Learning to love my broken self

Since I arrived in this country in 2001, I’ve been accustomed to my life being defined by the consensus of public opinion. For a while in community college, I would wake up and search “undocumented” or “illegal” on the Google News section to see how more deportable or likeable I was that day. I internalized everything these public opinions said was good, and denied myself the liberty of exploring whatever it said was bad.
I’ve outgrown my Googling tradition only because my Facebook NewsFeed takes care of that tick to define my being based on what others think of me. Basically, if my feed is full of undocumented articles, something is going on. Good or bad, doesn’t matter. What matters is that a group of people who know nothing about me are collectively feeling some type of way about me because of my legal status. And there’s really nothing I could do or say to change that, because xenophobia is a venomous plague watered by nationalism and harvested by cognitive dissonance. Anything I shout into the void is irrelevant to people who’ve already decided I’m disposable.
The last few days, my NewsFeed has been telling me something is going on, and its both good and bad. Good, only because I just realized I’m beginning to stop depending on what public consensus says about me to measure my worth. I’m finding new ways to love myself, independent to a poll, to an article, to a bill.
But it’s bad because I have not fully learned to do so. I’m still reading everything that mentions my legal status, still continiously refreshing my feed because I feel like I might miss out on any updates, still trying to see myself in every other undocumented person being unafraid (though only online). And all the fears of my youth are beginning to resurface.
I’m back in Elementary School, and in a new country which is having a hard time loving me.
I’m back in Middle School, and worrying that the government might do to me what they did to Anne Frank.
I’m back in High School, and hoping that a broken dream might grant me the ability to be loved by this country.
I’m back in college, and disillusioned by the truth behind the dream I grasped onto.
I’m post-grad, and my world seems to be breaking further apart.
But I guess I’m used to being broken. To me, being broken has been such a huge part of being an immigrant. Broken away from my birthplace, broken away from my grandparents, broken away from my aspirations, financially broke, broken accents, broken promises. So many broken pieces that I have to individually learn to love about myself, when all the forms of healing I turn to seem to want me to love myself as a whole. But I’ve loved brokenly before. I love my reckless childhood in Mexico and love the life my parents molded for us here. I love the way my Spanish quivers when I speak with my family and love to challenge English professors on their love for the literary giants which taught me to write. I love the way I fear because it reminds me that I want to survive, and I love my resiliency amidst it. And I love my community so much for being afraid (even though we chant that we aren’t) and still choosing to expose ourselves for the sake of feeling freer.
Because being resilient amidst fear, however draining it might oftentimes be, is another part of being an immigrant. There’s really no way around it. How else would we navigate this xenophobic world without the will that comes about our resilient desire to be free from fear? And though we often come to places which rob exactly that ability from us, the freedom we were granted from movement is nothing they’ll ever be able to take from us. Freedom to make anywhere you go your nest even though you fear it falling apart. Freedom to love other displaced people even though you fear being taken from one another at any given moment.
Freedom to love the broken pieces which will continue to scatter across this radiant earth.
From now on, I’ll be my own Google Search feed of affirmation. The only poll that I’ll allow to define me is one the people I love verbally grant me. And whatever bills or mandates might come and go will not define my ability to move about this broken life, loving whoever lets me even though I fear I might lost them.
Above all, loving the broken pieces of myself, individually.