In the Country We Love: My Family Divided

by Diane Guerrero

I pretended not to want what I wanted, mostly because I feared I’d end up disappointed.

Truth is, among low-wage earners busting their tails to make the rent, one’s feelings are seldom discussed or acknowledged. Emotional wellness is a First World luxury.

With a green card, my brother could look for an above-the-table job and bring in a minimum-wage income.

I always know it’s Sunday because I wake up feeling apologetic. That’s one cool thing about being Catholic … it’s a multifaceted experience. If you lose the faith, chances are you’ll keep the guilt, so it isn’t as if you’ve been skunked altogether. —JANET EVANOVICH, novelist

When you’re undocumented in the United States, you don’t get a pass under the heading of “youthful indiscretion.”

But like all of us, he’s human. He faltered. And, instead of his mistakes bringing him a slap on the wrist, they cost him his opportunity for citizenship.

Later, in talking with others around the neighborhood, Papi found out that this woman was actually working for this fake lawyer; for each unsuspecting and vulnerable undocumented worker she’d bring him, he gave her five hundred dollars.

When you’re back at the starting line of a race you have no reason to think you’ll complete, there isn’t much to talk about.

I felt if I attended any other public school, I’d fall through the cracks, or I’d crack out.

There is something special when a group of people work toward a common goal.

At fourteen, I’d been left on my own. Literally. When the authorities made the choice to detain my parents, no one bothered to check that a young girl, a minor, a citizen of this country, would be left without a family. Without a home. Without a

way to move forward.

In the eyes of the ICE, it was as if I didn’t exist. I’d been invisible to them.

We’d trudged through our days with our stomachs in knots, our lives on hold, our hearts in our throats—and yet our worry hadn’t changed the outcome.

If there was to be no happily ever after for my family, if we’d find no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then we should’ve lived as if the happiness we’d shared with one another was itself the prize. The dream. The Promised Land.

My parents’ deportation had thrust me, headfirst, into the world of adult worries.

In a way, not having Mami and Papi close led me to give myself rules. Structure. Boundaries. I wasn’t conscious of it, but it’s like I was parenting myself in their absence. I wanted to show people

even without my family here, I could remain on track.

through the forms and somehow got funded. I didn’t understand a lot of what I signed up for, and years later I’d pay dearly for some of my choices. Let’s just say Sallie Mae and I have had words over the years. Okay fine—we basically stopped talking after she accused me of being a thieving bitch, and I accused her of being a money-grubbing whore. Oh, but don’t worry, Sallie—you’ll get your money.

Depression is not like sadness; it’s not how you feel after cutting things off with a lover or losing a job. Those things hurt, of

course, but even amid the agony, you know there’ll come a moment when the heaviness lifts. Despair is different. It’s the absence of hope. It’s a long, flat road with no horizon in the distance. It’s the path my brother once walked.

“You are not your mistakes.”

“Your failures don’t define you,”

“Your worth isn’t about what you do or don’t do. You have value simply because you’re here.”

journey. I was giving myself the space to really try something and either succeed or fail at it; at least I wouldn’t die knowing that I didn’t make an attempt.

The day you finally start dealing with your past is the day you stop dragging it into the present.

Service to others—I believe that’s the purpose every person on the planet

shares.