Frozen Souls - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages This is not to say that I had no apprehensions about the move, just that any the upside was much greater than the alternative. After all, this was America, an entire nation composed of immigrants that had once made the same journey, both metaphorically and physically. On the flight I remember the airline playing the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies. At the time Schwarzenegger, himself an immigrant, was the governor of California. For a moment I allowed myself to entertain similar notions of grandeur; I too could do great things one day. When I reflect back on my perceptions before arriving in the United States I recognize my idealism. It is not that I am a gullible person; I just bought into the narrative of American, and more specifically Californian, wealth and prosperity. It was this feeling of excitement and expectation that I felt as the plane landed and I looked onto the world that is now my home. The plane landed on a grey and rainy day, but I didn’t notice, instead expecting the country to soon embrace me. For the first time I would not be held back by an inefficient government or a lack of opportunity. After exiting the plane I walked to retrieve my bags. There were many beautiful people and people of varying ethnicities all moving rapidly about. I retrieved my bags and walked towards the LAX gates and waited around for a cab to the apartment complex I had set up. I was so filled with excitement and anxiety that I could not sleep that night and instead contemplated my upcoming weeks, months, years. I spent my first week with such anxiety-filled excitement and wonder that I never gave myself the chance to notice my loneliness. After exploring all day I would come home and pass out reading a book or watching the Los Angeles Lakers. This week, however, soon turned into a month and then two and three. Instead of finding the joy and prosperity I figured awaited me, I found nothing but society’s self-interest. Every day I woke up to a California sun that stood in stark juxtaposition to the cold and lonely conditions of my current existence. I attended school during the day and would many times have my afternoons free. Not knowing anyone I would walk on the beach or through Downtown areas, hoping I would meet someone and California would finally make sense and my life would be warm and wonderful. I would walk past the sorts of beautiful people I once watched on television, all of them on their cell phones, with their perfectly coiffured hair and stylish clothing. For a period, I continued to tell myself that I merely needed to penetrate this wall of their existence and they the world would open to me; that while I had immigrated to the country, I had just not entered the true California yet. As a child in my home country I was raised in a conservative Catholic family. Towards the end of my adolescence I came to reject this family as overly constricting and naive about the true world out there. In my solitude and loneliness for the first time I could appreciate the true love and warmth they supplied. Such instances of love and warmth are rare. I made a few acquaintances during these early days, but no one I would consider a friend. After math class I would visit a coffee shop adjacent to the college and read and watch people. Rarely did I talk to anyone and rarely did anyone talk to me. One day, however, a girl named Vanessa was forced to share my table as the ...Download file to see next pagesRead More