
Immediately after leaving the airport, the light hoodie I was wearing felt too heavy and my skin felt damp from the humidity hanging in the air. My body remembered this feeling. My nose remembered this scent of desert and ocean combined. I felt my shoulders drop, my chest tighten and my heart start racing; I couldn’t figure out why being home felt overwhelming.
For 14 years America labeled me “undocumented” while my own country was too unsafe to live in. For years I waited on my greencard — it felt like lifetimes. I waited 18 years for my green light to travel.
I was quiet for the evening. I landed at 11pm and I was hungry. I wanted air conditioning, a bath, and alone time but I didn’t stay at a hotel. Instead, I was staying with family and air conditioning is not a common household appliance in Peru. I also had to share a single bathroom with two other people. I wanted to be alone to process what the hell it meant to return after 18 years. Aren’t I just as much of a stranger as any other American?
Alone time never came.
Time moved much faster than my brain could process information. There were no shopping sprees or long-day trips to the beach. I went to learn, to sit and wrestle with my roots, to dig through layers of dirt, to sit at my grandmother’s bedside, to recover truths.
I went on tours throughout Lima, a city whose infrastructure is frankly quite dangerous, every area defying all reasonable safety codes as the population keeps growing. The lack of proper roads combined with the complete privatization of so-called public transportation has led to one of the most congested cities in the continent.
Most buildings are painted bright colors, you’d never guess these little places are corporations from abroad. This corner is a Starbucks. Most of the city isn’t like this — though visually striking and serene, this part of the city is for tourists and for the wealthy.
Peruvian politicians have really failed Peru. The past 5 Presidents have all been charged with some sort of robbery or downright crimes against humanity, except for the one who died by suicide last year when police entered his home to arrest him. As of right now, Congress isn’t functioning. It was dissolved this past September in what has been dubbed the “2019 Constitutional Crisis.” But I digress.
I don’t know what compels some people to leave and others to stay.
I don’t understand the science or psychology behind migration. What I mean is that I don’t know what particular and personal circumstances cause some to stay and some to leave. If my dad had a clone and they lived identical lives, what would make one migrate but not the other? Is it a fight or flight response? Is it a deep commitment to survival? What keeps people tied to home and gives others wings?
I can say that what has kept me in the Midwest for almost two decades has been family, the desire of nearness. It’s also been survival as a Queer person, a chronically ill person, a disabled person, who would not have access to healthcare or full rights in Peru. In this way, my parents’ wings brought me to Ohio but I have not grown my own wings to leave the nest, not even to return home except for this visit. I don’t think I could move back permanently without experiencing a reverse cultural shock.
To this day my mom asks herself if it was right or wrong to move us from Peru to The United States. There’s so much to mourn: The lives that could have been. Who would we be? How would we carry ourselves and live daily?
There’s no real answer, of course. What I do know is that my parents had the audacity to dream and the courage to imagine what was possible for their daughters. How could I hold that against them?
