Author's Credit

"You never know what you have, until you lose it" it's a common phrase to hear, but no one gives it the respective value until you live it.
Since I was a little kid, I grew believing I was the big promise, my parents gave me everything they could to make me the person they wanted me to become, they put their hopes and dreams on me, giving me everything a humble family could and I took it, every single thing, thinking that one day I would make them happy.
My potential developed, people used to think I was a genius, a prodigy, a person with great virtues and talents, capable of accomplishing whatever I wanted and what I wanted was to become an engineer. I had dreams and I felt capable of making them happen.
But then I met the world and realised that there were roads without exit, promises than can't be kept and dreams that stay in just that... dreams.
In the last few years I destroyed that life, little by little my life fell apart, my grades reached a critical point which led me to leave college, I lost the passion for my mayor, I realised that it was just admiration for someone in my family that had picked it before me, everyone admired him.
My family, my friends, everyone stopped believing in me, I slowly developed an inferiority complex, I let everyone tell me who I should become, who I should be, what would be my next step. Everyone saw someone else in me, someone I wasn't.
Before I knew it I was in front of an empty person, a person without dreams, without motivation, I was incapable of feeling, I was an empty shell being filled by other people words and desires.
In the next few months I met people that tried to entered my life, but I pushed them all away, until I fell in love with one of the best friends I've ever had, a girl that came into my life when I was empty, she offered me something to hold onto, but not all stories have happy endings and she left me when I let her life take over mine, she became my centre, my everything.
Once again I was lost in the road, a lost puppy without home, without motivation, without dreams, without knowing where to go.
Despite talking with my parents and looking for professional help, I was empty.
One day, a classmate offered me the opportunity to go with him to an IT course, he had been talking me into it for months so I decided to go. I haven't told him this yet, but that invitation has been the biggest gift someone has ever made me.
After the course, my friend's boss saw something in me and offered me to go and learn everything I could with the people under his charge in an IT consultancy, I was hesitant at first but said yes anyway.
The more time I spent there, the more people I met and the more I learned from them, they are amazing people with amazing stories of how they overcame some sort of bump in their road, all of this because of my boss' philosophy, one that I've been making mine too.
Weeks passed and I slowly became friend with the people that work there, my now boss told us about a trip to Guadalajara, we were invited and that trip was the second biggest act of kindness someone has ever had with me. It was a time out, an opportunity to get away from my life and discover many things I'd forgotten.
I regained my ability to be surprised, I reconnected with old friends that live there, I listened to many stories of people and how they overcame pain and how they live happy now, with problems as everyone else, but happy, that's when I decided to fill myself with my own life.
From there I've been working, day after day, to fill myself with something new, to get excited over little things, to study and go back to school. I look out for my independence, I laugh when I feel like it, I cry too, I get mad when I'm stressed but restrain myself from living tied to others and their lives, I want to live my own life and make my family and friends proud of myself, of the things I've achieved, respecting the philosophy of the ones that inspired me, helping others when they need it, being the best version of myself.
Right now, I'm a work in progress, there are many things I can't seem to let go, wounds that haven't healed, but I'm living at my own past, valuing more and more what's inside me, my dreams, my promises and my own way.