Today I was asked by a woman at the gym if I was OK.
I wondered what she meant by OK. Do I look pale after that one-hour run?
But before I could ask or reply, she continued, “I saw you outside, you looked disoriented, like you did not find your place, I mean, sad, gloomy.”
Now I was totally confused, I felt good, or so was what I thought. I said to her I was fine, but her commentary left a war of thoughts in my head, my common sense would not let me go and ask this quest.
Do I look suicidal perhaps? No. Maybe not, but the reality flows high above my pretended happiness, and now, just now I realized that my answer to that lady should have been a very different one in content and size, and here it is:
Yes, I am not OK, lady. I come to the gym trying to stay positive and win a battle with my very own self-esteem that faces an everyday challenge when I find the same moms that I see at my kid’s preschool.
And most of them, except one, turn their faces away, like in the festivals at the school, pretending, just pretending they don’t see me, like if I were a shadow in the wall, someone to be avoided, as if just with a smile, or the slightest eye contact their well-being could be compromised.
Or maybe to talk to anyone and have them create a synonymous of idiocy with my foreign accent, and treat me like so. Or people look at me in a suspicious way, could I be an illegal alien?
I am an American citizen, born in Mexico. Or another reason to be “gloomy”: to be away from your beloved ones, in another culture, country, ideology and ways to be and live.
I just cannot understand how some people out there can be nicer to their pets rather than their neighbor or that person with a darker skin color or not so good-looking clothes or looks, and then call themselves good Christians.
For the smart savvy person out there that could jump with the question of the kind: if you miss so much your family, or your Mexico is that great, why you don’t go back to it?
I am a Mexican-born U.S. citizen that by the mysterious ways of this life met the man I love in Mexico.
Such man happened to be a U.S.-born citizen and his job is here.
I can’t change that or most of the circumstances that occur around my world. This one, that happens here right now, where I go, this community where I live, Peachtree City, the people avoiding me or just being raw.
But if one mind, one heart can understand how a foreigner feels, and how you can change someone else’s day with the unsaid acceptance of a simple smile, then I have got something out of this letter, and the question made by that lady at the gym, will have a better answer.
Rayo Wolf
Peachtree City, Ga.
