Those Who Left Me For Dead

Carolina is my home

Abuela kept going to sell arepas at that secondary school despite my greatest objections, each time she got or rather made enough extra money she would buy for me or Andrea something nice, a toy or t-shirt

One time she took me out for a haircut and even dyed my dark hair blonde which was cool, all the kids in my school thought I was cool.

I garnered popularity fast, of course they didn't know this haircut had been paid for by money made of selling arepas.

One time Abuela bought Andrea a black plastic pony it wasn't much but it satisfied Andrea, my sister loved horses back in San Juan she owned a pony made Belali.

It was a pure breed Arabian pony that had been a few months old before that fated festive holiday so Andrea didn't get to really ride it as it stayed in a stable of one of my father's friends.

I had a prized toy collection back in San Juan, I also owned a BMX bike and a quad bike that i loved driving down the hill with some of my friends back there.

Whenever I looked at my life with abuela in Carolina it seemed alien and foreign from the life my parents had built for Andrea and I, as I mentioned before we lived in a mansion in San Juan my father owned a few German cars.

My mother was a beautiful stylish elegant woman who loved to dress up and look good, she took great care of her looks, am not saying she was not a good mother, she did have us young.

My mother had always been beautiful, she had met my father according to her when she had only been nineteen, she had worked at my father's small travel agency as a secretary before they married and she became a housewife.

San Juan was a very lively place in the seventies everybody from the Americas and the world over said it was the place to visit, my father being an opportunist saw a gap in the market and opened a travel agency which wound up growing at a steady rate it helped him open a mini market which eventually transcended to many mini markets and a large travel agency.

My mother came from a poor broken home and never got on well with her family, at nineteen she was studying to become a teacher and working as a waitress when she met my father.

My father had hired her on the spot when she entered his office asking for a job. My father says that when he saw my mother for the first time his whole world stopped not in a bad way because he had simply met the woman he wanted to marry, at twenty nine he was much older than her but was quite young to have achieved what he had.

After a few years he turned thirty one. He now had a large travel agency and a few supermarkets under his name, a house in San Juan and had bought his parents a modest house in Carolina.

There had been a woman my father was with in Carolina but nothing serious came of that relationship and soon he was already married to my mother.

I was born a year later Andrea followed two years after me. My mother had me at twenty three and Andrea at twenty five so she really was a young mother by modern standards.

I think some of it may have had an effect on her parenting, my mother believed that love was money, her love language was money and my father had plenty for her to spend, if I wanted something I got it, if I got upset my mother would get me a gift to soothe me, words weren't enough Andrea was equally spoilt.

We never wanted for anything that's the life I had in San Juan. Yet despite all of that I always felt like I lacked something or there was a missing piece there, every night as I lay in my king sized bed in my bedroom creatively decorated in marble and granite cars and bikes of different cars , a wardrobe that was the envy of stylish celebrity children but still I lacked something I couldn't quite put my finger on...

Everytime I thought what could it be I drew up blanks yet the void in me kept deepening...

I loved my parents and my sister but life in San Juan let me with a void, for starters our father was hardly home, mom enjoyed shopping and socializing with other wealthy wives.

We had a maid in San Juan called Denise blonde and strict but middle aged with glaring blue eyes. We lived in a gated estate that meant that we lived in an excluded and closed society.

My school was no different not open to just anyone. Everyone needed authority and it was just that or more that made life in San Juan different it was very exclusive and selective it's motto was clear

"if you don't have money don't come"

My abuela had been to San Juan few times when I was born and when I was a toddler, she stayed for a month both times and than left, she came for both mine and Andrea's births and never returned back after.

My grandfather on thy other hand never bothered to come, he believed his son had gone crazy and turned superficial like his wife and he hated their flamboyant shows of wealth, so he didn't visit our father's crazy house.

Our home was a two storey mansion with multiple spacious rooms back in San Juan.

In San Juan I had wealth, security and comfort in Carolina I had serenity, love and happiness don't get me wrong I loved nice things, nice food and loads of nice clothes

But those things only made you feel good for a short while but the feeling of serenity I felt in Carolina was eternity and I doubt any place would have made me feel any better and I doubted that I would've been happy in Carolina if I lived with my parents, it was my abuela and Andrea aswell as Carolina that made me feel serenity...

Carolina was and is my home.