Would this be a good essay for the main essay in Common App?

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In New York, I got to breathe again.

Before that, I was suffocating, literally. My body was failing me before I even had a chance to live. I had an enlarged liver, my skin yellowing before I could take my first steps. My body rejected food, but my parents rejected the thought of losing me. The doctors in Syria didn’t have an answer, so my parents made the hardest decision of their lives: leave everything behind and hope America could save me.

I don’t remember the moment my parents decided to leave Syria, but I wonder what it felt like holding their breath underwater, lungs burning, waiting, hoping for air.

I was finally discharged from the hospital months later. My mother stayed in the hospital with me almost every day, remaining in faith, and thanking God for the outcome. My parents exhaled, and they could’ve stopped there, but they decided to take another breath, this time fighting to stay in a country they never were planning to call home. They returned back to Syria briefly to secure my mother’s legal status, but when we came back to America, it was for good.

We moved from city to city in Texas from one apartment to another, always adjusting, and always learning how to belong. My parents finally built up the money to buy a house in Plano, and we stayed here til this day. I became fluent in two languages but never felt fluent in either. I memorized new streets, new schools, and new faces, but always wondered what the old ones might have looked like.

A few years after settling in Texas, we went back to Syria to visit family. I still remember the smell of za’atar in the mornings, how my aunt would press warm bread into my hands and say, “Eat, habibti.” I walked through the souqs with my cousins, the streets buzzing with life, vendors calling out prices, people haggling not because they had to, but because it was part of the culture. I sat on the rooftop of my grandma’s house at night, listening to my dad tell stories about his childhood. That trip made something click. It wasn’t just a visit, it was a reminder that I come from a place full of history.

When I came back to the U.S., I started seeing things differently. In middle school, we were asked to create a small business project for a class. While others focused on selling simple products, I built a small pop up shop idea based on what I saw in the Syrian souqs, where everything was personal, where every product came with a story. I used handmade labels, offered bundles with handwritten notes, and made my classmates feel like they weren’t just buying, they were connecting. My teacher told me it felt “more like a real experience than a class project.” And in that moment, I realized I can take where I come from and use it to build something new.

When I think about my future, I think about the past. I think about the Middle Eastern markets, the souqs where business is built on authenticity and relationships, not just transactions. I think about how my own life has been shaped by people making sacrifices not for immediate gain, but for something better.

That's the kind of business I want to learn, the kind I want to master, the kind that builds connections, trust, and resilience. The same way my parents built a life for me out of nothing, I want to build something meaningful, something that bridges the gap between my roots and my future.

Back then, I thought adaptation meant sacrificing parts of myself to fit in. But now, I realize it’s about embracing and carrying all the different versions of myself forward.

I have spent my life learning how to adjust. Now, I’m ready to build.