Nick's Story

I'm the youngest son out of three. The biggest disappointment known to man, in their eyes.

My parents are Diana Michelle Lorenzo-Mara, and Octavio Giuseppe Mara. My dad's great-grandpa Stephano De-Luca Mara founded this town after a storm practically killed over half of the people that lived here. Though it wasn't until he started digging near the border of Utah and Colorado that he struck oil. Slowly over the years investors and their families came to town and started their lives here. Though not a lot, a sufficient number of people lived here to be called a small town at best.

Our family held the name of the best and richest in town. We had to live up to our name, and only the best was expected out of us.

I was supposed to be babied, to be shown love and support. But I wasn't and despite the stereotypical assumption that people, men, shouldn't be treated as something special, I wanted it even more.

It was funny, that most of the people I know hated the fact that they were babied, loved, coddled. They complained day in and day out that it was too much, and that they weren't treated as proper men, women, or people in between.

But I missed that, when people cared, and wanted to push me to be better. But they kept their vices to themselves, thus distancing themselves from me and my brothers.

They didn't mind, but I did. I was just too quiet about it. Instead to help cope with the stress they pushed us to play sports. My older brothers have always done better, and excelled but so did I.

My oldest brother Angelo was a pre-med major at Stanford, and my other older brother, Marcelo was an engineering major at Stanford as well. My parents are also Stanford alumni, it was almost fate for me to go. I mean sure I did want to go to one of the best universities in the country, but not to major in the medical, engineering, or law fields.

My ambition was always music and the arts. Ever since I was younger the lights, the noise, the music was what got me through most of the hardest things in life. I joined multiple plays, musicals, and theatre productions, and not once did they ever bother to come. Even when I was the lead for the classical Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet.

Because it was unethical.

Expressing my love for music at an early age, my parents always drilled into me that it's never gonna happen.

That I'm always going to be a failure to them if I decided to pursue what I wanted to do.

What I was put onto this Earth to do, in their eyes.

I've tried to do everything I could to make them proud but nothing worked. It only made me stray further from them.

Until I met them.

They were the best part of me.

They gave me purpose.

They filled up the spaces that were drilled out of me.

They inspired me to keep pursuing what I was born to do.