Invisible in Plain Sight.
When your accent tastes like homesickness, and your softness becomes your survival.
Reading Time: Approx. 5 min.
Stepping Off the Plane.
Picture this: Seventeen, eyes swollen from goodbyes I never got to say, salt crusted on my lashes as I stepped off that plane into bright lights at almost midnight.
You ever walk into a life you didn’t ask permission to live?
Air smelled like bleach and cheap floor polish like they’d scrubbed away the ghosts of everyone who landed before me.
LAX smelled like bleach, cheap floor polish, and opportunity I didn’t feel ready to claim.
My Aunt Lisa’s voice bounced across the terminal like an airport announcement: “There she is! My girls!”
She hadn’t seen us in four years. She brought me an oversized coat two sizes too big and a smile that didn’t match my grief.
Denny’s at Midnight.
By midnight, we were at Denny’s under flickering neon.
Hash browns turning cold on my plate, a milkshake sweating in a tall glass.
Every bite felt like betrayal. My throat locked up around the taste of a life I hadn’t agreed to swallow.
You ever push food around your plate, knowing you’re hungry but your throat won’t let you swallow?
Every bite felt like betrayal a taste of a life I hadn’t agreed to live.
The Immigration Office.
A few days later, we sat across from an immigration lawyer whose office smelled like stale coffee and ink.
Have you ever watched your whole story get chopped down to checkboxes?
Papers I didn’t understand. Legal pads scribbled with my life in boxes: Race. Nationality. Visa type.
My mother’s hand hovered, trembling over the lines.
I watched my identity get reduced to checkmarks and signatures, while Aunt Lisa’s hand pressed steady into my back.
First Days at College. 🎓
June1995.
The College looked like a movie set I hadn’t been cast for.
Students in pajama pants, flip-flops, and tank tops, coffee cups bigger than my head. My mother’s face turned pale at the International Student tuition fees. Aunt Lisa flipped through the manila folder like a survival guide, hoping paperwork could bridge my accent to this new life.
At the Catholic Boarding School, we woke at 5:30 AM to the sound of bells and the Matron’s footsteps on tile.
Here? They strolled in at 11 AM like they owned the sun.
When Your Accent Becomes Your Cage.
“Where are you from?”
“Kenya.”
“Oh… like the animals?”
In Psychology 101, I’d raise my hand to talk about Freud or Jung concepts I knew better than my own bones. But the moment I spoke, I’d see it:
Heads tilt. Smiles stiffen. Their ears stop listening to my words and start listening to my difference.
A boy once asked, “Why do you say ‘schedule’ like that?”
So, at night, I’d practice at the bathroom mirror: shed-yule? sked-yule?
Sometimes I felt like a traitor to my own tongue.
The First Six Months.
Every conversation felt like performance art.
My nervous system trained by years of boarding school silence now had to survive this new game: Explain yourself. Repeat yourself. Translate your softness until it sounds safe enough to be heard.
Maybe you didn’t cross an ocean.
Maybe you’ve never held your breath when your accent slipped out raw and honest.
But maybe you know what it’s like to stand in a room that promised to see you only to realize they were measuring you instead.
Your accent, your difference isn’t a flaw.
It’s proof you carried your softness through the landing.
But here’s what I didn’t see coming yet:
America loves a loophole, and I was about to find one buried in the back pages of a glossy magazine.
You ever sign something small, thinking it costs nothing then feel the weight of what you didn’t read?
Twelve CDs for a penny. Twelve voices that would remind me my accent could carry softness that no fine print could ever erase.
I didn’t read the small print. Didn’t know forgetting one tiny postcard could empty the grocery money.
Didn’t know Aunt Lisa would slide that bill across the sticky kitchen table and say, “Sweetie, nothing here is free. Read every line next time.”
But that cheap stack of jewel cases would become my sanctuary when nothing else felt safe.
Music turned out to be the only thing that could hold my voice steady the one thing they couldn’t mute, no matter how foreign my tongue felt in my mouth.
This Friday: The day Columbia House taught me how America sells you dreams for a penny and how music rescued the piece of me that refused to disappear.
So, if you’ve ever felt your own voice get lost in translation know this: every word you’ve just read, I wrote it for you.
I see you. I feel you.
xo,
Sly 💛
I felt this so much. Really appreciate you putting it into words. Your emotions truly spoke to me. This was great writing. I love it 🙏❤️