By Scarlett Vargas
I know you are thinking right now about this being about Dr. Martin Luther King, and how every writer writes about the same things, not sharing new thoughts and experiences, but it’s not. This is about me and my pathway to becoming a woman, and opening my eyes to how the world really is. It’s about the struggles of falling and not getting back up, and after a while realizing what you have done. This is about my dreams, and seeing them disappearing like dust along with my innocence, while at the same time giving me knowledge and lessons that will never be forgotten. This is a memory that will be shared to encourage those who still have time, to never give up. After all, what’s important is not how hard the climb was, but getting to the other side and noticing how hard you worked to get there. I really wish I had thought this way earlier, but when I was a small girl I wanted to be an actress. Acting was my lifelong dream, one that I worked very hard to accomplish.
I first started to show massive interest in the world of the arts when I was about 5 years old. Back then I lived in the Dominican Republic, where enrolling in any extracurricular activity was really complicated due to the fact that money was scarce and those programs were really expensive. But my expectations as a kid were high, so I wasn’t planning to let that stop me. After that, I taught myself to dance ballet and to be honest, I was pretty good. Then I decided to save money, because even though I was just a kid I was pretty smart. I noticed how every actress I admired like Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus lived in the U.S and spoke perfect English, so I enrolled at the APEX technical school in Santo Domingo, where I started learning how to communicate with others in a language that I couldn’t call my own.
Even though I had high aspirations, I had a massive fear known as “stage fright,” that didn’t allow me to accomplish my goals in front of people. But after all, fear can be something you must pass through to reach opportunities, and after performing many times in school talent shows, theatrical plays, and dance clubs in my elementary school, I overcame it to the point where I was only nervous before stepping on stage. So, since I had conquered my stage fright, I decided to go “big”, and booked interviews with companies looking for actors somewhere close to the age of 10. I noticed I was good and that I had a shot in the acting world after all.
A few years later as a young girl, I was on my way to becoming a woman learning to cope with hard work and life-challenging events when I started to believe that older people had something against me. Certain experiences in life began to make it seem as if people always looked out for their own benefit; not caring about others or being nice like in the movies. I say this because in the winter of 2012 I went to an interview for a photo shoot at an American company that turned out to be a disaster. At that time my mother didn’t have a car and the interview was all the way in Connecticut, so me and my mom took an express bus that promised to take you to your destination no matter how far it may be. But after a while of driving around in Connecticut, a completely unknown territory, he kicked us out of the bus in the middle of nowhere because he didn’t know how to get to our destination and there were other people on the bus who had to get places.
So, my mother and I started walking, even though we didn’t know where we were or how we were going to get to our destination. Since this is a technological era you might be thinking why didn’t she use her phone? Unfortunately, back then my phone only made phone calls, and there wasn’t any signal, so using the GPS (Global Positioning System) wasn’t much of an option. Another struggle I had on the way there was that I was wearing those high-heeled sneakers, and they were cutting my pinky toes on both feet and I could barely walk. One of the other problems was that I was wearing a really thin autumn jacket and it started to snow. I felt like I was about get pneumonia, and the only choice I had to express the frustration and despair inside of me was to cry, but my mother was always by my side supporting me. She told me in Spanish, “We have come too long a way to stop now. One day you will look back at how hard it was to get here, but at the end of the day you did it and you will never look down on anyone who is having struggles! Now wipe those tears off and keep walking.” After that, we came to a post office where we got warmed up and then kept walking. Eventually, after something like 5 miles, we got there. I went into the bathroom to put makeup on, because the tears and snow had made my face look red and oily. At the same time I decided to put some toilet paper on my pinky-toe because the pain was unbearable. The interview was great they loved me. Later on we went to get food because I was extremely hungry. We went from Connecticut to 125th street in Harlem and got hot chocolate and French fries at McDonald’s before we went home.
After about a week, I started to receive calls from this company asking for more and more money each time, until it reached a point where my mother and I just gave up. It felt like all my hard work had amounted to nothing, and that the world had ganged-up on me to destroy my insides. After all, my dream story does not have a happy ending. But, I can always look back on my hardships and say that that’s the reason why I’m a strong woman today. Now I will never think twice before helping others, because I know how hard the path to your major goals can be.