Ever since I was a little kid I have always thought that the world was so big and vast. I wanted to explore different parts of the world and see it with my own eyes. Yet I was always told that I may not be able to do that because the world has a set of standards we follow as a society. In order to pay for the things we want to do we have to do things we don’t want to do to have money to go places we want to go or spend it on things we want to own. To me that equation just didn’t make sense. Of course I wasn’t working yet and I was still small and defiant to the world and what it "wanted" me to do. It wanted me to abide to the rules and shift my personality to being submissive and give in to the way the world goes. It wanted me to give up so much of that freedom so that eventually I wouldn’t be able to taste it anymore. For years I wondered what that would be like. To loose taste of the freedom I so desired. 

Once I turned sixteen I got my very first job. It was awful. I didn’t know what I was doing, the training was boring, the people were off, the place smelled and the manager was creepy but It was  money. At the time I was also going to school and for me it was a lot for my brain to handle. Every time My dad would pick me up I would feel myself being drained emotionally. It was my first taste of the real world. I got to see how taxes came into play on a paycheck, I got to see what working was like, and I felt that pull to want to go home immediately. It was just not fun. My head was filled with all kinds of thoughts and I honestly just wanted to wish it all away. Working away wasn’t what I wanted. 

The world though isn’t so easy to bend the rules for those who want to break the system. When I got let go from my first job I had to find another one immediately after that. Unfortunately it didn’t happen right away, it took me about eight months to get a new job. By then I was seventeen and had a drivers permit. From there the goal was to get a car and my driver’s license. I wanted a piece of freedom back and I fought my father to make it happen. I had gotten through the learning experience of driving a stick shift car, which was traumatizing but rewarding, and I was working at my new job pretty often. Yet I wanted to feel some piece of me was free. I was surrounded by adults in a world where I was learning that I had to work right then and there to make money. I was learning that the world isn’t as nice as we think it is. So, my father and I made a deal. Every month I had to pay him "car insurance" and the rest of my money I could use to what I needed or wanted. Yet at the end the goal was to get the Volkswagon to be mine. My car. My responsibility. My ticket to going where I wanted when I wanted to go. In a sense a small step towards regaining my freedom. For months I slaved away at this place that I hated working but the pay was good and I needed the money. 

Then it happened. The job I hated so much but I tolerated closed its doors. Almost a month before my big day to getting my car and I was jobless again. But I had enough saved away to not have to worry. See the part I didn't share was that part of the deal for this "car insurance" was that half of what I owed him went in the safe and when I turned eighteen that money that was saved in the safe every month would then go to the car and having the title be under my name. I remember it so well. A month of being jobless gave me time to get excited about owning my very first "adult" item. A car. A beautiful car that worked like she was brand new and a car that I first learned stick shift in. Once that title was mine and "officially" became an adult I then planned to leave to go to Michigan to start a new life. Everything started from my father doing the right thing in trying to get me to understand that eventually I have to do what other adults do. Yet those words of wisdom being ingrained my brain also made me want to strive towards a different future for myself. I always say that my journey began when I left home for the first time, on my own, when I was eighteen and that is what started my traveling kick and its grown over the past three years. At least that’s what I say but, really it started with my own  feelings of being trapped when I was a child. Always being told that the world was not going to bend the rules for just anybody. 

Well that may be but, I know I will succeed in making my dream a reality and I will get what I want out of life, even if I have to fight everything and everybody to get to my goal. I will survive. I will succeed. I will be free.