Make Me Yours

Episode 1: Ready for take off

I couldn't believe it. Today is finally here. I can't breathe, I feel like I've been waiting for this for so long. Dad is downstairs, freaking out and making a fuss about twelve different things as usual, but I'm ready. As I close the zipper on my second luggage, I let out a loud sigh and walk to the bathroom to splash my face with some water.

"This is crazy. You're really doing this, aren't you?"

I said to myself, staring into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror. I've haven't always been this fearless. Ready to jump into the unknown, ready for anything. I'm the oldest of three girls, and my sisters have always looked up to me. My life purpose has been to be the greatest role model for them, to teach them not to be afraid of anything and to follow your heart everywhere it may lead you. I'm a firm believer in taking chances but also in learning from every single experience, whether it ends up being a mistake or not. My mom taught me that.

Mom...

Mom and I, it's never been easy. I have such a care free personality, laid back, adventurous way of looking at everything. She, on the other hand, has a hard time when things don't go her way, and believes that things need to be planned, thought for, measured, confirmed. Basically, leaving out all the fun of trusting your instincts and free-falling into life.

Mom is rational. Level-headed. While I tend to be careless.

I always envied my friends for having such great relationships with their mom. I always wanted that. I also know that I have not been an easy teenager. I was a great kid, quiet, calm. But once I turned 16, things started to get ugly. I was tired of being a good kid, and I was angry at the whole world for no apparent reason. I lashed out, snuck out in the middle of the night, I was basically a devil child. I'm sure it wasn't easy for my parents, seeing their calm daughter turning into a person they did not recognize. But dad was a little bit like that too.

Dad...

Dad is my best friend. I feel like I'm kind of a girl version of him as a teenager. Dad is laid-back, kind of impulsive (that's where I get it from) and is not easily enraged by anything. He was the first of his family to attend college, and ended up screwing his whole academic career through parties and girls. Eww. To think that Dad was drunk half the time and going out with a bunch of girls is gross, although I get it. College is honestly a really hard step in anyone's life.

It either goes really great, or really bad.

But Dad ended up being quite the man, if I do say so myself. He's my confident, my everything. I know 100% that when I pick up my phone and call him, I'll find him on the other end of the line waiting to hear about my problems, my secrets, my hardships and my victories. For crying out loud, I called him the first time I took the subway by myself. You should have heard him, it's like I won the Olympics or something!

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Just like him, I attended college a couple years ago and tried really hard to make my parents proud by getting a fancy diploma with 4 years of blood, sweat and tears. After the first year, I had just turned 21 and had finally stepped into the world of adulthood. I felt trapped, like I was going to school because I was being forced to by some weird social phenomenon that makes us believe the only way to succeed in life is with a piece of paper and a grad picture. What a joke.

I started working for a startup company at that time, not really knowing what I was going to do with my life. My parents were so disappointed in me. College is such a prestigious thing, and an expensive one as well. I'm lucky enough that my parents were able to support me through my first year of college, I really am. But I felt like I was suffocating there, like sitting in class was giving me anxiety and like I couldn't figure out the reason why I was even there. I had no passion, no interest in what I was studying. The world of business and finance seemed like a good idea at the beginning, a lucrative one anyway. But I felt like the life was being sucked out of me, listening to the professor talk about numbers all day long.