Recently I made a trip back home. It’s been almost two years since I left the sunny coast of my home island and made my way into the expansive world in which I now reside. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to say that I was excited to go back, to see my friends, my family and the experiences that I had left behind in order to search for a better life for myself. When I got there, yes, I got what I was looking for; I found my friends, my family and my old life, yet I saw that I didn’t fit in that life any longer. 

I am far from the first person that has lived through something like this, and I will not be the last. Leaving the nest and growing beyond it is a far too common human experience, so much so that in writing, it is called “The Hero’s Journey” where we go out into the new world, learn it’s rules, fall, come back up, conquer, and then find that we are not the same people we were when we left The World We Once Knew. It’s a common trope because it is an experience that, in our own way, most of us will live or have lived already. We fill a kinship to the character because we have felt a calling to do something great, big or small, and because (at least in my case) we feel like we might whither and die if we don’t leave the stagnant place of that world. 

Going back to my experience, outside of the good times that I had spent with friends and family, I would take a few moments to take trips by myself down the streets I use to travel through the most, trying to recall memories of an enjoyable time, and even some of times that, while not great at the moment, still left a mark on me or changed me in a way that I am grateful for. What I found traveling through these ancient open corridors of memory was that the place I once called home had fallen into a state of stagnant decay beyond what I could ever have feared or hoped. I saw buildings  covered in black moss, their paint falling off bit by bit with no one to repair them or call them home. I saw streets littered with holes the likes of which I feared my rented car’s tires would fall into and break. I saw gang wars and murders just firing at each other in plain daylight, down a neighborhood street, and psychopaths released from jail to commit heinous acts because “he talked pretty” to the evaluator. Worse of all, I saw how an island once so full of hope and promise had fallen into quite conformity and acceptance of the terrible conditions in which the governing body had left the island, after absorbing all its resources. 

To say that I was furious couldn’t really describe what I felt at that moment. I feel angrier now as I write and process everything that I saw, than what I felt then. More than anything, I have to say that I just felt an unending amount of sorrow and empathy, but also, just pure and unfiltered hate presented only in quiet contemplation. 

What happened to the place that I had once loved? Nothing, it was practically the same it was when I left. 

I was always aware of its glaring issues, but after leaving and seeing the issues out here, it puts a light into how deep and far our own issues go as well. Not to mention, as someone who works full time now in the media, I am more keenly aware now of my surroundings than ever before. There is no denying it, my island, my people, are dying. And we alone are to blame. 

Oh, sure, there are many factors that come into play when it comes to the current status of the island. We can blame it on the original Spaniards for conquering land that wasn’t theirs to conquer, stealing our riches and killing the taino people to the point of extinction. We can blame the Americans who came and desecrated our flag, experimented on our people and killed many of our own in our soil. We can blame our own government who constantly steals, cheats, and push down the lower class people to the point of regress, all to fill their pockets and lick the boots of our rich american overlords. 

But it is us, the people, who have allowed it to happen. Us, the ones who have become so comfortable with the terrible conditions in which we are treated, that it has become our new norm. Because it is easier to accept once fate, filling in the empty space with tv shows of drama and gossip, worshiping idols that really don’t deserve any praise, and accepting to live check by check because it is easier than to actually work. Us, the ones who left to search for a better life when we saw that life in our how would never get any better. 

Our island is dying day by day, and only we alone are to blame. When shall we wake up from the dream and realize we are no longer the Rich Port that we were promised to be?

The question then becomes, what can we do about it? The first step is deciding that we’ve had enough. The second, act.

Humanity has always had the capacity to make what they wish of the world. Why not reclaim what is ours and make it our own?