Finding Your Roots: It’s Okay to Start Over

Trigger Warning: This piece contains references to sexual assault which some readers may find upsetting.

I lost myself some time ago. 

I searched in vain until I found her in my bedroom mirror. Nineteen years later.

Photo by Nahid Hatami on Unsplash

Electric. That’s the word she used to describe me. “You were electric,” she said. I would have related more to passive or casual. I have never thought of myself as electric. 

Then again, she knew me when I was four. Four-year-old me danced on public sidewalks and kitchen tables. 

Twenty-six-year-old me struggles to make eye contact. 

The fairytale creature she claims I once was is a mystery to me. Someone I’ve only heard about in stories of fond memories. 

That’s why I came back—to find that girl. 

The Seed

My parents met on a bus in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

I am the product of a young girl looking for a way to leave home and a boy who would have followed her to the ends of the earth. 

We lived happily for three years until my mom decided, once again, that it was time to go. 

The Uproot

The life I left behind—the one I lived for 22 years—was paved with gold. It was the American Dream—you know, the one they all talk about in movies? It’s one of the reasons my parents moved to Florida.

Argentina wasn’t economically poor at the time, but it was highly crime-ridden, and after almost losing our lives during an armed attempted robbery, it was a no-brainer. 

So they left in hopes of striking rich and never having to face another loaded gun. 

Little did we know, and little did I know. 

I was too young to understand where I was, let alone where we were going. Toddlers don’t get a say in life-changing decisions. They go where they are taken. 

My dad and my grandma have always been close, and according to them, she was greatly present in my life before we left. It must’ve been hard for her to see us go.

Memories from that time are in flashes and fragments. Most of what I recall comes from stories and pictures I’ve seen. 

Nonetheless, before I could speak in full sentences, I was on a plane traveling 4,420 miles from home to stay for good.

The Replant

Florida is paved with sand and folks who look for watches with their metal detectors. Not gold. 

Sure, you can make a good living for yourself, like my dad did. After he and my mom got divorced, he started his own company, got remarried, and had two more kids. 

We weren’t well-off, but we never went hungry. 

I adapted well, made friends, and had enough family to practice my Spanish. I danced and sang in school plays and took after-school hip-hop classes. Things weren’t so bad. 

But then, my mom got remarried to a monster who had a thing for seven-year-old girls. All he gave me was the end of a childhood. 

My roots were poisoned, and my light went out. I walked through life like a zombie until I was a freshman in college. 

That’s when I became a fireball. 

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

The Decay 

I burned too hot for my own good. I scorched everything and everyone around me, including myself. 

The alcohol I doused myself in only made the fire grow taller, and the marijuana made me buzz like an old fridge.

The only time you could find me dancing was three shots deep in nightclubs. There was nothing artistic or creative about it. 

I had learned to play guitar at a young age, and after a college experience filled with betrayal, heartbreak, and confusion, I began dedicating more time to writing and composing. 

I learned to express my sorrow and grief through my songs. I took fear and shame and filled entire notebooks with them.

I think it saved my life. 

But music and sex soon became a drug. I prioritized intimacy with men over real friends; the concept of real stopped short of the physical items I could touch. 

All I remember is wanting to feel important—like I mattered. 

One day, I looked around and saw that I was surrounded by ash. I had never figured out what mattered to me.

The Healing

When I started therapy, I questioned everything like it was a pastime. It wasn't conventional psychotherapy, but breathwork therapy. 

For the first time, I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and woke up to my reality. 

Burned down buildings, injured loved ones, and a four-year-old me waiting at the end of it all. 

After two years of therapy, I moved out of my dad’s house. Again. 

St. Pete is about three hours from where I grew up, and it’s always had its appeal. I thought I had finally found my place in the world. I thought I’d be staying for good. 

I lasted four months. 

I lived in my car for two months and came up with the money for an apartment for the other two.

With an upcoming visit to Argentina, I was ready to go see my family for a short while and come back to my humble abode in Florida.

It was hard not to want to stay in Argentina whenever I was there. It was like an invisible string that tugged at me. 

The way life would have it, a week before my flight, I almost faced another brutal abuse by someone I knew (or thought I knew). 

And no, we weren’t in cahoots. I genuinely considered this person a friend.

Thankfully, I got out in time, but the fear and anger took over. 

My illusion of everything came crashing down like a floor-to-ceiling window. I couldn’t trust anything or anyone. 

Within a day I had my life packed into two large suitcases and I was on my way back to my dad’s. And within a week, I was on my much-awaited flight to Argentina for a four-day visit. 

I never got on the flight back. 

The Resowing 

We move from one place to another to find that thing we are looking for. We walk the earth in search of answers—or simply for something better. 

To think that my parents left such a beautiful country and charming city will always astound me. Of course, they had their reasons, just like I had mine to come back. 

But there’s something about the movement within us that has recently captured my attention. The way it travels through our bodies when we aren’t thinking about it, because we’re completely in it. 

There’s a vastness in it. It’s like losing yourself completely to find the purest part of yourself. The part that has no label or role. Neither a category nor an identity. 

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

That’s what I saw in the mirror that night. I saw myself without thought. Without judgement. Just pure energy in motion. Pure being. 

It’s been four months. 

I’ve never felt more sure about anything in my life. I feel at peace for the first time in a long time. 

We still talk every day, my parents and I. I think we’re closer than ever. 

It took 22 years and the journey of (what seems like) many lifetimes to finally understand. 

Sometimes the answers are far away, and sometimes we have to travel thousands of miles to realize they are closer than we think.