The days when I don’t think back on my life on the island, I dream about it. I have nightmares that I am in a Cuban classroom again. I can smell the place and hear the teacher’s broken dreams in their voice as they yell at a particularly difficult child. I see the other students’ blurry faces and their smiles. Somehow without seeing clearly I know who they are. They have no idea. We’re all in a daze. Living day by day, unaware of the shit future that awaits everyone.

I also sometimes imagine my father in that raft. He has mentioned the corpses that floated by, half-eaten by sharks, or the visions of buildings coming out of the water when dehydration and exhaustion was taking its mental toll; the impossibly high waves, or not being able to see your own hand in front of your face because of the pitch-black darkness.

I also often wonder about my future children. They will never know what being an immigrant felt like. They will not understand- the same way I will never fully understand what it was like to cross an ocean. Sometimes I think that is a good thing. I hope my children don’t have recurring nightmares or life-threatening experiences because their home country was in shambles. I think being an immigrant is not something to celebrate. I wish I didn’t have to learn a new language, that I didn’t have to adapt to the culture of people that are incredibly different than me, that I didn’t leave family behind, that I had to feel lost, unwanted, confused, and angry for years, that my mom didn’t have to age so fast trying to start over at 40 where adapting isn’t so easy. I wished that part of my life was the dream, and not the reality, and I certainly wish children around the world never had to go through that. But if living in Cuba taught me anything, it was that nothing is ever fair. Despite everything, I’m aware of reality, and I embrace it. Cuba gave me a perspective on life that I wouldn’t have been able to get here. This is why I now look back and reflect, and realize how important making this journey has been.

The metaphor is clear. The Hero’s Journey of my adolescence has finished. The process of adapting and being re-born anew will never end, but it has cycled into a new me. Now I use the experience and integrate it into new enterprises, and as I challenge myself and struggle with new life, I make this piece: a representation of hope in the sea of life, journeying into the future.