She walked in, confident, but nervous from her insides.

“Have a seat, please.”
She sat down quickly without uttering a word.
“Hi, Annie. How are you?”
“I am great.”, she said joyfully. “Never been better!”

Annie was the most intelligent girl in her family. Happy and always smiling, she was the famous girl in her school. Nobody hated her, she was the best. And like everyone out there, she, too, had dreams for herself, which were soon to be shattered up in pieces.

“So Annie”, the woman in a suit said, taking her interview. “May I have a look at your qualifications?”
“Sure. Here you go, ma’am.”, said Annie, shaking.
Annie was going through her own thoughts at the moment. Dreaming at day time, her favourite pass time whenever she was bored.

“These are really great, Annie! I’ve never seen such wonderful qualifications. I’m speechless.”

Annie felt like she was at the top of the world. Thank you was all that she could say.

“I want to ask you a few questions, Annie.”
“Sure ma’am.” She said, thinking of it as an odd thing.
“How did you do so well in these?”
“It’s inherited, ma’am.”, she said, giggling.
The woman gave a fake laugh, or it just seemed like one.

“One more question, Annie.”, she said with a serious face. “It’s a stupid one, though.”

An awkward silent pause followed as she said this. Annie was nervous, so many questions whirling inside her head. Are they going to reject me?, the most common one.

“What is your aim in life?”

“Pardon?” Annie thought she heard her wrong, her stomach twisting this time. Was this the time that she had feared the most? Was this all over? Does she really need to face this? Is this it? It.

“Your aim in life, Annie. What’s your aim in life?”

“Well,”, she said after a lot of thinking, sweat dripping from her forehead, “my parents…wanted me to…to…join a business. So, here I am.”, she talked, hesitantly. She had no idea where the conversation was going, or what did it had to do with any of this.

“That’s amazing, Annie, but I want you to tell me what YOU want to be.”

She was quiet, speechless. Her mind couldn’t process what to think or what to say. No one has ever asked her that, in her entire lifetime.

“I…..umm…..I…..ah…..”, she stammered, giving up. “I don’t know, ma’am.”, she said after a pause with a sad and innocent face that revealed the words, I never thought about it.

“Do you want to join a business, Annie?”

She was quiet, face down, like she was hiding something; something that she didn’t want anyone to know; something that she never thought to talk about. This was it.

“It’s okay, Annie!”, she said with a pitiful face and a sympathetic, soft voice: the least Annie wanted. “You can talk to me about it.”

“I don’t know what to say, ma’am.”, she said with a shaking voice and tears in her eyes. She was cursing herself and her stupid tears that came out whenever they wanted, without a reason. No, it wasn’t her tear ducts, but her crazy emotions that were building inside her, about to burst out.

“Annie! It’s okay, my dear.”

“Nothing’s okay, ma’am.”, she kind of shouted, but didn’t mean to. These were her very sentiments, bursting out, and this time, she couldn’t stop. Or she didn’t want to, herself. She has had enough. She wanted it all out now.

“Does your parents know, Annie?”

“No, ma’am. I never told them that I didn’t want this.” She was now sobbing. Anger, hate, regret and what not exploding out of her flesh, tearing her insides.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

She stared at her for a moment, then began. “Ma’am, they had hopes from me, many hopes. They wanted me to join a business and I’ve been hearing this since the day I was born! How could I tell them? How could I break their hearts?”

The ma’am was now speechless. She asked herself the same question, ‘How could she ever tell them?’
She was now consoling her client, but what can console a broken heart?

“Did you had any plans for yourself?”, continued the stubborn lady, eager to hear the rest of the story. Annie thought of her as a crazy woman.

“I didn’t choose a profession for me, but I had one aim.”

“And what’s that, my dear?”

Now, came the moment; the very moment she was waiting for, the things she wanted to say for a long time, to shout it out to the whole world.

“People die, and after a few generations, no body knows whether they ever existed or not. My aim in life is to be remembered; I want to do something remarkable, so that people know me. I want to be remarked in this world. I don’t want to be the person who just lives and then dies. I want me to be alive even after my death. I want to…..”, she stopped.

After thinking for a while, she suddenly said, “What am I doing?”

She felt ashamed, bad for even thinking for a moment of letting her parents down. Anger, hate, regret and what not! This time of a different kind.

“My aim in life is to satisfy my family.”

There! She said it, and made the greatest sacrifice of her life.