" Now my reason is very different from what anyone would expect. I know there are very many people, especially young women who are are in a situation that I once was in. Those are the people am targeting to show them that they can make it out there. That's why I told you that I want it to be in form of a success story of a woman."
" The woman activist in you is speaking," I say teasingly. " I think your life will give more light to your activistic work."
" It's not about being an activist or what , because I believe apart from people being excited after learning who I am, everyone will get something from my story. "
" The last question before we start is that why has Elsa Miles decided to tell the truth about herself particularly now."
" As I have told you earlier, it hurts to hear lies said on your life. And so, I don't want that to happen anymore after I die. Everyone should know who I really am such that they talk only what is correct about me when I die,"she says.
I have got some notes already. I get out my recorder and place it on the table, turn to a new page in my notebook. Elsa lies back in her chair in a relaxed manner, and without meaning it, I find myself making myself comfortable. This is it, the real story behind the woman herself, the icon to many is going to be told to many through me first. I believe this is one of my many greatest achievements.
" What am I saying first, Carloy?" She asks.
" Of course your childhood and in a broader context the reason why you broke up with your family. Your love life and that always talked about marriage you had," I say confidently.
" First things first," she says. " I am ready to begin."
" Then we should start off," I say, my professional instinct kicking in. I turn the voice recorder on and prepare myself to listen attentively.
***
Behind every good thing, a painful long story lies. Just as gold goes through the highest degree fires to become precious, even success stories have a a toil to give. I am not saying that I have had a bad life as I made it to where l am, but am certain I had a difficult start. Yo everyone out there that sees Elsa Miles and those that know me, I have attained myself what is called success. Indeed, I climbed through the ladder of success at a young age that when I look back, I ask myself who that girl was.
I am born to a big family here in the country that has made a name in the business sector. The old saying that money be gets money did not work for me. I never got all that I own from my family's assets and neither did I use the name Williams as I started my way through. As everyone knows, I don't even use that name, I am Elsa Miles.
I believe everybody gets turning points in their life and I got mine in a certain year. A year that made me change entire perspective about life , a year that built me. Have you ever been at your highest and then you come down to the ground? If you've been through that situation then you understand what am going to talk about. For those who have never been in any such situation, you will have a taste of it after learning about what I went through. But that only made me learn how to flourish. It only helped me seek and acknowledge the potential within me.
Like any child, I had dreams as I grew up. Most of them were childish of course and unrealistic but I had two particular dreams that I fantasied about. I wanted to get a well paying job and also find a love of my life at an early age. The latter sounds funny but any girl will understand. I wanted to find the man who would cherish me before I went into relationships. I hated experiencing any love break. Luckily, I got these two dreams but unfortunately lost them sooner than later.
Being born in a business family is no joke and it was worse for me because I was the last born. Everyone was always busy to the extent that even when they were at home, their language was all about the business they ran. I guessed that was how business life was meant to be inculcated in everyone at home.
Even my elder siblings had already started working by the time I started understanding. At twelve years, I came to understand that every kind of business I heard everyone speak of at home was under one umbrella. It was all under my family.
Instead of being proud, I wondered how a single family could venture into all the various sectors . No wonder the workaholic nature of my family. My dad always told me that with the help of all family members, the different sectors could easily be managed. He promised me that I would also be managing a big company when I grew up. Of course I was excited on this because I knew I would be rich soon when I am managing a company.
That's one way in which we find a full lineage being rich over generations, it's in the way the rich people raise their children. They build the aspect of being rich in them from an early age. Sometimes it's not always about money be getting money but also the mentality and perspective someone grows with affects their aims towards the money. That's one thing that helped me a lot in all my endeavors and it had been planted in me at home when I was young. I grew up knowing that I had to be rich someday and I always ran up to that. And that alone.
Despite the fact that my dad had never been to school for any business related studies, he was a good entrepreneur and we all looked up to him. Though all the different family business related activities were under different people, my dad was the overall seer and prime manager. He was the final decision maker, after all he had started the thing. He had educated all my siblings and his relatives and these are the people who were running his entities. So behind the big guys, there was the other big man.
He was rich, which he also knew well because he always said that he was in position to get anything he wanted because he had enough wealth.
" I make my money to help me get whatever I want and also my problems,"he always said.
In addition to that, he always reminded us that money made the world move and that we had work very hard to be rich. That statement awakened some realization in me. The way he always stated that we had to work hard to be rich made me realize something that everyone else was ignoring or it was just me overthinking things.
' You have to work hard to become rich.'
That statement made me realize that none the guys running this businesses were rich, he was the only rich person here. He had used his money to manipulate all of them to make him rich. That was my understanding of the thing at the time. And I always wondered why nobody had ever thought of it that way which made me think that I was being paranoid about the whole thing.
I did not want to make someone already rich richer, no I wanted to also be rich. Not in the way my other relatives were rich but in an independent way rich. But I had qualms and doubts about it because how come no one else ever tried it the way I wanted it. Or they probably tried and failed. That was another challenge I had.
Besides all that, the spirit of being rich was ignited in me at a young age because I knew that once one was rich, they could have anything they wanted. And what independence is more than that? But also, I knew very well that it is only through working very hard that I could attain the richness, infact I started envisaging being the richest person the world ever had. Later I learnt that it was not just about working hard like how my dad always said it , but rather you have 'to work hard in a smart way.'
Everyone in my family was a big dreamer that you could never help it nor avoid it, but also become one. That is how the spirit of working hard was instilled in me at a very young stage and for that, am always grateful to my family. Sometimes what we become and what we are is not determined by us, but rather the people we live among and the circumstances under which we live play a big impact in shaping our life.