Deported Carry-On

As anxiety over the fate of DACA continues I thought I would write about the feeling of leaving the country I consider my home. 

Stretching my legs over my red TK-Maxx suitcase I watched as my parent’s heads faded into the dimly-lit yellow lights of the DFW Airport parking lot.

My sleepover in Terminal 2 was the first of many nights I would spend on my own. This night, in particular, marked the last night I  would spend in the United States.

I was brought to the US by my parents when I was five-years-old. And then at 23 under the fluorescent lights, I remembered how in nearly 20 years I had worked to Americanize myself. When I first arrived I adjusted my accent to eradicate all signs of my Mexican citizenship. I became an Honor Roll student and at university, I majored in political science where I learned the laws of the country that considered me “illegal.”

As my family walked away I felt my roots being yanked from under me. The disorientation made my eyesight so blurry I needed to squint even while wearing my glasses.

Later I used my shades to make me look like a person that did not have a gaping hole in her chest. My sorrow could be seen in the deep circles around my watery eyes.

On the plane, I desperately applied the items in my makeup bag in an attempt to conceal my sadness. The puffiness of my eyes could not be fixed no matter how many items I applied.

Later my computer would reopen my wounds when it allowed me to see the faces of the loves I had left behind.

My lavender sleep mask, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion from crying helped me to fall into a deep sleep 48 hours later when I laid on the top bunk of a dorm in Tokyo Japan.  I slept with the hope that rest would bring me the strength I needed to take on the next day.

I maintained the hopes of my hardworking family within me and this allowed me to persist even as I continue on to this day without roots.