By Ms. Alexis

Many of us grew up with people telling us we could be whatever we wanted to be.  However, what they don’t say is  how it’s going to happen. Sure, an athlete can “practice, practice, practice” but what do you do when you’ve practiced all you could? What do you do when you’ve sung all the notes you can hit? What do you do after you’ve invested every idle second, read all you could read, and prepared yourself for that one small opportunity that may or may not ever come? The motivation is there. You wait and wait, but the opportunity never comes. After you’ve sacrificed everything and it doesn’t happen, what do you do?

I was there a year ago. I had just graduated from college and both my grandparents had just died, with no insurance money to cover the expenses. We barely had money to bury my grandmother because we had borrowed money to bury my grandfather five weeks before. Money was very limited. Neither my mother nor I was working and I was getting evicted from my apartment. My mother had to hurry up and move out of her apartment. While doing that, we hit a deer on the highway, totaling her car. My sister’s father wasn’t paying child support.

We were in debt up to the ceiling. All we had was my grandparents’ house and my raggedy little 1998 Ford Escort.  My license was suspended, my tags were expired, and of course, I didn’t have any insurance. We were so broke we didn’t have $5 to put into the gas tank.. Once, my mom’s best friend had to call the gas station to fax over a copy of her ID and credit card so we can get gas. The manager at the BP felt so bad for us that he chipped in. We were in bad shape. The cherry on top? Our lights, gas, and water had been shut off at once.

Things had gotten so bad that my mother couldn’t tell the people my grandparents had passed or else we’d really be up a creek. We went to the city to ask for help but they wouldn’t help us because of my mother’s level of education. By the grace of God, my mother’s ex-boyfriend loaned her $3,000 to help us get back on our feet. Meanwhile, I’d had enough of waiting on an opportunity that wasn’t coming. I had been applying for jobs in Chicago but they weren’t calling back fast enough. I had gone on a few interviews here and there. But they weren’t hiring fast enough. All I had in my mind was getting back to Atlanta.

For me, Atlanta represented opportunity. I had been interviewing celebrities for several websites based out of Atlanta. While I was in Indiana, I felt like I was just missing out on infinite opportunities that I could have gotten if I was just…there. They say everybody comes into your life for a reason, and I couldn’t agree more. A few weeks before, I had gone to Atlanta for an event and ended up meeting  a gentleman from Atlanta in a club.  The next week, he wired me $150 to come down to Atlanta because he wanted to “see me”. And with that $150, I created an opportunity of a lifetime. I packed up my car and drove to Atlanta. 

Remember, gas was sky high; I didn’t have any credentials to be on the road going anywhere. But I was definitely going somewhere. I went to the grocery store with my mom’s food stamps, filled up my grandfather’s cooler with fruits and water. I gassed up my car and I left Gary, Indiana. I didn’t have a clue where I was going to live or how I was going to get any money.

All I knew was that I was going towards opportunity. But what I didn’t know was that I didn’t know anything about people. All I was thinking about was success. My mind wasn’t going to bend around any other concept except to be able to make it. All I could vision was how I would feel to get that one “BIG BREAK”. I didn’t know how it was going to happen. All I knew was that it was going to happen. I believed. I received it. I claimed it. And I wasn’t going back to dusty and dirty Gary, Indiana under any circumstances.

Tune in next week for Part II of this ongoing series

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