Personal Narrative: El Salvador

As a child, El Salvador was all I had ever known. The lush green forest, oppressive heat, and large ravine that seemed to stretch on forever were what my sense of identity rooted itself in. My first time coming back to the U.S. after leaving in 1998 was the winter of 2002, and I was practically bursting with joy at the prospect of being reunited with my parents. Any excitement that I had felt promptly left the second I laid eyes on my new home. The huge white castle with a golden fence that I had always imagined my parents living in turned out to be a crowded, bug infested one bedroom apartment in an old, worn out building.
Living in Virginia was extremely difficult to adjust to, and it was made even harder due to my inability to converse with the people in my community. With both of my parents being unable to speak English, the task of learning a completely new language was something that I had to deal with myself at the tender age of four. I quickly grew tired of the isolation

My biological father ran off with another woman and left my baby sister, my pregnant mother, and me to pull ourselves out of the financial hole he dug us into. Without my father’s paycheck, we never had enough money for the basic necessities. The fear of hunger and homelessness constantly circled overhead, getting closer and closer with each passing day. Eventually we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent, and we began to move from one person’s basement to another. My mother’s unpredictable work schedule became a huge source of stress for me. Because she had no way of contacting me whenever she was working late, I spent hours worrying for her safety and wondering if she was ever coming back. My overactive imagination created the worst possible scenarios, which alternated between her dying in a car crash, and being caught by immigration and deported back to El Salvador