I would say mental health is what started my addiction, as it's done for many others. Except my addiction is fed through my brothers body, it is like spilled black ink on the paper of my life. It has seeped through and got me hooked, unable to go without the idea of how to help him. I've become addicted to solving his addictions. I always knew something was different about my brother but never knew what. I never understood why he wasn't around as often and why my mother would stare off with saddened eyes as I mentioned his name. As I grew, I began to understand substance abuse and the way it affects the brain, I began to try and wrap my head around this plague that had ridden him. In my formative years I attempted to create solutions as to how to help, though it was once I truly grasped the affect that his bipolar disorder and depression had on his substance abuse, everything became more clear. Rather than two separate entities, they found their way to wear into one another. To weave into the quilt that we called family, to fester it with rotting fabric and hopelessness. As I did more research, it becomes apparent that around 50 percent of people who struggle with severe mental illness, are also affected by substance abuse. 53 percent of drug abusers attempting to cope with at least one. The issue is, these people truly believe the psychosis, mania, and emotion that they feel with the brain they were born with. Relaying on how times when Daryle was sober, he would tell tales of how a small, dark cloud would follow him around. How it would grunt bouts of thunder and linger over his shoulder. Despite the oddity of it, he truly saw it, he felt it, and to him, it existed. I saw the way in which it affected my home, the woman who birthed me and even my sanity. How his presence and lack of both had a staunching sort of impact, how when he was manic, your heart wrestles on whether it is better for him to be around or banished. I think about all the other little girls that felt as I once did, as if they could just figure out the perfect formula to help cut the addiction then their world would be perfect again. I know now that is not possible, it is much more than that. It is his mental illnesses and how he tends to them, what he feeds them, and only he can choose to get help. The other addicts that struggle the same as him, they are the only ones that are able to get that help themselves; unless they do not know. Mental health and alignments are such a spectrum that there are so many stigmas around. I suffer from anxiety disorder, and can recount on the ways in which it affected my life negatively before I was diagnosed and found ways to get help. That is my goal, to help be the voice to ensure people that it is okay to get help, to challenge common misconceptions surrounding mental health, to share my story, and to assure that there is no shame in getting help.

What is it to be the first? I always wondered, what is to be the first great at something? To be the first in a slew of determination and grit that inspires others to follow. I asked my Tio that one day, seeing as he was the first to come here. To feel the first of American soil and the first to face all the struggles that came with immigration. From his mouth, his words began to flicker. Like a lighter to a wick, a flame began to burn in my chest. A fire was starting that no one could exhaust, and I knew I needed to be the first. To be first was to provide for your family, it was to defy all odds and still make a way, it was to do what is difficult because in the end, you will help others. That is what Tio Julio told me, what he spoke and breathed and lived. It was the truth I knew I too needed to achieve, like a mantle passed down, I gripped to these revelations. I will be the first to graduate college. There is an almost imminent pressure when you are the last of five children. It almost feels as if you’re the last resort, the last one to finally achieve this mission that they’ve all dreamed of. Of two parents who were not provided with these opportunities, of siblings who lost their way towards education. All were faced with something greater than a degree; survival. I hope to change that belief that has seemed to have rooted its way not only in my family, but that of the Latino community that I was raised within. To challenge that idea that these grand opportunities aren’t meant for “people like us.” That immigrant is just a term of phrase and not our identity, we are people who deserve to go to college, be successful, and make ourselves known. And maybe one day, when my sobrinos and cousins begin to age and pursue their education, they will be inspired by the path I have set. I will clean up the shrubs and vines and thorns so they will have a way. I will show them that no matter what our origins are, where our family is from or how much is in our pockets; we can make a way. I will be the first to be their voice. I like to think my path to medicine, to science, started like a fairytale. Before I was born, in a small hospital in Guatemala, where a girl named Mercy was born. With a cleft palate that stretched her face and deformities that were looked down upon. The doctors whispered to her parents that she would not grow beyond the age of 1, I met her when she was 30. Her parents brought her here to America in the late 90’s to fix the abnormalities, Mercy lived until she was 33. I could not imagine a life without her, the joy she brought to me and the brightness she was in the dark of the world. She was my best friend. I think about the other Mercy’s around the world, how their parents might not have the knowledge that they are able to help their child, parents who might not find it tangible to do so. My goal in life is to help those who feel as if they are alone; that don’t have resources, feel as if they are not seen, not heard and be the one who helps give them a voice.