When I was eight years old, I flew to Costa Rica for a week to visit family members. I barely remember the trip, but I know that it did not feel like I had left my home, not completely. In a time where I did not have control and could only follow everyone else along, leaving Puerto Rico felt easy. There were no worries or doubts or fears; I knew I would come back to the same home I had left.
The next time I left my island was a month after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico in a state of devastation and distraught.
My family and me had been fortunate enough not to have been caught in the worst of the hurricane. We dealt with similar things that almost every Puerto Rican suffered through: no electricity, no water, endless lines for food and gas, and an overwhelming worry of what would be to come. It had become a normalcy for everyone. My father would be up with the sun in search of gas; I would wait with my aunt in three-to-six-hour long lines for bags of ice, swatting away at flies and trying to tuck ourselves into any shadow that might protect us from the scorching rays; my brother would go to the neighborhood park and help pick up the debris Maria had left for us to clean; and my grandmother would stay in the house, fidgeting with our handheld radio in search of any news station that was transmitting. We’d attempt to contact family members and friends, trying to assure ourselves that everyone was okay. Through all of this, I found myself without a place for education. The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) had already struggled to get back on its feet after a long student strike, and the hurricane caused enough structural damage to leave the university non-operational for a significant amount of time.
It was during the beginning of October that I received an email from the Honors Program at the UPR (Rio Piedras Campus): Brown University was inviting students from the program to travel to Rhode Island, all expenses paid, and finish their semester at the university. Brown University has one of the best writing departments, and has always been a top contender on my list of dream universities; the mere possibility of attending Brown, even if for a semester, seemed surreal to me.
Still, there were many doubts that kept me from applying right away. There was the suddenness of the whole opportunity; in less than three days, I needed to make a decision, pack my bags, say goodbye to my family and friends, and leave for an indefinite amount of months. With a little over a decade since I had last travelled, and no previous experience travelling alone, the thought of leaving in a whirlwind to the US, much less an Ivy League, was daunting to me. There was the guilt of being in a better situation while my family was still in the unfortunate circumstances. There was the fear of going to somewhere other than Puerto Rico, with students I did not know, in a culture I had never been in. Yet, I still applied. I sent the application as an afterthought, with the idea clear in my head that I would still be in Puerto Rico with my family no matter the answer. But then I was accepted.
I did not want to leave my loved ones behind, especially in a post-Maria Puerto Rico; although hope and positivity persisted amidst helpful neighbors and night spent together as family, the uncertainty of the future was always in the back of everyone’s minds. And even as I chose to leave, packed up my bags and headed for the airport, leaving did not erase the uncertainty, nor did I expect it to. I left because I knew opportunities like this were hard to come by, and experiences like this were one in a million. I left because, despite the struggles back home, I knew my family’s hearts swelled with pride at the thought of me taking advantage of this moment. I left because I wanted to expand my horizons academically, and I did not want my education to suffer because of these terrible circumstances. I left because I knew the other students and I could raise awareness of the current situation in Puerto Rico. Most importantly, I left because I knew I’d come back to my island in the end.
Paula Ayala es estudiante en la UPR de Río Piedras, cursando un bachillerato de Mercadeo con segunda concentración en Literatura en Inglés. Actualmente, se encuentra en Brown University como estudiante visitante para finalizar su segundo año académico.
