On our first night in Rome, rain fell in thick sheets as the sky mourned the end of summer. It was September 2016, and my husband and I were on our way to dinner somewhere on the Via Della Madonna. Caught without an umbrella, we ducked into Grezzo, a pasticceria and gelateria.
“Signora, we are closing in 10 minutes,” the shopkeeper said, smiling apologetically.
“Ah, va bene, grazie,” I said, and surprised myself at the ease with which I spoke the words. “Un pistacchio e una stracciatella, per favore.”
As the shopkeeper closed up, we stood in the doorway, ate our dessert before dinner, and watched the rain slow itself to sleep. While walking along the glistening street, emptied by the rain, I had a thought: Rome is real.
The year before, in January 2015, I self-deported from the United States after two decades as an undocumented immigrant. It was a voluntary choice to leave the country rather than stay and anticipate the day I would be forcibly removed by authorities. I had arrived as a nine-year-old girl from the Philippines who thought she was visiting Disneyland with her parents, and left as a 31-year-old woman who, because of her undocumented status, had never seen the world.
There was an unreality to the state of being undocumented, a denial of the self and its existence in order to assimilate and survive. In America I hid in plain sight: I stopped speaking Filipino and rarely ate our cuisine. I taught myself to be happy with being in New York, too afraid to travel to any other parts of the country, fearful that a routine TSA screening might lead to the unraveling of my life in the shadows. In those years the rest of the world, to me, became nonexistent. Hypothetical, like dark matter.
It was only after falling in love and marrying my husband, Steven, who is British, that I chose to finally leave. I did not wish to inflict the same limitations upon him, who loyally chose to do only what I could do while undocumented. He traveled only to the places I could safely go. We set aside our wish to start a family or to own our own home, two things that were too costly for an undocumented person with limited earning capabilities. The choice to leave did not come easily. I weighed the decision with care, aware of what I stood to gain by starting over in a new place, understanding how permanent the severance would be. By choosing to leave, I knew that I faced a minimum 10-year ban from returning. I might never see my parents, sister, or friends again.
After leaving the US and briefly returning to Manila, I moved to London with Steven. There I was able to find the beginnings of self-realization: I earned a master’s degree in documentary film at the University of the Arts London (and was admitted based on professional experience, despite not having an undergraduate degree). Steven and I were able to get a mortgage on our first flat together in Hampstead, an impossibility for me in the US. I was able to apply for a Schengen visa to visit Europe. These actions and events might seem ordinary to some, but they were mere dreams to me while I was undocumented. Though these joys did not diminish the survivor’s guilt or the trauma of the past two decades, they did allow me to look forward to the future. Visiting Rome was part of that journey of self-discovery, the first trip during which my newfound freedom and its cost began to sink in.
