Loving Across Borders

Modern Love

The New York Times

Love, New York Times, Nytimes, Essay, Loss, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Redemption, Nyt

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At age 11, Julissa Arce came to the United States from Mexico on a visa that expired three years later. For more than a decade, she lived as an undocumented immigrant, fearful of revealing her secret to anyone. “Every phone call or email I got from human resources would make my blood run cold,” she wrote in her Modern Love essay. And when it came to love, she would lie to nearly every man she dated, fearing the threat of exposure and deportation. On today’s episode, we hear about an undocumented immigrant’s search for love — and what it taught her about isolation and intimacy. Then, we hear from two Modern Love listeners who have kept their long-distance relationships alive during the pandemic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now.
0:04.0	And it's a phone, love.
0:06.0	It's a love.
0:07.0	It's stronger than anything else.
0:09.0	It's a love.
0:10.0	And I love you more than anything.
0:13.0	It's a love.
0:15.0	From The New York Times, I'm Mealy.
0:18.0	And I'm Dan Jones.
0:19.0	This is the Modern Love Podcast.
0:22.0	You know, often when people are first dating,
0:24.0	they hide things about themselves in order to appear in the best light.
0:29.0	Right, they do.
0:31.0	But in this essay, a woman has to hide a really essential part of herself in order to survive.
0:36.0	And over time, that just takes a huge toll.
0:40.0	The essay is called, Telling the Truth, Wasn't an Option.
0:44.0	It's written by Julissa Arcee and read by Frankie Corso.
0:59.0	Before I was even old enough to have a boyfriend,
1:02.0	I was trained to lie to him.
1:05.0	My secret, my mother said, could be used against me.
1:09.0	You can never tell anyone you're undocumented.
1:15.0	When I was 11, my parents, who had been living and working in the United States for years,
	...

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