I found pleasure in the view of skyscrapers reaching up to blurry skies; so different from the reality that is the near-ghetto landscape of Spanish Harlem, the place where I had been only an hour before. The place where I used to call home. I could almost feel everyday on the L, The second I left Spanish Harlem; like I was leaving to another world. This brings back the memory of another world I left behind. The small island where I was born, the place I often remember and miss.

I was born in Puerto Rico, a tiny island that is so different from this tiny island. I did recall a great deal of those first 14 years of my life but I knew that I had a different destiny in store. Except those for the rich, schools in the Puerto Rico were small buildings with limited books, teachers and opportunities. I would never have attended a school as amazing as the MT. Sinai High School, where I have grown far beyond the scope of Spanish Harlem.

I was awakened by my mother very early one morning and we left my small town of Carolina, just as the sun began to warm the air. I wish I had paid more attention to the arms that clutched me and cried as they said goodbye; but I was too sleepy. I would not see them again and not return for five years but I when I did, I was a tourist and they were strangers. Returning had the effect on me that I have always questioned how Puerto Rican I am and how Boricua I should be.

It was so strange to me that I lived in two different worlds between the L, my lifeline to both. There is the world to which I rode sleepily every morning. The world I studied for, the world that drained me of all energy, the world in which my triumphs are characterized by tired smiles. There was also the world I rode tiredly every afternoon. This is where my little sisters made up knock-knock jokes that made sense only to their uncluttered minds; where my mother is more than content to do exactly what she was forced to do to pay the rent over our heads, oblivious to my disgust for that willingness and all my arguments for women’s empowerment. I don’t believe anyone who knew me in either world could understand how the frantic days of High School contrasts with the self-contained, closed circle that is my family. I often struggled to keep both worlds apart.

My parents decided long ago—or perhaps my mother decided and my father merely agreed due to the separation—that the Ortegas would never become American. We would come into the gringos’ land but never absorb their culture and never live their lives. We would celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s day on the day it is celebrated in Puerto Rico. We would eat the same foods we would have eaten; we would exist exactly as we would have existed if we lived in the tiny town of Hato Rey. Except that we did not, despite how hard my mother tried. She hung up portraits of old friends and placed them on the walls and tried to keep them all alive with her stories, tried to keep us all together, tried to keep us all Puerto Rican.

I had very few Hispanic friends and spoke Spanish only when I speak to my Aunts and Uncles. They did not speak English; or rather spoke very little. My aunt timid English peeks out gently on the phone when she repeated her memorized phrase: “He is not home.” My uncle’s struggling English stalks out when he was angry and when arguing with a gringo. A friend’s first phone call to my home is when they realize by the garbling Spanish in the background, by placing my name and face in the category with other Latinos people they knew, and by remembering vaguely that I had told them, that I am Puerto Rican. They used to always say, “I just realized you’re Latino.” It felt a little bit like they rob me by saying that. They confirmed all my fears.

I did not have an accent; or rather I have a well-hidden one that stumbles out only when I’m extremely nervous or angry. I did not fit the stereotypes. I did not listen to merengue or bachata and certainly did not dance to them except at a rare party at my house. It had been difficult for me to come to terms with how little I acted or was like other Puerto Rican teenagers my age; like my all my cousins. But I found the solution simply in allowing the two worlds to mix, and trying not to be defensive when asked about who I was. It became easier as I formulated an idea of how to answer. I knew now that I shouldn’t struggle too hard simply to be who I am. I worried about how my relationship with my family was made more complicated by their accusations that I did not want to be Puerto Rican. But I soon realized that my relationship with my family needed only to be based on my loving devotion and underlying respect to them and my strong heritage.

Through the years I have developed, being the exception to so many rules, immunity to stereotypes as well as an acute interest in all things different. Living in that diverse city, I came into contact with so many different cultures and races that I have an absolutely open mind. I am sad to say most, including my family, do not. I had friends, born in other countries, who also traveled through different realities and who did not fit the stereotypes. I have a real fascination with cultures of every kind and a curiosity and respect for all ways different than my own.