I apologize in advance if this article isn’t what you expect. You expect me to discuss how I’m not ready to leave my new “amazing” dorm housing and go back home to my old high school friends and curious family members. However, I commute from “home” so no, this has nothing to do with college life or anything related. During winter break I will be off to Ecuador for an entire month—that’s what I call my home. Ecuador is where I was born and semi-raised (I moved to New York at 5 years old) and mainly all of my family lives there (including my dad). I would travel each summer to Ecuador since I moved to New York and I’ve loved every single moment over there. It was my safe haven and my vacation away from stress and reality. I love going to Ecuador because all we ever do over there is tan by the beach, eat almost every second of the day, and hang out at ice cream shops, the pool—and my personal favorite—sandwich carts that are open at midnight (those are the best sandwiches you will ever have!!). So then why am I scared to go back home? It sounds like paradise; who wouldn’t want to go there?
Well, get ready for this to get really personal really fast. On January 19th, 2017 my cousin died in a car accident. He was in his late 20’s and his death impacted so many people. When my mother and I heard the news the day of, we immediately booked flights to go to Ecuador for the funeral. Everything happened so suddenly I was still in a state of shock. Nothing really hit me until we arrived at Ecuador. My family is known to be an extremely fun and happy family. We party every chance we get and we love being together (keep in mind we are a HUGE family) and joking around everywhere. So, when I arrived in Ecuador on that day, my heart shattered instantly. I was extremely depressed because one of my cousins had just died and my cousins are my brothers and sisters to me. He was the nicest person you would ever meet. He played piano in a band and one late night when they were coming back home from a gig, the driver (drunk, may I add), sped up the car while going through a curved highway, which led to the car flipping over multiple times. Keep in mind, my cousin was not intoxicated. The only thing he had done wrong (besides letting a drunk person drive and getting into a car with them) was not wearing a seatbelt in the back seat because he wanted to be more comfortable, so he could sleep through the ride. There were a few more people in the car too (his band, a pregnant woman, their friends), but my cousin was the only one that died. Now, you would imagine what a death like that does to a family. You would imagine how much my heart broke even more when I saw all of my family members crying, screaming for my cousin, deeply sad. I had never gone through that before or seen anything like that because this was the first family death since I was born. It really traumatized me to see my family like that. I never wanted to go through that again, but you can’t always control death. However, you can control drinking and driving. So I beg of you, don’t EVER drink and drive.
To make matters worse, in 2016, an earthquake with a high magnitude of 7.8 happened in Ecuador. It destroyed my hometown, so driving around my hometown a year later and seeing that everything looked worse than it did on social media not only made me sad, but angry. I was mad at how social media can speak so much about something but nothing ever gets done. Most buildings were shattered on the ground and if they weren’t they had to be inspected to see how strong they could stand afterwards. If one wasn’t, then it would get torn down. Imagine having your home broken down by something you couldn’t control. It was very frustrating. I couldn’t handle seeing everything and dealing with my cousin’s death at the same time.
Now I’m returning soon and I’m scared. Scared because my cousin’s one year anniversary will be coming up, scared to see that my hometown’s condition hasn’t changed, scared to experience all of those emotions again, scared because Ecuador isn’t my safe haven anymore. I really want to be strong enough to be able to hold it together when the time comes—but I can’t help but feel fear. So again, I apologize if this article wasn’t what you expected it would be.