But the meeting left me crushed. My only solution, the lawyer said, would be to go back to the Philippines and accept a ban that is 10-year i really could apply to come back legally.

If Rich was discouraged, he hid it well. “Put this problem on a shelf,” he told me. “Compartmentalize it. Carry on.”

The license meant everything in my opinion me drive, fly and work— it would let. But my grandparents worried about the Portland trip plus the Washington internship. While Lola offered daily prayers to ensure that i might not get caught, Lolo told me that I was dreaming too large, risking a lot of.

I was determined to pursue my ambitions. I happened to be 22, I told them, accountable for my actions that are own. But this is not the same as Lolo’s driving a confused teenager to Kinko’s. I knew the thing I was doing now, and I knew it wasn’t right. But what was I expected to do?

A pay stub from The San Francisco Chronicle and my proof of state residence — the letters to the Portland address that my support network had sent at the D.M.V. in Portland, I arrived with my photocopied Social Security card, my college I.D. It worked. My license, issued in 2003, was set to expire eight years later, to my 30th birthday, on Feb. 3, 2011. I had eight years to succeed professionally, and also to hope that some kind of immigration reform would pass in the meantime and allow me to stay.

It appeared like all of the right time in the whole world.

My summer in Washington was exhilarating. I became intimidated to stay in a newsroom that is major was assigned a mentor — Peter Perl, a veteran magazine writer — to greatly help me navigate it. 2-3 weeks into the internship, he printed out one of my articles, about some guy who recovered a long-lost wallet, circled the initial two paragraphs and left it back at my desk. “Great eye for details — awesome!” he wrote. Though i did son’t know it then, Peter would become an additional person in my network.

At the final end of this summer, I gone back to The san francisco bay area Chronicle. My plan would be to finish school — I was now a senior — while I worked for The Chronicle as a reporter when it comes to city desk. But once The Post beckoned again, offering me a full-time, two-year paid internship I graduated in June 2004, it was too tempting to pass up that I could start when. I moved back once again to Washington.

About four months into my job as a reporter for The Post, I began feeling increasingly paranoid, as if I had “illegal immigrant” tattooed to my forehead — and in Washington, of most places, in which the debates over immigration seemed never-ending. I happened to be so wanting to prove myself I was annoying some colleagues and editors — and worried that any one of these professional journalists could discover my secret that I feared. The anxiety was nearly paralyzing. I made a decision I experienced to share with one of the higher-ups about my situation. I looked to Peter.

By this time, Peter, who still works in the Post, had become element of management since the paper’s director of newsroom training and professional development. One afternoon in late October, we walked a couple of blocks to Lafayette Square, across through the White House. Over some 20 minutes, sitting on a bench, I told him everything: the Social Security card, the driver’s license, Pat and Rich, my children.

It had been an odd type of dance: I happened to be trying to stand out in an extremely competitive newsroom, yet I was terrified that when I stood out way too much, I’d invite unwanted scrutiny. I attempted to compartmentalize my fears, distract myself by reporting regarding the lives of other people, but there was no escaping the conflict that is central my entire life. Maintaining a deception for so long distorts your sense of self. You begin wondering whom you’ve become, and just why.