Here is something I wrote last year that still resonantes. I wrote it in a past tense. I was still 34 years old but I wrote it from a 35 year old perspective. Predictable, but still uncanny.
*I adjusted and edited the content accordingly.
For the past 4 years my life was about waiting. Waiting for the doctor. Waiting for the treatment. Waiting for the treatment to work. Waiting for the results. Waiting for the results to be “negative”. Waiting for the next 6 months to start it all over again.
Then the hurricane came and so the cycle continued but worst because this time I also had to wait for the electricity to come back and for things to come back to “normal”.
I waited.
I waited 1 month to go on a planned Vacation amid darkness and uncertainty in my country.
I waited 2 months for the garbage to be removed from the street in front of my home.
I waited 3 months to visit my family in Thanksgiving only to comeback home and find out that candles were still going to illuminate my night.
I waited 4 months to -FINALLY- have the light back in my apartment.
I waited and waited and built a patience in a way I never knew I could…
When it all ended, I took a deep breath and moved out. Ironically, when it all came back to “normal”…
Moving to another country was the dream of my life. I did it after surviving cancer. I was 34 years old and I chose France to live the experience. I had always loved the language and studied it through my college years.
I did this for myself and for the sake of living and healing. As soon as I finished my treatments, I packed everything and went away. Sort of. It wasn’t an “out of the blue” moment. I had planned it since the beginning of my illness. It was a promise to myself, that I would live to live the experience I always wanted to.
I am here now. In Nantes. This is my present and I can only think of all the terrible things I lived back home. I feel nostalgic in a strange way. I do not miss the Island or my family. Maybe I miss being strange there? Here my “strangeness” is different. Obviously. I’m in a land with people who doesn’t speak my same language and behave completely differently from us, the Latin people.
I think what I miss the most is their empathy. People in Puerto Rico and Latin America are generally compassionate and empathic. They have a sweet voice and a big heart; they know how to soften our sorrows and make us feel comfort and warm even in the coldest and saddest places of our bodies.
But Life continues. Here. In this country that I find a bit cold, in all the senses. I have to grow tolerance every day and not be open hearted with them. It will only hurt me more. I have already seen it, their distance, their seriousness. They don’t know how to deal with emotions. Vulnerability is not in their daily vocabulary. And I cannot change that. And it’s ok.
That is why I feel this country is not for me. I am an open human being; I am a woman that has got through a lot of pain. I need openness and vulnerability in my life. Most importantly, I need to be able to share it, and need to be able to feel understood. Here I feel like a strange tree standing alone in the middle of a cold valley.
Notwithstanding, I don’t desire to go back to Puerto Rico.
I think about how there’s a “reality” waiting for me back home—if I can still call Puerto Rico home. I still need to visit the doctor every 6 months for 5 years in a row, then once a year during the next 10 years.
I think about how I never felt I belong where I was born and, now that I’m in France, I have found myself don’t belonging here, either.
There is a sadness, a sorrow; but there is also a quest, and that is what matters the most to me. I’m not giving up now.
