Like in the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” I had to make a life-altering decision: to stay in Puerto Rico and strive for survival, or to pick up my things and move to the US, effectively joining the mass exodus of Puerto Ricans from the island. Today I write this while sitting on my wooden desk, while the world is happening outside my window. I moved to the US, in search of that which Puerto Rico has very little of: hope. I was born and raised loving my archipelago. Before I was 12, I had visited all of the plazas de recreo and sipped coffee in most of them. I visited new beaches monthly and was always in some kind of festivity. Now I sit quietly, Monday through Sunday working to pay everything: rent, gas, water, heating, my car, and food. Life is not easy here. I took the road less traveled but most worn out, which is maybe the easy choice for some, escaping the whole island mess, and forgetting it ever existed. On the verge of a humanitarian crisis, Puerto Rico keeps steadily losing population, and I became yet another one of the thousands who have left when on May 17, 2016, I left my country.
The flight was a blur, but boarding was the worst. My best friends, Héctor and Elliot, drove me to the airport and we didn’t talk the whole way, waiting for the end to come. As my island began to fade in the rearview mirror and the airport appeared closer and closer, so too grew our emotions, and I began to cry. We unloaded the car with all of my belongings at the beltway of Terminal B for American Airlines, at 4:30 AM with no traffic, the airport’s usual bustling human mass absent.
Not a single word was uttered, but the emotions were there. As I retrieved my luggage from the trunk, both of my friends got off the car and started crying. “How could I handle my friends hurting because of me?”, I remember thinking. I still don’t know. I placed my bags on the sidewalk while the car was still parked besides me, and all that was left was the hardest goodbye I’ve ever had to do. Two songs later, “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk and “Lluvia” by Frankie Ruiz, and fifty-something pictures later, it was time to go. I hugged them and begged them to strive for greatness as I braced myself and challenged a whole new world with two backpacks and a Puerto Rican flag on my back. Three months later, I still miss Héctor and Elliot so much it hurts.
One of the many photos taken during the drop off. Elliot is on the left and Héctor on the right.
Now I won’t lie: things have been great for me after I jumped el charco. I have a job, friends, and a healthy lifestyle, but I don’t have my country. I am a happy human being, but not a happy Puerto Rican. I cannot stand what my people have been going through and I will never support it. The year 2006 hit my household like a furious storm. I had to cut down on things, and I remember my mom saying “recession is tough, but we are tougher.” In 2007, I transferred to a cheaper school that was closer to home, and a year later my dad was diagnosed with pancreatitis and almost died. The following year, my dad applied to and received Social Security while my mom lost her steady job due to the infamous Ley 7, the Fiscal Emergency Law that resulted in the mass firing of 40,000 public employees. The year after that, 2010, I changed schools again due to philosophical and administrative differences between myself and the Catholic school I was attending. By 2011, my mom still hadn’t found a steady job. Two months before I began college the following year, in 2012, my father passed away. By 2013, my mom had moved out of our family home to settle into a small apartment while I studied in Mayagüez, aided only by my Pell grant. My mom relocated the following year, this time to the US, leaving me effectively alone to manage with my Pell grant. Last year, she was able to get a stable job in New York City and got an apartment, but our struggle continued. This summer, I moved with her to Virginia, hoping for a better tomorrow.
And now I can still say it is not worth it. I’m not able to take a moment to go to the beach, go to el jangueo con los panas to drink some beers and talk as if nothing were happening, or ignore the impending colonial death sentence that was signed with the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado over fifty years ago, and cemented by the Fiscal Control Board this year. As the days grow old and my experiences keep stacking up, I wish and hope for the best. So to you, my island friend, I will talk to you in Spanish.
Lucha por lo tuyo; Puerto Rico es tuyo; no dejes para mañana lo que puedes hacer hoy, porque ya mañana será muy tarde para luchar. Recuerda que ya yo no lo tengo, lo añoro a diario y tú lo tienes diariamente. Ámalo y cuídalo, porque Puerto Rico solo hay uno.