The Price of a New Life

Every immigrant story is, in some way, a story of loss.

We lost the voices that once called our names from another room.
The hands that used to straighten our collars before we left the house.
The scent of home-cooked meals we’ll never taste quite the same way again.

Some of us left, thinking we’d return.
But time stretched longer than we expected.
Papers took years. Borders hardened.
And then, one day, it was too late.

A phone call in the middle of the night. A message we didn’t want to open. The moment we realized we had been gone too long.

This was the price we paid for being here.

And so, we told ourselves this new life had to be worth it.
That the sacrifices had to mean something.
That we couldn’t have left everything behind for nothing.

We worked harder. We pushed forward. We built lives here with the weight of the past pressing against us.

Because immigrants don’t just carry dreams.

We carry ghosts. We carry goodbyes we never got to say.

And that is the quiet grief of starting over—knowing that even if you make it, you’ll never get everything back.