I never realized just how rough our situation was. My mother has always been a hardworking woman dedicated to raising my brothers and me. Even though she was not supporting us financially, her job as a mother to support my two brothers and me was a more tedious one. My father, on the other hand, has been providing for us since the young age of eighteen. His first job consisted of him working sixteen or sometimes even eighteen hours a day at a milk factory, milking cows in California for minimum wage.
We lived in a city called Hanford along with two other families in a small house with only three rooms. These were hard and often weary times for us, but my father was always the best at keeping a positive attitude. My father is an ambitious man; he always wanted what was best for his family. He taught me the importance of making due with what little we had. We spent some time in Hanford, but my father was not looking to settle. A few years later, he took a gamble when an economic opportunity arose at a company in Dallas, Texas - a gamble that ran full circle but ultimately paid off.
Even after the move, it took me a while to process the harsh reality of our situation. My dad spent the next twelve years putting in his
best effort in order to move up in the company he worked for, only to be laid off in 2011. Without a high school diploma, he had no formal education to fall back on. Just when things seemed to be going right, everything took a turn for the worst. We were forced to relocate and journey back to my parents' homeland, Mexico. With all
this instability, my life seemed to be everywhere - except where I wanted it to be. After so many years of chasing the "American Dream", it seemed as if we were starting from scratch once again.
After a year in Mexico, struggling to find schools that would accept our American credits, my parents decided to put our education above all else and we gave Dallas another shot.