When We Left Cuba

by Chanel Cleeton

“Beautiful” never quite matches up to the other things you could be: smart, interesting, brave.

It’s different going to a place and fighting, seeing the destruction men can wreak all around you, and then returning home, to the sanctuary of a country that will likely never descend into such madness. Harder to live it in your favorite haunts, to watch death touch your friends and family. And still, war is war and misery comes to all men, natives and foreigners alike.

Do we all have secrets lingering beneath our skin, private battles we fight?

“I will never forget. I can’t forget. But I don’t have the luxury of languishing in my grief or allowing my anger to consume me.

“The only way to stop being afraid of something is to confront it. To take away its power over you.”

If I’m going to have regrets in this life, I’d rather them be for the chances I took and not the opportunities I let slip away.

“Do you really think that’s what the CIA is fighting for? To give Cubans a chance? Do you think they’re overthrowing him out of the goodness of their hearts?

The thing about hope is that when it fills you, when you hold it in the palm of your hand, the promise of it is everything. You can go for days, weeks, months, years on that hope, telling yourself everything will be fine, eventually, you’ll have what you’ve been waiting for, this is just a momentary setback in your life, one you will overcome. After all, if there isn’t a happy ending at the end of the story, what is the purpose of all of it? Hope is such a beautiful lie.

“You don’t get it, do you? People don’t immediately dismiss you because of the way you look, don’t flash you a condescending smile and tell you some conversations aren’t meant for you, you’re too young, too female, too pretty, too sheltered to understand the world around you. You aren’t treated like a painting, or a delicate vase, or a broodmare, as though your worth only lies in your beauty and what they can barter for it.”

If I’ve learned anything at this point, it’s that life comes down to timing. Things happen the way they are supposed to, the seemingly insignificant moments stringing together to lead you down a path you never imagined traversing,

as I listen to Kennedy’s words, his condemnation of the Soviets’ actions, decrying their attempts to insert themselves in the affairs of other countries, to amass power by proxy, I cannot help but think of the United States’ own actions, their role in Cuba’s current condition. Is the distinction between the two powers that the Soviet Union does so brazenly and with flagrant disregard for international condemnation whereas the United States does so covertly and secretly with the use of the CIA and other organizations like it, while maintaining the moral authority on the world stage?

Do necessity and desperation change our moral fabric so much that we no longer recognize ourselves?

I struggle to reconcile the image of the stalwart American presidency tasked with preserving peace throughout the world and exporting democracy, and the version of the United States I have known for much of my lifetime: the country giving weapons and aid to former president Batista and turning a blind eye to his abuses of power and the subjugation of the Cuban people.

Love ebbs and flows, a low-level hum in the background, but anger sinks its claws in you and refuses to let go.

“Sometimes it’s a choice, Beatriz. You can’t always predict how things will work out, but you can still forge a life for yourself, still find a way to be happy.”

When I was a child, I believed if you wanted something badly enough, if you worked hard enough for it, if you pushed your way past the obstacles presented to you, well, it would be yours. But now I’m learning it’s not simply a matter of will or desire; some things are perpetually out of our reach, and no matter how badly we wish it were otherwise, there are some battles whose outcomes are decided not in our hands, but in the stars.

conflict

Omg eduardo?!

Dreams never die all at once. They die in pieces, floating a little farther and farther away each day.

The line between villain and hero is whisper thin and, very frequently, a matter of perspective.