Grieve Leave Community Blog: The Wait That’s Become My Life

The Wait That’s Become My Life
Community Blog, contributed by a college student in North Carolina.
Note: We have chosen to publish this blog anonymously, at the request of the author. 

At first, it felt temporary. Just a wait– just some time before things moved forward. Before I could apply, travel, work freely, feel settled. But days turned into months, and months into years. Slowly, that wait stopped being a pause. It became my life. 

Plans were made around it. It felt like opportunities passed me by. Parts of me started feeling smaller, quieter, more scared. I wasn’t just waiting for citizenship- I was waiting to be able to live.

This is the kind of grief people don’t talk about. There’s no word for it in textbooks. No checklist for how to mourn the version of your life that never got the chance to exist. I’ve missed job opportunities because I’m not a citizen, yet. I’ve watched internships get handed out while I drafted emails explaining “my situation,” trying to sound composed, trying not to sound like a problem.  

It felt like a reminder that my life was frozen. And no one was coming to press play.

But the waiting didn’t start in adulthood. It began the moment I moved to the U.S. as a child.

Middle school was a battlefield I didn’t have the language for. I was bullied for not speaking English, for being “different,” for not fitting into the boxes everyone else seemed to. I’d come home and cry; not because I hated myself, but because I didn’t know if who I was would ever fit in here.

High school was where I tried to prove myself. I took college classes. I led organizations. I got internships. I fought for equity, for DEI reform, for change. But while I was fighting for systems to work better, I remained outside of them. The very policies I defended didn’t apply to me. I am not eligible for in-state residency. I am not eligible for most jobs. I am not eligible, period.

I watched classmates get what I worked for. People who didn’t carry half the weight. People who didn’t lose sleep. Who didn’t send letters explaining their existence. Who didn’t beg for the chance to be considered. And I never let myself grieve. 

Not fully. Not for the dream. Not for the version of myself I believed would matter, if I just worked hard enough.

Then, came the financial part. No aid. No scholarships. Just out-of-state tuition and bills that didn’t care how much I was already carrying. I worked three jobs, stayed up night after night trying to study and keep up. Not for a degree, for a chance. For a “maybe.” For something close to what others already had.

There is no room to rest. No space to breathe. Just watching people my age live while I tried to survive. Watching them laugh and travel and waste time while I learned how to budget and hold back tears during double shifts.  And still, I pay more than them, just to exist here.

And the worst part, perhaps, is the misconception that because I’m here, it’s all good. But there is still real, unspoken grief: losing friendships, not seeing loved ones for decades, watching siblings get married and not being there… 

Now, on top of everything else, we face the largest deportation operation in the last decade. Nearly 800 students lost their visas; some of them I know personally. Some of them were friends, people who shared the same struggle, only for their futures to be torn away just when they were close to securing their place here. 

In a classroom, instead of focusing on my studies, trying to meet deadlines, trying to keep up with everyone else, I am haunted by the fear that, at any moment, I could be one of those students, dragged away because of a decision that had nothing to do with me but everything to do with the system I was forced to fit into. 

I’m not just worried about deadlines, exams, or grades– I worry about the possibility that I might be told to leave the only place I’ve ever called home.

I followed the rules. I did everything right. I fought for everything I was told to, legally, by the book, by the system. But this system never included me before, and it certainly doesn’t now. I’m left holding onto an image of a life that never fully belonged to me.