I sat staring blankly at my desk, silently wishing I could disappear or trade lives with someone else. Or, at the very least, be alone as much as I felt alone. I looked up to see that everyone had found a partner—everyone but me. To my classmates, I was an inept student to be avoided, a liability to their grades. The teacher offered extra credit to any group willing to take me in.
No hands were raised.
From the many episodes of social rejection I faced, I became exhausted trying to find my place in a world filled with talented, intelligent people. So instead, I found my place among the wrong crowd: in the principal’s office, in the back of a police cruiser, in front of a judge, and in a jail cell.
All the while, my parents—immigrants struggling to build a new life in a foreign place—were working long hours in low-wage jobs to give me the educational opportunities they never had.
I’m sorry that love was pain, that I was a bad kid, and for those nights you couldn’t sleep because I was never home, a lost teen with a backpack full of clothes looking for love in all the wrong places.
But you can smile now, because for years you tried, and it looks like we finally made it.
The stories of dreamers, fueled by an unwavering perseverance to believe in themselves against all logic and experience, vary. But no matter how the plot differs or the names change, the story always ends in a world made real simply because it was desired.
The world you dream of is possible. To get there, you have everything it takes—but it will take everything you have.