I’m walking up a flight of stairs into the open sun. The sun rays hit my eyes and I am forced to shut them for a brief moment. In this moment I embrace the vastness of where I am and the emancipation that comes with it. Suddenly and desperately I want to melt with the sun. Melt and become nothing. I want to be light, weightless. My body is suddenly unbearable and heavy and I think I might fall.
In the few moments I have left before I enter the mall where I work, I contemplate about who I’ve become. Again and again I’m struck by the image I had six years ago and the one I hold now. I feel liberated from a world I wasn’t exactly a prisoner of, but one that would have become a prison had I stayed.
But the past is the past. Now, on an early morning hour of a cool Friday, the sky is so limitless, so vast that I can’t help but feel powerful. There is no one else here but me. I have a bag on my shoulder, walking to the beat of the music that is faithfully playing in my ears. The day is beautiful and I feel free. I’m loving it. It being all that defines the dream, the pure, tangible American dream.