Living in the US, I was afraid of racism, discrimination, and, for lack of a better word, being an alien. That never happened, though; I went through the schools and grew up with my peers just like anyone else did. All the bad stories and histories that prepared me to live like an alien never came to be. Sure, on paper, without the documents, without that BC or SSN, I was kept from pursuing some avenues of happiness and success, but rarely, if ever, had I felt the hatred that you see on display in the streets of the US now.

Now, I find myself in a place where I am judged not only by the typical classism, but I am deemed less than due to my accent, my mannerisms, and everything that hints—even though my skin is brown and the nopal is puncturing the flesh on my face—that I am an alien. I am a foreigner and an alien. Everything is familiar, but still out of the reach of my comprehension. It is backwards, so I can still understand, but talking to anyone makes me feel like taking steps backwards.

I want to embrace it; I want to be Mexican. Not like in the movies or any misrepresentation that made you feel like you had to be a certain way to be Mexican: a cholo, a struggling low-wage employee, a culturally lost white-nationalist-adjacent. I want to be just another Mexican in Mexico, with no intention but to do so.

Instead, since moving to Mexico, I continue to seclude myself with the music, TV, and anything else that makes me feel like I’m back home. Back home in the US, where everything just makes sense. When I am angry and frustrated, I can swear it sucks and one is better than the other, but when I am content, I can feel the rhythm and the pace of the life out here just warm my heart.

The saying is new, and soon to be as old as us—the ones taken to the US with no backup plan, no option, no place to call home: we are neither from here nor there. I disagree. I disagree because we are from Mexico. Our first breaths, our first cries, were in Mexico, and so no one can say I am not from Mexico. But I cannot change the time, whether or not we have even been together as people we know on a firsthand basis; we have spent enough time in the States to not ever be able to stop feeling like you are from the US.

We say we are from nowhere, and that is a mistake. We have to know and feel what we already feel, and know that both sides are ours. Nationalism is a tool for destruction, and so we should not let ourselves be conditioned to think so and normalize it as a joke for the generations.

I am Mexican, and I am American. Technically speaking, that is the same thing, but you know what I mean.