For this project I chose to interview my longtime friend Tatiana, whom I met through church when I was 13 and she was 12. Though young at the time, Tatiana told me her story of how she came to be living in America with her brother and mother, and I have asked her to recount her story again for the purposes of this project. It is not a happy story; quite frankly I was not aware of the full weight of it and her background until I became older. Tatiana and her family’s story is comparable to our previous class topics of refugees and fighting for a good life, as they moved from Mexico here to Florida in search of a better future and are still overcoming many hardships in their daily life to get where they want to go.
As you already know, I was born on October 22, 1996 in Mexico City. My mom is full-blooded Mexican, and my dad is German. We left when I was 7 and my brother Andreas was 12; mom bought us plane tickets and we came to Florida with just a couple of suitcases and our backpacks. We had to leave everything behind- all our toys, our books, our movies, all our friends - everything we knew. We had to leave because my dad wasn’t the best of dads; he used to yell and beat my mom, and yell and kick at us. I was scared. One time he slapped me across the face, and was throwing stuff at mom from across the living room. It was terrible! I remember a few times when were were all together and happy, but there weren’t very many of those…
I guess mom chose to come to America because she had a sister here and some other relatives, but when we first arrived, they didn’t help us out. We had nothing, just some clothes and almost no money. Of course Andreas and I didn’t want to leave; all of our friends, our toys, our school was back in Mexico. Nobody at our new school spoke Spanish, and we had to learn English coming into elementary and middle school. Kids made fun of us all the time. Even though we looked like everyone else, I still got made fun of and so did he. It was really hard to make friends until we could speak English, which wasn’t until a couple years afterwards.
Dios mio, lifestyle change! My mom went from being a high class Mexican wife to cleaning other people’s houses four to six times a week. It was enough to get us by, and it was really hard for all of us at first. There were a lot less toys for birthdays and Christmas. All of our clothes were from clearance racks or thrift stores, Mom taught us how to clean up after ourselves and how to cook, and also taught us Mexican and Eastern Orthodox traditions of Easter, Christmas, and other days like that. Andreas and I have been together through everything, and we’re really close.
My first impression of the United States was at first that it was really cool, and new, and exciting. But then after we were here for a couple weeks, I began to realize how different it was, especially at school with the language and all. Once I learned English and made friends, it got better, and I did my best in middle school and high school to get good grades to make mom proud. I made friends over the years, and right now I’m working and trying to save up to take college classes at Valencia and still help mom pay for rent and food. Andreas helps out too, and he’s more advanced at Valencia than me. It’s hard, but you do what you have to, you know?
For me, I would really like to be an artist. But that’s never gonna happen, so right now I’m just working. I really like the Renaissance period, and my favorite thing to paint is people in oil or acrylic, but supplies are really expensive. I sketched and painted in high school, but nothing since then because of the cost of supplies. Andreas really wants to be an engineer, and I think he can do it. He’s made a lot of good connections and I hope he can do what he wants.
In general, I feel like anyone can do what they want in America and be what they want to be, but it’s definitely harder when your family is struggling to make ends meet all of the time, you know?
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