she who speaks

Note: this was originally written in May, but it took until now for me to go through, edit, and decide to actually press that ‘publish’ button.

It’s probably unfair, but for the longest time, I’ve felt like my whole life was defined by one man — ironically, a man whom I’ve not seen nor heard from in almost twenty years.

My father is a paranoid schizophrenic who has never wanted to face his reality. It was on a whim that we arrived in the US when I was five years old. Another impulse would result in my family staying — an incident by the side of the freeway wherein my father was spotted striking my mother. This was not the first instance in which he displayed violent tendencies.

He was arrested and after hearing our story, someone said to my mother: it’s now or never. So she took my sister and me and we ran. We stayed at a women’s shelter initially, then made our way to relatives in California. I have been here ever since.

Through high school and college, I had only one real priority: to stay in the country. I focused on finding a career path that would allow me to transition easily from a student to work visa, initially choosing accounting because of my mother’s assurances of its stability. It was a disastrous venture though, as I became dangerously depressed and my plummeting grades threatened to derail my visa status. Eventually, I followed my instincts and switched to web design and development instead.

In the midst of my chaotic life, while I was focusing on every other aspect, I met my now-husband (on the internet, no less). As the cliche goes, we fell in love and realized that we wanted to spend our lives together (a separate story for another time, perhaps?).

Now my green card paperwork is processing, and for the first time ever, I can actually step back and relax a bit. I have loved creating and improving user experiences on the web (and more recently, on mobile), but it was something I chose partially under pressure. I’ve waited a long time to be free of the legal constraints that come with immigration, so now I want to take the time to ask: what is it I really want to do in this life?

Tagged: introspection, navelgazing