Sorry

Have you ever thought of the story of other people, how they live their life while you live yours? When you are laughing, people are sad, while you are depressed, it is the best day for others. I am here to tell you one of those stories of others, My Story. I was born on July 14, 2010, in Matanzas, Cuba. My mother Hildre Perez, my dad Luis Martell, and my Older Sister, by two years, Maria Martell. I had lived for most of my life (7 or 8  years, it will soon not be right) in Cardenaz, Cuba. 

I have always had a fascination for engineering and Science Fiction. 

I lived a pretty normal life in Cuba, a country known for bad living conditions and a really bad government. I wasn’t really introduced to the bad side, as I was born in a time when there wasn’t much struggle in Cuba (There was but it isn’t as bad as today). I lived pretty normally there for the aforementioned 8 years, life was simple back then, nothing much to go about, but not too little, always appreciated it. 

When I was around 8 years old my parents decided it was about damn time to go to the AMERICAS. Before we were able to go to America we had to go through Mexico, this would be the last time I ever got to see my family. One of my aunts had a child right after I was born, one of the only people I have yet to see from my family. We had gone many times before to Mexico, a beautiful country. We were supposed to only stay there for a short while but we ended up staging for 8 months. In Mexico we rented a house and I went to private school because my mom was scared, as she had heard Mexico was a violent country. Mexico has to be one of the most beautiful countries I have visited, the hotels and Cenotes. I lived in the Yucatan region.

After living in Mexico for a while my parents gave us a question, do you want to stay in Mexico, or resume on the journey to the USA; Me and my sister instantly gave the response… go to the US. I don’t regret anything at all giving that response, I wonder what might have been if we decided to stay but the right choice for me and my family will always be to go on forward. After deciding to continue towards the USA, we started planning we would hand ourselves in at the Mexico-US border. We took a plane down to the border, where we then spent a few days waiting in a house for something, for hope. We were not really sure if it was the right decision to go, we had been in Mexico for a short while but going to the states would mean the possibility of not being able to go see our family, it would mean going through a hard process to get in, but in the end we decided to go. We decided to hand ourselves in, go through the border, and hope we were admitted. We waited on a bridge with other people for around 70 hours, once we finally were let in, it wouldn’t be the end, now we had to wait in a jail cell until they processed our files. My father was separated into another jail cell, while me, my sister, and our mother were let alone into another one, with two other people, a mother and her daughter. During this time I could feel that it was a hard time, what if they didn’t let us in, what if we had to stay there for months. But in all of those questions, it was overshadowed by the bored mind of an 8 year old. After another 70 hours of waiting we were finally in the US. One of our family members, through father side, helped us out during this time, we stayed in a hotel, and once we were ready, we took a 2 day Bus ride to Miami where we passed the big cities of the coast, it was the first ever time me seeing building like this, high skyscrapers, and beautiful american stylized building, we passed through the coast from Texas to Florida, passing Orlando and other cities. 

Once finally in Miami we were greeted by my fathers family, they let us stay in their house, where we stayed for a few months. At this time we were reunited with my grandmother that came to the states before us, and stayed at their house. It was my family, my grandmother, and my fathers family, consisting of my Aunt, her husband, three children, and her mother. It’s been a long time since then, but it was the first time seeing an American house, and a family aside from the people I already knew. In that house my mother and father learned to drive, and bought a car. Me and my sister went to an elementary school, where my sister met her best friend, who she still talks to today, a quite annoying individual. In elementary school it was hard for me to communicate because it took me time to be able to learn English, thankfully some people there knew Spanish, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to make friends.

It was around this time where one of the hardest parts of my travels in the Americas happened, me and my family moved from one place to another, trying to find a better place, a place to call our home. First we stayed in Miami, but then moved to a different part of the city. Once we stayed there for a year or so my family decided to move again, this time it would be a more drastic change, we moved all the way to Naples, a city south of Fort Myers. In Naples, not a whole lot happened, I started middle school and went on to live there for 2 years, but in Naples we did end up moving home twice.

Once my Family had enough of moving around Florida looking for a place to live, my parents decided to buy a house to live in. We decided that the place we would move to would be Cape Coral, Florida, the place I reside at now. Once in Cape Coral the first few days were not what anyone would have ever expected. We knew that there was a hurricane arriving soon, but we taught it would be a small category, 2 or 3, never would have anyone expected that Ian would go directly to a category 4, and even reach 5 for a small time frame, worst of all the hurricane tilted directly to where it would hit directly on top of out home. Ian would come and hit, we tried preparing our best, but Ian still took a big hit to our home, we ended up losing all of our electricity and water filtration for an entire month. I moved out during this month to pass the time to my Aunt’s house, but for what I know that even months later after the incident, we still had no internet, which was really hard.

Things got better, things always got better, I continued to live my life the best I could for the next months I went to Mariner middle school, where I started to actually care about my grades, as my experience in 6th grade because of my terrible grades was not the best. In Mariner middle school it was where I started to socialize more, and was able to achieve graduation a way I liked. In my time as a Middle schooler, and way before my sister and I have always wanted to adopt a dog, but our Mom has always denied us, in 8th grade it was the first time she finally said yes, and we were able to get the dog we always have wanted.

We named our Dog, Susi. She was a small puppy retriever with golden fur that we adopted from one of my parent’s friends. Susi was a challenge to deal with. She is a troublemaker, that never does anything we tell her to do, jumps all over people and is always biting the house. I think that this experience with my dog made me grow as a person, it made me appreciate my dog, and taught me a lot of things on how to be able to handle creatures, and made me a kinder person.