I Could be Days Away from Being Deported
For Two Years, I’ve Been Waiting for This Verdict. Now, It’s Here.
I see all of the ICE raids on the news, and I could vomit.
I picture a team busting down my front door.
Then, I somehow automatically start hearing Psalm 23 in my head.
Ye, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
We used to say that prayer at school every morning.
I filed it away for a rainy day.
My fate gets decided any day now.
I could be days away from being deported.
I decided that Substack would be the place where I am fully transparent. I’ve never had a place to talk about this debacle. Yet, it’s been weighing on me daily for the past 2 years.
For the past 2 years, I’ve held on to my American Dream dearly.
Whatever happens next will define the whole rest of my life. It’s such a strange place to be mentally — unable to plan more than a month or two into the future. I’m living day by day as I wait for the final decision.
All while Donald Trump is on his immigration rampage.
How did I get myself into this mess?
Everyone keeps asking me if I have a plan B.
No.
No second chances.
If my green card is revoked, I will NEVER be able to live in the USA again. Not even through marriage. Not even if I have children here, nothing.
Somehow, even with my neck on the chopping block… I tell myself I will die on US soil, one way or another.
It all started 2 years ago…
I was out on my ass on a cold winter night in January.
That was the night my marriage ended.
My ex didn’t realize it yet…
But I knew.
It had been a long road getting to that point.
I could feel it in my bones that I’d had enough.
No more.
That set off a tripwire that set my whole world on fire.
I struggle to impress upon you, the reader, how much weight I’ve been carrying. All while appearing perfectly normal from the outside.
I dance like there’s no tomorrow.
I give you my heart.
My soul.
You have no idea why, but you love it.
Little do these beauties know, for me, that tomorrow could mean annihilation.
I partied like I hadn’t in my whole life.
Until the music never stopped playing in my head.
Today, it’s always there.
I’m always looking for an excuse to whip out a salsa spin.
In the kitchen. At the Zen Center.
I practice all the time, everywhere, so when it comes time to party, the slick moves are ready to go.
At the beginning of this journey, I had sleepless nights.
I’ve spent untold hours agonizing over this.
I have to fight to have what everyone else takes for granted.
I fight for what everyone else gets to keep as their birthright.
I bought a giant American flag and pinned it to the wall in my dining room.
It looks very over the top.
Nobody understands my taste in decor.
That flag greets me every time I enter my apartment, and it puts me at ease.
It’s the only thing that got me to stop worrying about the outcome of this situation.
There’s one song in particular that also helped.
It’s called American Heartbeat by Survivor.
I’m here for the chorus:
It's the American heartbeat
The American heartbeat
It's the American heartbeat
Oh the American heartbeat
In times like these, I realized that I must make my allegiance clear spiritually. So, no message is sent to the universe that I don’t want to be here.
I like to tell people I’m a cowboy.
And then, naturally, people started asking me why.
And I sounded like a goofball a few times because I didn’t have a clear answer.
Here’s what I tell people…
I’m a cowboy because…
I’m dangerous
I have a dark past.
I’m entirely alone in this world.
And I’m trying to get as far away from where I came from as possible.
I look back at the sum of my life, and I see…
There’s no going back.
My dream for 25 years has been to leave St. Lucia and move to the US.
I understand if the US doesn’t want me here anymore, but…
I’m still not going back.
Sometimes, I think I’d instead go to war or prison.
I couldn’t possibly mean that, could I?
I have been waiting for this news for 2 years, and now that it’s almost here, I find myself standing at a cliff’s edge.
When I was 18, I planned my whole life up to the age of 40.
Oddly enough, it more or less played out how I thought it might.
Uncanny.
None of my siblings or cousins left St. Lucia.
Ten years ago, I told myself I would only date Americans and Canadians because, one way or another, I’m going to get out of this place. I took careful inventory of all my options and knew I had to be that focused, or I would miss my chance entirely.
And that’s more or less what I did. I only dated one person, who, after 5 years together, became my wife.
I guarded my relationship.
I made sure nobody could threaten our love.
Yes, because I loved her.
But also, yes, because I was protecting my best interests — and I wasn’t going to let my dysfunctional family scare away my bride-to-be. She certainly got spooked on several occasions.
Incidentally, as you read about my ex-wife on this blog, understand that she had a vast amount of power over me.
This was part of why I was so passive in our relationship. Why did I tolerate her out-of-control behavior? Well…
One reason was that she could grant me US citizenship, and she didn’t let me forget it.
Few people can understand how vulnerable that made me.
Dancing gave me life.
It helped me forget about my endless abyss of problems.
It gave me something I knew could disappear forever, forcing me to savor it.
If only they knew.
If I go back to St. Lucia, here’s what’s going to happen:
I sit. I rot. I die.
The end.
What I have accomplished these last 2 years is incredible.
I chose to savor everything.
I ran about 100 races.
I became an excellent dancer.
I taught myself to play the flute.
I became a Buddhist. (And won gold at the Meditation Olympics)
I completely reinvented myself.
I danced with beautiful women in Toronto, Texas, NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, and all over upstate New York.
I became Tony Robbins’ copywriter — writing to millions of people.
I wrote it all down in a memoir.
All while I hang on to my American Dream by a thread.
Woe is me.
Until next time,
Anton
Dancer, Writer, Buddhist