A Dreamer Within a Dream

Chapter II - ESL

The definition os ESL is English as a Second Language. Indeed, English was not my first, needless to say that I grew up speaking nothing but Spanish in my household, I was able to concur the fear of being left out.

Growing up I was always in ESL classes, at least until the moment I attended high-school. In middle school, it was embarrassing to say the least. I would be the reason English class in eight grade was interrupted as the councilor of the ESL class called my name alone. I feel like a fish out of sea, like a blooming tree in the deserts of the savannah. The sun so hot against my face was the stares and mocks of the privileged kids and as my blood boiled my face was a mirror of my embarrassment.

I'll admit, I struggled in the class but I did not have an accent. The counselor always looked at me in awe, "you don't look like you should be in ESL." What was one supposed to look like? Dark skinned and uneducated, ripped clothes and homeless looking? I didn't look like I was an immigrant? Maybe that would have been less harsh... at least I knew I was one now and would be able to respond to her with a valid answer, instead I just nodded and waived.
The tests were all about writing and reading but no matter how hard I tried and felt satisfied with my work it so happened that every time I failed... which bothered me because I still carry the certificate for Best Writing Student in my rough grade class which was awarded to me in my eight grade promotion. I felt like I was being tested, pushed to keep writing and to keep my grades up.

These pressures of my younger years was all I could think about. I was never a kid who was popular, my step brother whom I shared the same classrooms with was. Under his shadow I was nothing but a loner who played with the other unfortunate and unpopular kid and picked up ants during recess. There were times where I ran and ran all recess period to escape the non forgiving feet of a bully.
I didn't have the ability to be a kid at heart, I was to busy with the worried of my father and mother being deported on their way to work. They didn't have valid paperwork, in fact, Utah was the only state that gave them a valid license which they used to work. I remember one day they had to travel by car back to Utah and he weather conditions were horrid. I cried myself to sleep that night at my aunts house. I couldn't keep my mind of the idea that they would be stuck in a blizzard, stopped by a police officer and deported and never return.

I hated the kids in my school, so lost in their ideas and childish games. I was a child too, but a child that was forced to grow up too quickly. In the eight grade I soon began to feel the need to rebel, why should I listen to anybody, I was going nowhere anyway. I stumbled in a bundle of confusion, a game of Marco Polo, where I my identity was Marco and I was Polo. I never found myself in reality, always in a dream land. That's where I found the dreamers.
Not dreamers as immigrants but the creative kids, he ones who wore all black and divided their broken soul with bracelets up to their elbows and covered their voices in their heads with music.

The highlighter kids who used hair dye to defy the system of normality. What was normal though? Weren't we all human beings not one creator seeking to find the reason to live and the right to love? I was lost, forgotten and never accepted in the popular crowd but the Scene kids welcomed me.
My ticket in? A broken heart.