The Day They Told Me

To break the ice, my parents announced the unthinkable: We’re moving to the United States. And as if that wasn’t enough, they added that my mom had gotten a better job, as if that could soften the catastrophe.

I didn’t hear the rest of the explanation. Or maybe I did, but my brain erased it as a defense mechanism. All I know is that the moment I understood what was happening, the air left my lungs. It was a blunt impact, like jumping into a pool unprepared and having the water knock the wind out of you. I wanted nothing to do with the United States, and I could imagine even less what a life there would look like. To make things worse, my sister took it well — she even celebrated it and said she was excited. I felt betrayed. How could she be happy when I felt like I was being torn away from my world?

I was born in Manhattan, New York, but that was just a footnote in my story. When I was a nine-month-old baby, we had moved to Buenos Aires, and that’s where my memories were, my streets, my childhood. Buenos Aires was my city. I played soccer in two clubs, I had my family, my friends, Sunday barbecues, the croissants from the bakery on the corner. The food was the best in the world. The language belonged to me. My life was perfect. I felt like I had entered a phase where everything was aligning: high school, independence, a sense of belonging. But from one day to the next — poof — all of that disappeared.

The first two months in the United States were strange. Not in a tragic sense, but more like those times you wake up in someone else’s house and for a few seconds you don’t know where you are. I felt like a tourist in my own life. The streets were unfamiliar, the air felt different. Everything felt like a movie set. As if, at any moment, someone would yell “cut!” and I could go back home.

The illusion of being on vacation ended when the moment I feared most arrived: starting school. Or as they call it here, high school.

I knew English. Or at least I thought I did until I tried to use it. In my head, everything made sense, but in real life, every conversation inevitably ended with the same question: Where are you from? At first it frustrated me. Then it started to amuse me. I discovered that many people had no idea where Argentina was, and some didn’t even know what language we spoke. One kid even asked me if we spoke French in Argentina.

The night before my first day of school, I told my mom I didn’t want to wake up. It wasn’t a tantrum or an existential crisis. It was a primal fear, like when you see a shadow in the hallway and you don’t know if it’s the coat rack or a burglar. But there was no escape: morning came, I put on my backpack, and entered that new world.

Over time, things got better. Not all at once, but little by little. Routine beat out anxiety. I learned to understand the language better, and I even started to enjoy life here. The desire to go back to Buenos Aires was still there, but at least I no longer counted the days like I was in prison.

Returning to Argentina, after a while, was another surprise. Everything was the same… and at the same time, everything had changed. My grandma was no longer there. Some friends kept in touch, others had simply moved on with their lives. The neighborhood felt familiar, but it no longer completely belonged to me.

And that’s when I understood something that was hard to accept: home isn’t just a place on the map, it’s the story we carry with us. Even though my life had changed, what I left behind was still a part of me. And I confirmed it in December 2022, when I went back to watch the World Cup. I watched it with my family, with my lifelong friends, with the usual food and the same intensity I would have felt years earlier. And when Argentina became champion, when I found myself on Avenida 9 de Julio, jumping, crying, and hugging strangers who felt the same way I did, I knew that no matter where I was, Argentina would always be with me.