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When I first left America, I left behind a lifetime of waiting for racism to end.
It was 2013, I was 23 and had just finished college. I bought a one-way ticket dated the day of the graduation ceremony. As the plane took off from JFK and landed in Trinidad, relief washed over me. I finally felt like I could breathe. I had no plan for how I would make a life for myself, but I knew there wasn’t one for me back in America. Still, I tried time and time again, even after that moment, to return to the home I knew, only to realize again that it would never fully embrace me as a Black woman.