The Childhood Promise

I was five years old. It was 2003, and one day I thought to myself: I want to move to the U.S.

I still don’t know where it came from. Nobody around me was talking about America. There was no movie I can point to, no relative who had made it there, nothing that explains it. I never understood what the purpose was, what I was thinking, what prompted a child to decide something like that. But I remember clearly that it wasn’t a wish. It was a decision.

And it stuck. From then on, moving to another country was the main thing pulling me forward. I didn’t always understand why I was pushing. I just knew the direction, and I kept moving.

After fifth grade, the decision got a second engine. I started getting bullied at school. Somewhere in those years the goal picked up a new layer: one day I would prove that every one of those people was wrong about me.

That’s the honest version of where my drive comes from. Not a vision, not a plan. A decision made by a five-year-old who couldn’t explain it, and a schoolyard I never forgot.