“When you live life you explore many things but when you are meant to be in this world sometimes you are really meant to be”. Those are the words that my sister told me once. In the year 1991 a child named Christian was born in Cali, Colombia. When my mother was five months she found out she was pregnant, but oh well it happens. She gave birth to me in a real bad day people were protesting and people were contaminating the drinking water but in Colombia sometimes crazy things happen. After a year I was born my mom was thinking of adopting a child that was just few months from being born. His mother couldn’t afford him so she was giving him away, my mom talked to my dad about the situation and he said that he couldn’t afford him either so the woman gave it to a couple that couldn’t have kids.
I grew up in a town called Comuneros, Comuneros is one of the towns that make up Cali and only the poor people live there. Growing up there wasn’t the best experience, there was always violence going on. Every week there was either a fight or a dead person. In the block I that I lived in there was a family and all the guys in that family had guns even their friends had guns too. When I use to see that I thought guns were cool and normal to carry, I even use to play games with my friends making pretend we shoot each other.
What I didn’t know was that, that family had their own illegal business going on. Most of the weekends they would play dominos or cards outside and when they start arguing they would shoot bullets in the air. After a while of hearing gunshots I got use to the sound of gunshots. My mom and my two big sisters were friends with the woman married to one of the guys in that family so he would take care of my mom store making sure nobody would steal from her.
But like every drug dealer they all fall down its just matter of time. I remember seeing like three funerals in that same house. Fist it was the son of the woman my mom was friends with he was about 18 years old and then the father. One by one they were all dying either getting killed by other people or they were just killing each other.
Time passed by and my mom sold everything she had in the store and then she came to the United States. When she came to the United States she was already separated from my dad. Me, my dad and my sisters were forced to move to another town a town where we could be closer to my aunt’s house.
My aunt was like my second mother she would make sure we had everything we need. My two older sisters were only 19 and 17 they were still young and obviously they would party a lot and me and my younger sister were most of the time unsupervised I was 8 and she was 10. My dad was a good dad but he had a drinking problem that’s why sometimes he wasn’t around. There was days of happiness, sadness and there was even days that the only way to feel safe was by praying. I remember there was one night I woke up because of the sound of machine guns and bombs going off because gorillas were trying to take over the town I live in. I was in my room surrounded by my dad and three sisters; we were all listening to the radio to find out news about what was happening. Thank God everything didn’t go worst and the military was able to control the situation.
Time passed and I came to the United States. My dad told me that I wasn’t going to like it here but I don’t know if he was saying that because he didn’t want me and my sister to leave or just because it was the truth and we weren’t going to like it. When I got here it was like a whole different world the money was different, the houses were different, the language was different, even the environment was different. At first I felt as if I didn’t belong here and I remember about those words my dad told me. I started thinking and it was the truth, I wanted to leave but my mother told me that I had better opportunities here I didn’t know what she meant until now. When I see these things I know that my sister was right “you get to live life, and you explore many things but when you are meant to be in this world you are meant to be”.
