Life is short. At this age, I am immortal. Age does not harm me and my skin sticks to my face wonderfully. I am full of life, pumped up with elasticity and ambition. I am stubborn and I refuse to give up. I do not care for those that put me down because they are simply disdainful. They do not want me to succeed but I will. The day I do, I will knock on their doors and laugh because by then I would have earned the right to. I am determined to reach my goals—nobody is going to stop me and because of this, my outlook on life will ultimately affect my future. Even with my first memory, I had known this. After all, the world ends with me.
My first memory is about the age of three or four. I was walking on the streets of Junction Boulevard. I passed by a Mickey Mouse ride, one that my mommy would always place a quarter in the slot and some cheerful song would play as Mickey shook like a horse. It was fun indeed. I would laugh like a silly girl who had indulged in too many sweets. Children often indulge rather than limit themselves. Indulgence leads to desires and desires are goals and goals are what motivate me to accomplish my dreams. The sun would be glaring and beaming into my four year old eyes and I would hid them with my fingers but I often opened them up to see the busy streets crowded with many people of Latino descent. I would smell the fresh churros, so enticing that I would cry, “Mommy, I want some of those!” She would deny me sometimes but this case, she did not. The Mexican woman would smile at my innocence or what I had thought my greediness. I wanted more than just one. One was never enough, just how one life is never enough to accomplish everything. That does not stop me from trying though because the world ends with me.
Two old men would always sit around the corner store on one crate laid a chess board and the one with the graying hair is scratching his head pensively while the other was smirking with arms crossed. I enter the corner store with my mother and we picked out cards for our relatives. The one I love the most was shaped like a giraffe, it was yellow and brown spotted and had a red bow tied on its neck. She paid $1.75 for the card and later destroyed by days of wear and tear. Humans are often worn down by wear and tear but scotch tape would have fixed the card right up and perhaps it need not to be discarded. Stress is natural when it comes to living. Once bitten, twice shy, a failure is never a failure but another road to discover myself. Like the giraffe I can always repair myself because the world ends with me.
The store owner would watch us suspiciously, his eyes never leaving mine and I would stare. He seemed tired. Now I would think, perhaps he was sick of the world. Maybe he hated how he had to slave everyday in the corner store as people would arrive and create a huge mess and ultimately, he would have to clean it up. At one point, he must have decided that opening up a store would create opportunities for him. Being his own man, his own boss, he would not have to listen to anybody. He did not allow petty thieves to deter his business—he was in control. The elderly men outside the store was no different, in the game of chess, they control the outcome of their lives. Each move was theirs’ and theirs’ alone—there was nobody else controlling them. I watched them once when my grandma would be in the store. I asked them, “What does this do?” in Cantonese. They could not understand my language. One of them stopped for a minute to play with me, he had a funny mustache. He waited patiently for the other player and temporarily entertained me with silly games such as stealing my nose. My nose! I need that to breathe! What would I have done if they had not given it back? Who knows? I probably would have taken it back by force; nobody is stealing my nose when I can help it because the world ends with me.
The world ends with me because I control my own world. No matter what people dish at me, I will bounce back, more stubborn and more ready to win than before. I do not care for those that dislike me or those that do not believe I cannot do it. They are mere whispers in my symphony of success and I am the conductor. In a sense, mankind is holy because we are our own gods, we can bend the world to meet our needs and I will do the same. The world ends with me and if I have to grab it by its shoulders and shake it until it gives me what I want, I will never give up because I control my own destiny.