Notes

THE STORY OF HONK: CHAPTER 1 (ORIGIN)

Alright, where to begin. Let's talk about how I got here. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Florida very young. My real name is Alexander and it was chosen because my dad thought that my last name was too weird and gave me a "normal" name. I spent my childhood in a mobile home (you can look that up on Google) before moving into a nice house (the one I showed you before but without all the wood in front of the windows). I was always super shy but SUPER excitable. I can either be cold and distant or super playful and immature. My dad worked as a... well I don't know actually. He drove a big truck but that's all I know. My mom worked at a laundromat and worked very hard even if she wasn't paid very much either. My living conditions were pretty much just lower-middle class until... my dad passed away due to cancer when I was 10 years old then that's when all the problems rolled in. My mom had to work extra hard alongside my older brother who also wasn't paid very much in his job. I of course didn't worry at the time because I was still a kid who was too busy playing around.

Then in 2015 (I was 13 at the time), the Colombian embassy called for my mom to come to Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, so she can get her U.S. residency so she can continue raising me in the U.S.. When we got to the embassy, the people there told my mom that she migrated illegally to the U.S. and was punished by telling her that she could not leave Colombia to the U.S. anymore. She then went to live in Santiago de Cali, where most of her side of the family lives in and I went to the U.S. with my older sister (who was helping us). I had to live with my sister and begin my high school year with her family. It was hard to adjust because she was super strict and I wasn't adjusted yet after basically losing both my parents. Me and my sister got along but we fought a lot. I also had a super toxic crush on a girl at my high school at the time. It was so bad that I started misbehaving a lot and it really pissed off my sister at how I was acting. I had anger issues too and one day I almost drowned my 10 year old nephew. I didn't feel bad about it at the time because well I was stupid and I was like a ticking time bomb. Of course, I regret it now and I wish I never did that and I hate myself a little bit for doing that but yeah. That was probably the last straw for my sister and after my first high school year ended, I was sent to Colombia to visit my mom for "vacation". Turns out she lied and told my mom when I got there that I couldn't stay with them anymore because I was too rebellious and basically an asshole.

So yeah now it's 2016 and I'm living in Cali, Colombia. The living conditions are what you expect if you know anything about Cali. Cali is basically that one city every country has that's super beautiful and everyone wants to go to but is also supposedly SUPER dangerous and that people avoid because they don't want to die or get robbed. It started out really rough because my Spanish at the time wasn't very good. I knew some words and can do some sentences and sounds but that's it. When I tried to make friends, I was always the "Gringo" and I was always asked to say certain things in English like swear words or whatever. It was cool for a while tbh, I felt like a GOD. THE AMERICAN GOD who's going to have so many friends. Then I realized that they only really liked me because of my ability to speak English and it stopped feeling that cool. My mom introduced me to my bestest friend in Colombia and I started to become very happy again because now I can hang out with someone since I'm staying here. I didn't know how long I was staying at that time so I was put into school.

Now you would think that I have a lot of money in Colombia because I come from America, nope. A lot of the money was used to help my mom and her legal stuff and that's like 10000s of dollars over time so no, I was never "rich" while living over there. Despite this though, I was put into a bilingual school for a school year since it catered to my English speaking needs. It was super expensive though and I had to leave to go to a cheaper school. I bonded with the students (only like 20 students were there) a lot though and even though I was still the "gringo", I still felt connected to these people in some way in a way I can't describe. The most memorable moment from that school was in my English class where everyone has really bad English and I almost always got good grades because duhhh. The English teacher gave me a question in English and I completely blanked out because I forgot how to say a certain thing in English and then one of the students said that I was forgetting my native language. That part really stuck with me. I was then transferred into a more public school... sort of. It was more like a test drive for next year and this school was only Spanish and much closer to my house so I can walk there casually. Here is where I get a taste of the "average Colombian teenager" experience and NGL I kinda fucked with it. Like it was fun while it lasted and I made more friends, granted a lot of them took interest in me because I was gringo but whatever. I had a small crush on a girl at the school too and I did something really stupid, kinda romantic at the time (btw I was 16). Okay so you know how I said that Cali is super dangerous and whatever well it's kind of an unspoken rule to not go in the night because it's easier to get robbed. I wanted to get something super small like a candy bar and a party hat for my crush's birthday so I literally walked at night all the way to the big store right next to my neighborhood and got those things. When I got home, my mom yelled at me for obvious reasons but I managed to pull out an excuse so I don't tell her the truth. The next day, I gave my crush the things but I never told her how I felt. Kinda regret it.

[End]