Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

Robert Neelly Bellah

In high school we always used to joke that you could count the number of white kids in a class on one hand easily. This held true for most of my classes, there were, for the most part, only a few breaks to this rule; statistical outliers. For the most part things were always the same. The world turned, I went to school, keeping in a constant cycle but then something broke that cycle, something we never saw coming. Or maybe we did, maybe we just failed to do anything to alter the course, fix the cycle.

You could say it began during the elections of 2002 when the nation capsized the government over policies and politics that were, in the public eye, disagreeable, but to me that's too far back, for me everything began November 6, 2006. Horis Williams was the first black man elected president in the history of the country. Piggybacking on public displeasure concerning the former regime he'd come to power as his predecessor's complete opposite.

I was young during the upheaval and his first campaign but even then I could see his eloquence and sense his charisma. I hadn't been afraid then. Thinking about where I stand now and looking back, I think it was because some instinct given to me by my father tells me it was because he was working towards reelection. But then, from my memories, I'd say it was his eyes. In pictures they were soft; they held the pain of our nation. After his reelection they changed. Somehow they'd become cold, the change was not overly startling but still, there.

Of course, being naive, I brushed it off. Life kept on its endless cycle. I disagreed with his original policies, having grown into my own political position and opinions but I was only 14 without the right to vote. I would just brush away the party "loss" and go back to school. I never thought…or rather, I never believed that even he would go as far as he did. I never dreamed that I would have to leave my home in the night in favor of foreign soil that was as cold as my own had become.