After endless searching since the age of 5, my place in this world has finally been found. It’s a place where I can finally be myself without judgment or fear. A place where I can let go, even if it’s only for a couple of hours every other year. “This is where I belong”, I thought, as I stood in the pit of TD Garden watching as Tyler jumped around the stage singing lyrics that my lungs wailed at because they couldn’t keep up. I belong here, mixed within the throng of misfits and oddballs who don’t quite know where they belong either. But somehow they make me forget about this chain I call social anxiety wrapped around my throat. I belong here, with the music pulsating through my blood, eyes fixated on the dynamic duo named Twenty One Pilots, watching as Tyler sang, “…Is it time to move our feet/ To an introspective beat/ It ain’t the speakers that bump hearts/ It’s our hearts that make the beat”. This is where I truly belong, dancing to the beat of my heart, a beat that was once in time to the sound of bachata back home.
As an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, I have always felt like a wandering ghost. To me, that place is as foreign as our unexplored galaxies, with streets like mazes and family members who are nothing but blurry faces that I can’t recognize. When they come here to visit, it’s always, “¿Me recuerdas?” or even “¿Recuerdas cuando hacíamos…”, and I desperately want to say, “Yes, I remember you”, but those precious moments we shared from my childhood seem to be lost and no matter how hard I try, I can’t bring them back. And while those memories seem so far, this concert continues to bring out the real me. While hearing Tyler sing, “If I keep moving, they won’t know/ I’ll morph into someone else/…I’m just a ghost/ …Defense mechanism mode”, I came to the realization that,
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After endless searching since the age of 5, my place in this world has finally been found. It’s a place where I can finally be myself without judgment or fear. A place where I can let go, even if it’s only for a couple of hours every other year. “This is where I belong”, I thought, as I stood in the pit of TD Garden watching as Tyler jumped around the stage singing lyrics that my lungs wailed at because they couldn’t keep up. I belong here, mixed within the throng of misfits and oddballs who don’t quite know where they belong either. But somehow they make me forget about this chain I call social anxiety wrapped around my throat. I belong here, with the music pulsating through my blood, eyes fixated on the dynamic duo named Twenty One Pilots, watching as Tyler sang, “…Is it time to move our feet/ To an introspective beat/ It ain’t the speakers that bump hearts/ It’s our hearts that make the beat”. This is where I truly belong, dancing to the beat of my heart, a beat that was once in time to the sound of bachata back home.
As an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, I have always felt like a wandering ghost. To me, that place is as foreign as our unexplored galaxies, with streets like mazes and family members who are nothing but blurry faces that I can’t recognize. When they come here to visit, it’s always, “¿Me recuerdas?” or even “¿Recuerdas cuando hacíamos…”, and I desperately want to say, “Yes, I remember you”, but those precious moments we shared from my childhood seem to be lost and no matter how hard I try, I can’t bring them back. And while those memories seem so far, this concert continues to bring out the real me. While hearing Tyler sing, “If I keep moving, they won’t know/ I’ll morph into someone else/…I’m just a ghost/ …Defense mechanism mode”, I came to the realization that, in my mind, I want to belong to my country, to my people. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t morph into someone I’m not.
For the past 12 years, I’ve stepped foot nowhere else but Boston, Massachusetts. It is here that I’ve witnessed a nasty divorce between my parents. Here, I’ve made my lifetime friends. Here, I’ve decided to study early childhood education in order to help shape the young minds of tomorrow. But despite knowing the streets of Boston better than the city in which I was born, this is not home. Because my parents made the conscious efforts to give my brother and me a better future than the one destined for us in D.R, this will never be home. Because of my undocumented status, this place won’t feel like home. Not even my DACA status can make this place my home because, at any given turn of a corner, deportation is there, lingering, and waiting to send me to my unexplored galaxy.
But as I stand at this concert, singing these words, “East is up/ I’m fearless when I hear this on the low/ East is up/ I’m careless when I wear my rebel clothes”, I realize that I belong in this place with the sea of people wearing their rebel clothes, all singing the same lyrics. We all jump to the same beat, body heat radiating off and lingering with me hours after the end of the concert, despite the mid-autumn breeze. These are the people who don’t care if I look stupid while “dancing”. The ones that understand that “it was never just a ‘phase’, mom”. These are the people who understand me for me. They are my people. And standing amongst them, I am neither undocumented or a wandering ghost. Standing amongst them, I have found my place. “It looks like you might be one of us”.