I fell in love with Boston exactly like one falls in love with a person. It was a moment on a street in Bunker Hill and I’ve never been able to stop thinking about it since. Sometimes as I walk down the street in Boston, I catch myself smiling as I watch the T crawl along and for a moment I have this realization that I live here, that this is real. I remember the day when I was visiting with a friend and I thought how cool it was…the girls who walk down the streets with a reusable bag under each arm carrying their groceries home…and I turned to her and said that’s going to be me one day. Some days it seems surreal when I remember the years I spent wishing for this. The years this was my dream. My dream was to live in Boston. Spoiler alert it absolutely sucks to have to carry your groceries for a mile walk home. It gets heavy and when you shop you hit a point where you’re not getting that item because it’s going to make your bags too heavy. So you say I’ll get that later.
A few weeks ago I was eating dinner with longtime friends and I said I’m going to cry every single mile of the 3 day drive home I’m going to be so sad to leave. My friend replied, “Of course you are! You fought so hard to get there.” Her husband said, “You spoke Boston into existence. You talked about it for years before you made it there.” They are right. I did. I loved Boston so much, I did exactly what I do with any crush. I tried to get to know everything I possibly could about Boston. I studied up on all the Red Sox baseball players, positions, facts on the player, followed them on Instagram, followed game-by-game and all the Twitter news. I followed all the Boston Instagram accounts so I knew all the inside jokes, all the major landmarks, neighborhood places. I bought a Red Sox hat from the stadium store so it was “authentic” and the JD Martinez tank top with the letters JD in Red Sox font to complete my collection. When I talked to my dog, I would ask him if he wanted “wattah” and would ask him if he was going to like living in Boston. I was so good, a guy at a party asked me if I was from Boston. Proudest day of my life with what Bostonians tell me is an undeniable Southern accent you can hear from a mile away. I refuse to believe I have an accent.
And this is what brought me to this blog post. The one where I tell you about the journey it took me to get to Boston. Almost five years ago my life had an event that felt like a bomb went off and when I opened my eyes everything around me was shattered including myself. I don’t have any tattoos because I’m far too indecisive and noncommittal to pick out something I would want forever but if I were to pick one…I would want a phoenix. That’s my spirit animal. I rose from the ashes and I built my life back and more importantly myself back into someone far beyond the person I was before. I clawed my way back.
Sometimes as I walk down the street in Boston, I catch myself smiling as I watch the T crawl along and for a moment I have this realization that I live here, that this is real.
molly inclÁn
I never realized until this year all the things in my life that made me always feel like I came from a place different than all my friends actually is because my dad is an immigrant. In my program, a lot of my friends have at least one parent who is from another country and I realized these people…they get me…they came from the same place as me. Many immigrants have built their lives from nothing after everything was taken from them. They instill in their children the importance of survival. If you Google immigrant and survival mentality many articles will pop up. My dad instilled that in me. I’m not exactly sure how but I know I always see myself as a fighter, a survivor, and a thriver. I know when my life blew up most people would have spent a lot of time crying over it and I know there were times I definitely cried but more-so I remember the anger that fueled me to keep marching forwards. I couldn’t even be sad about it. I was just numb. If something is devastating enough you bury it far down so you don’t feel it to protect yourself. It’s a survival instinct.
The only thing that kept me from collapsing was the sense of pride instilled in me by my dad and my faith that God had a plan and a purpose even when I couldn’t see it. I used to run a lot and I hate running. I would repeat to myself when I got tired and wanted to stop, “You will not win.” This became my mantra. The circumstance imposed on me would not win nor the person who inflicted them. I crawled my way back from the depths of the valley of despair. The thing is, after something like that happens to you, you fear nothing because you know you’ll survive anything. My resilience has never been tested as much. There were days where I wasn’t sure I had it in me to keep trudging through more muck without something good happening. But I kept trudging one foot in front of the other. That’s how I made it to Boston one step at a time.
I was on a travel binge that year. Exploring new places was incredibly healing to me. I went to 16 cities that year and some more than once. In the midst of this era of life, I traveled to Boston for the very first time. On the top of Bunker Hill, I took the picture at the top of this post. I posted it to Instagram with the caption, “Travel until you meet yourself” which upon searching for the person to attribute that quote to today I realized I apparently created my own spin on David Mitchell’s quote “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” It is there on that hill I knew Boston had my heart. That day I decided I would move to Boston.
It is there on that hill I knew Boston had my heart. That day I decided I would move to Boston.
molly InclÁn
At first I tried to get a job there for the summer and that didn’t work out. Then I applied for permanent jobs but it’s pretty hard if you don’t live there. So a year later I decided I would go for my MBA. My GMAT score had expired so 10 years out of school I went and got a GMAT study system and proceeded to spend every weekend for 2.5 months from 5pm Friday to Sunday evening I would spend at my kitchen table nonstop studying. If you asked me to do something socially, the answer was no to everything. Little did I know these were the last weekends of normalcy before Covid. I was late deciding to apply so I had one shot to take the GMAT and get a good score. 700 is the golden number to get into really highly ranked programs. I took practice test after practice test and hit 690 every time.
That year I studied through Thanksgiving. My dad woke up with a virus and I couldn’t afford to catch it and miss my test. I had Red Barron pizza by myself for Thanksgiving. The sacrifices they’re adding up quickly as you can see. I went that Saturday morning to take the GMAT. When I got there they were running 2 hours behind so I had to sit and wait for a long time to take my test. It was a whirlwind of bad circumstances and when it was time to take the test my nerves got the best of me. My brain went blank. I blew the test. My family called me after with great anticipation and through tears I told them I scored over 100 points below what I was capable of.
I cried and cried on the way home. This felt like another time life wouldn’t give me a break. My dream of grad school and Boston felt like it was gone. I really considered not even applying to grad school at this point. I worked so hard and spent those months studying to achieve a score high enough for the really top-ranked schools and I had failed.
I really, really wanted to quit but my brother asked me matter of factly when I was taking it again as if there was no other option. You have to wait a certain number of days to retest. I had one day before the deadline to take the test.
To Be Continued…
Part 2 will be released next week.