When I was 10 years old and in the fourth grade, I wrote my first big-girl essay. It was less an essay and more of a story, but I was feeling proud enough at the time to anticipate it as an essay. The story was titled “Sidney Strong,” and it told a story about a girl who was strong and persevered in the absence of gravity. She never expected one of her own friends to destroy gravity and decided to save everyone on Earth and bring them to another planet. My complex storytelling made me feel confident in not just my sense of imagination, but my English skills as well, for my English had been at its best. I look back at my story now with empathy for my younger self who believed seasons were capitalized, “in” meant on, and “on” meant in and who believed humans could survive on another planet other than Earth. While I was uncertain of my mistakes and believed my essay to be creative and grammatically perfect, I was more certain of the fact that the reader was unable to hear my accent through the page, and that judgment lacked in one aspect of my performance.
At nine years old, you think about the joyfulness of life without much awareness of its repercussions. As a nine-year-old, I was brought into a world full of opportunities at the risk of being stripped of things I had learned to enjoy the most. I enjoyed dancing “Flamenco,” a type of Spanish dance including hand clapping and percussion footwork while flaring of the dress in different motions. I went to flamenco class twice a week for three years, and couldn’t wait for the day I could perform solos with my unique dress instead of one that looked the same as my dancing partners. I also enjoyed going to school. Not necessarily for the learning part (due to the intensive and unbearable English curriculum my school had ultimately unmotivating me to learn English) but for the friendships I had in each new school year. I enjoyed knowing everyone in my class, talking over my teacher all the time, and making school exceptionally entertaining. While not at school, seeing my family over the weekends brought me the most wonderful moments that I unawarely but undoubtedly smiled through the most. I was surrounded by the people who loved me most while eating the food I enjoyed most. The warmth I felt when my grandma hugged and kissed me at family gatherings leaving a lipstick stain on my cheek displays the attachment I had to my family as a little girl. The uncontrollable laughter I experienced from my uncle’s jokes and the jumpy feelings I received every time I was allowed to play hide and seek with my cousins are memories that have unconsciously engraved themselves in my memory. But like gravity in the story of Sidney Strong, nothing in life is guaranteed to be everlasting. When I moved to the United States, my world changed completely, at a time when I didn’t realize it should be.
During the weekdays I was unable to practice my favorite hobby, decreasing my dancing abilities that I once was an expert in. School was no longer my favorite part, for now, I had to take English more seriously or I wouldn’t be able to make friends, enabling me to distract them during class. Family memories changed from occurring every weekend and now into only winter breaks, where the time went by a lot quicker and delicately at the same time. It was a changed world but it was my desire to keep finding joy that persevered.
I tell this story because being strong and persevering isn’t as hard as you may think. With that type of courage, I was able to find joy in the most unexpected of ways. If someone told me as a nine-year-old that today I write articles for a high school paper, I wouldn’t be able to believe it. Never would I have ever thought I’d be enjoying the skill of writing even after the embarrassment I would receive from marked essays during the first five years of my life in America. But today I write to you my last article, expressing my confidence and enjoyment for writing, and telling you to be as strong and authentic as you can be. Just like Sidney Strong.
