The aftermath of digging

 I recently wrote a short play that I hope to be able to share with you all soon. 

As you can see, this isn't a short story nor a play. This is the aftermath of that writing. The aftermath I didn't plan on dealing with. The aftermath I didn't know I wasn't ready to deal with. 

Often times I find myself thinking about who I am. Who I've been. Who I'm aiming to be. I think about how the people I surround myself with are the people who are slowly molding me into the women I'll soon be, or eventually end up being when my time on this earth is up. 

Why do I bring this up? Easy. Because that's the reality of our lives. Everybody. The people we are is made up of many components. The people we surround ourselves with on a daily basis. The music we listen to on repeat. The books that left a mark in our memories that will never go away. Our favorite foods. Our hopes, dreams, aspirations, goals, mistakes, memories, etc., It all comes together to make us into the people we are and are destined to be. 

Again, what does this have to do with anything? Well, this play that I wrote, it was for school. It consisted of a series of interviews that affected the community that surrounds me, but doesn't affect me directly. So I chose immigration. Not from a political stand point though. It was about what immigrants leave behind in hopes for a better life here in the states. Chasing this "American dream" that we are all chasing whether we are aware of it or not. The challenges people face on a daily basis in order to provide their family with a better life. 

I interviewed a total of 12 people that had either 1st or 2nd hand experience with this type of life. I interviewed 5 people that never even had to think about this situation on a personal stand point. Lastly, I interviewed 3 people that aspire to one day be able to get a taste of America and all its opportunities that are promised to everybody. 

That's where my issue is.

That's the aftermath I'm currently dealing with. 

For a total on 2 weeks, I sat down with 12 people. I asked them questions, they replied. I listed to 12 life stories. These stories were different and the same all together. These 12 people came to this country in hopes for a better life. Looking for these opportunities that everyone hears of. They came in order to better themselves as people. It wasn't until I hit submit on that play that it hit me. I opened a can of worms that I wasn't ready for.

I started off this play talking about my life as a kid. Some call it a childhood, but the reality of it is that I didn't have much of a normal childhood. I spent my days in the back of my moms car while she drove all over town selling whatever she could in order to pay the bills with my dad, and take care of my brother and I. My clothes consisted of thrift store clothes and hand me downs from my cousins. I grew up having to quickly adapt to the culture of this country and master a second language faster than the other kids so that I could help my parents when they didn't understand their mail or documents they needed to fill out. I couldn't get the 72 pack of colored pencils because my mom couldn't justify spending $6 on colored pencils. To me this was normal. I was a kid, I didn't think much about it or question my living situation because, again, this was my normal.

When I sat down with 5 first generation children I realized that in a way this was normal. At least for us it was. We all shared the same common factor of our different childhoods. We all realized that as kids, our parents didn't fully raise us. We did. We guided our parents and they guided us. It was a working dynamic that we all had in our homes as kids. 

This isn't why I'm mad. I'm mad because this just shows to us that our parents were set up for failure the minute they decided that they wanted a better life. They came here looking for a better life for our families and had to work long days, long nights, and hard jobs in order to even get close to an opportunity that so many are handed just for being born on the north side of the border. I'm mad because I had to grow up watching my dad come home struggling to even walk because of how tired he was so he could have a roof over my head. I'm mad because I had to grow up seeing my mom work three different jobs at once and still have to sit down with my dad at the end of the month in order to sort out their expenses so they could pay the bills and still go grocery shopping at the end of the week. I'm mad for the youth that comes here for a better education only to find that it's difficult to pay for books alone. I'm mad because these 12 people came here looking for a better life and they had to fight and work 100 times harder in order to obtain that possibility. Most of all I'm mad because I know that no matter how hard I work or try, I will never be able to repay my parents a fraction of everything they did for me. I can only aspire to be half the person they are. 

I've been thinking about all of this for a week now. I've been tossing and turning all night for 8 nights now. Am I amounting to anything? Am I making my parents proud? Am I contributing anything to this society? Will I ever leave a mark in this world? Is there even a mark worth leaving behind? 

Writing that play was both a blessing and a curse. I'm blessed to have had the opportunity to see life through the eyes of these individuals. However, it's a curse to be able to relate so closely to them through my parents sacrifices and be able to feel the pain they went through in their journey to have a life here. 

Writing that play, in a sense, helped me realign my life focus. My focus on my future self, and my future family. 

I can't go back and change my life or the life of my parents. I can't take away all the sacrifices they had to make for my brother and I. I can't make their journey, and the journey of all these people easier than it actually was. What I can do though, is hold on to them. Hold on to their words and stories. Make them a part of who I want to be. Share these stories with my future children and the future people that will eventually surround me and hope that these stories touch them the way they touched me. Most of all, I can look back on these people, their stories, their lives, and try to be a fraction of the people they are. Have a fraction of the courage they had to make these sacrifices, and have a fraction of the will they had to keep pushing through and making some sort of a positive impact on the people and situations I come in contact with from now on.