My Autobiography
I was born in Tbilisi, Georgia and moved to California when I was only six years old. Our first house was right off of Fulton street next to the Golden Gate Park. It was blocks away from Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Without knowing a single word of English, I was exposed to an unfamiliar world. My parents enrolled me at Lafayette Elementary school located between Anza and Balboa street. I was barely able to communicate with the other kids for the first year or two. Luckily, I stayed persistent and by the third grade, I was speaking English better then some of my other classmates. It was also in the third grade that I started playing the piano a couple days a week with my instructor Milla.
After working as a doctor in Tbilisi, my mother spent her days studying to retake the medical board exams in order to continue her work as a licensed doctor in the state of California. When I was in the sixth grade, she married my step dad whom she had met through a mutual acquaintance. Both my parents had the same vision and that was to move out of San Francisco and put me through a better school. We packed our bags that summer and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County,where we moved into an apartment.
Once again I was exposed to a whole new world leaving behind my friends. I found myself starting over once again. Somehow, since I no longer had a language barrier, I was able to make some new friends. Before I knew it, I was in high school. Later did I come to find out that Robin Williams, an international super star mostly known for his humor graduated the same school. I studied at Redwood High School up until my senior year. It was then, that my father was offered a residency program at the SUNY Hospital in Syracuse, New York in the department of anesthesiology.
After rebuilding my life for the third time to the point where I then considered Marin County my true home, I was faced with yet, the biggest change of all. I had one year of high school left, and we were going to move to the other side of the country. I begged, I pleaded, I did whatever I could to convince my parents to reconsider, but unfortunately, nothing helped. I realize now, that it was more important for us to build a stable future as a family, than it was for me to graduate high school with my friends. After all, it wasn’t like I was never going to talk to them again.
We moved to Syracuse later that summer, where I eventually graduated from Fayetteville Manlius High School. I immediately moved to New York City to pursue my career in the jewelry business. I graduated from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), with a major in diamonds, November of 2004. The school was located on Madison Avenue, in the heart of downtown Manhattan. New York was unlike anywhere else I have ever been.
After working for Helzberg Diamonds for a couple of months, I decided to move back to California and begin my studies in business. Which brings me here writing this autobiography. Yes, as a child growing up, I did move around a lot. Yet, each time we moved I learned to adapt to new environments quickly and effectively.
I can honestly say that my past experiences, events, and memories make me who I am today. Every individual contains the story of life, their life. Life is an unexpected journey, in which the story is written not in a single day, or month, or even year. It is a story that evolves over decades. When life begins, it is almost as if an empty book is opened with the child’s name on the cover. As they grow, the blank pages inside begin to fill up with words, and the story evolves. Everything he/she does will become a memory, an experience, a story of the past. Until one day, the last sentence is written. The last words are spoken; and the book is closed, as their ashes flow with the wind. Life has a beginning but it also has an end. It is up to us use the time in between to write the greatest stories of all by turning our dreams into reality. One cannot predict what’s to come in the future yet one has the ability to create the future as he/she desires.
