I hit the boiling point a month or so ago and it wasn’t very pleasant. I told a close friend that the time had come for me to see a counselor, since I wasn’t feeling very well for the past two weeks or so. He agreed and encouraged me to go.

I entered the counseling center and waited for the counselor to see me. She came for me and we went into her office, introduced each other, and started to ask basic information about me. Everything started when she asked where I was from. I told her that I’ve lived in the United States for about 13 years or so and that my parents were from Mexico. From there, she began to comprehend the source of my stress as I began my story.

In the fall of 1995, my father decided to leave the United States (he had come on his own a year earlier to find work to be able to sustain us) to come get us. When he had returned, my siblings and I were happy to see him, thinking that he had come to stay with us. However, days later, my mother talked to me (I was nine years old at the time) and pretty much said that she was between a rock and a hard place because my father had come to bring us with him to the United States. We were in the United States in September of 1995. About two weeks later, I started school and from there I began a new life. I became someone else as I was submerged into a different world with a strange language and a different culture. I thought at the time that this place was somehow still a few miles away from my old home. A place close enough to home, I thought.

I graduated from elementary school as the valedictorian and I graduated from high school at the top 10% of my class. I was fortunate enough that my high school college counselor helped me apply to private colleges. Although many colleges were not able to help me because of my status, one school understood my challenge and awarded me with a private scholarship to attend college. As graduation day nears, I am ever thankful to the people that believed in my abilities to complete a college education and to help guide students like myself.

My counselor was surprised that I spoke fluent English and that I seemed to lead a normal American life despite my obstacles. Although she had no answers to my problems, she assured me that all of these obstacles have helped me to appreciate what I have been able to achieve so far. Though I still live with the stress, I was glad that at least one more person knows about us, the DREAMers, who continue to persevere to keep on going until we have a voice with people willing to listen to us.