Mental health problems flow through me just as much as my parent's DNA does. My mother was a schizophrenic drug addict, her addiction eventually being her demise. My father is undiagnosed, but he shows signs of NPD and ASD, leaving me in a lovely in between of struggle. I myself have been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder Reoccurring Severe, PTSD, and Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder. I have been told I am ADHD by one doctor, ADD by another, and had my symptoms blamed on anxiety by a different one. One psychiatrist in the psychiatric hospital went as far as to say I showed signs of ASPD, which I didn't take seriously then but am starting to notice more myself as of recently. As you can see, I certainly have my fair share of experiences when it comes to mental health. While your typical stay in a mental hospital is between four to seven days, mine lasted fifteen. I was involuntarily committed for homicidal and suicidal tendencies, and when I left the hospital I took around an average of twelve pills a day. I was fourteen at the time. While none of that was fun or jolly, it taught me two things. One, self harm and suicide attempts just make you feel worse afterwards, not better. When I panic or spiral these days, I know better than to try any of that again. It never once helped me. Two, it really will get better if you keep trying. I can't imagine how it felt for my father to witness. His sister passed from suicide in 2012, and here I was, repeating her personality, her hobbies, and now her struggles. If it weren't for his efforts at the time to try and help me once things got really bad, I don't know if I would've gotten better. No, he wasn't perfect. He made a lot of mistakes. My step-mom made infinitely more. However, without him, I know I'd either be in a residential unit or dead right now. I certainly wouldn't be thriving just fine with zero medications under my belt like I am now. Experiencing what I've been through and continue to go through has shown me several things I would've never thought of when I was younger. I never would've thought I would be one to hallucinate, yet I've heard the voices when I couldn't sleep due to my crying and screaming. It's so easy to lose yourself in emotions, grief, and stress. It's even easier to decide you'll never improve and dig yourself deeper into the warm, humid hole that is true mental struggle. If it was so easy for me, a child at the time, to fall so far in, how hard is it for someone balancing a marriage, children, bills, politics, genetics, and a full-time job? Not very hard I bet. It really showed me that you absolutely never know everything someone is going through. So many people didn't know what was happening to me, or where I had gone for two weeks. I never knew my grandma was bipolar or depressed until I helped her sort her medications. You never know. You have to be cautious and understanding. Even if it's hard to care, even if empathy is a struggle or you're going through your own stuff, you always have to at least be aware that not only you can hurt.

I've always had a calling towards telling stories. As a child I would write down tales of someone's pet pig in an orange crayon in my notebook, drawing little illustrations of my characters along the margins. It's peaceful, an escape from the chaotic life I was cursed with since birth. When my mother passed away and I could hardly handle my emotions, I handled Vincent's instead. I wrote Vincent's story and let him do the things I felt like I needed to feel better. That's always been what writing is for me. A way to experience emotions and places and things that either I don't understand or no one would understand about me. How would it feel to watch your loved one die? Not everyone knows, but with writing they can feel a piece of the pain someone else experiences. Sometimes the joy too, depending on the genre and style. It's a way to teach and share things that you've learned through experience or research. No, I don't know what it's like to embalm a body, but Washington knows that, and through Washington I can learn and others can too. Writing spreads awareness and purpose. It can alleviate depression, support self-care, provide an escape, and make those who need it most smile or cry. It can give someone the knowledge they need to get a diagnosis for what's been hurting them, or tell them that a diagnosis was wrong. It can inspire others to write and spread their own experiences, and the cycle continues. The worlds we create in fiction are alive inside of every person who reads them, hence the creation of fanfiction. To be able to move someone so powerfully that they learn your world inside and out and create their own inside of it is a superpower. Writing is a web of creativity and unoriginality all the same, for even as hard as all us writers try, something in our writing was first written elsewhere. Though many may say that it's annoying to see similar styles or the same tropes reused, I see it as evidence that we are all one group of creatives who appreciate one another's ideas and products and show it openly. My entire reason for going to college is to continue my writing and pursue a creative writing degree. The book I am currently working on is already past 150 pages, and I am hoping that with a proper education, my next few drafts will be exactly what I need to catch a publisher's attention with the help of an agent. I know based off of grades and past competitions that I have talent in writing, but I also know I can always do better. I want to do better. I want to perfect my craft and graduate college with a manuscript to show for it. Hopefully, it'll be just what I need to get my works on a store shelf.

As a transgender man with artistic hobbies in a small, rural town, things have been rough. When you live in the country, it's all hunting, boots, and fishing. Now don't get me wrong, I love boots and fishing, maybe occasionally a cowboy hat (or three in my car), but when that's what it means to be a man to everyone around you, it can feel very daunting trying to fit in. It feels like I'm drowning in the dysphoria sometimes. I want to draw, but 'men' don't draw. I want to write about vampires, tragedy, lost lives and love, but 'men' don't like vampires and romance and especially not when they're gay. I want to get a piercing but that's a transgender stereotype. I want to cry when someone's mad at me but all I can think is "boys don't cry". My father is a 'real' man. Tattooed all over with a long beard and marathon medals on his wall. It's all about how much protein is in his diet and working on the tractor in the shop. Because of the notion he has that he is as masculine as a man and any male-identifying person should be, I am not accepted in my own home. If my friends call me he/him or William in the house, they aren't allowed back over. When I took my senior photos in a tux, I had to watch him pout and tell me that I would've been so pretty in a dress. Me, a chubby man with a weak attempt at a DIY mustache and a curly, ginger, self-cut mullet. Every time I try to prove myself to him, I'm wrong in some way. I remind him I started wearing boy clothes at nine, and he tells me I just wanted to look like my mom. I say I want a truck or an old fixer-upper car and he says "You just want to send a certain message to the world". The only thing I've consistently found peace in is my writing. I can write male characters and not have to give them the stress of constantly fixing their shirt to hide their chest. I can show emotion by proving that men can have emotions. I can spread awareness that men can have whatever hobbies they want, and that their sexuality doesn't make them less than. I can write a hairy lumberjack of a man who hates the color pink and champagne and make him gay and prove to everyone that there's no single way to be queer, or a man. My writing teaches me that there's so many types of characters, and people, and you'll never feel like humanity is black and white ever again once you step into your first draft. My current project is on page 163, with two very different sides of the spectrum of queer men as my two main characters. Yes, they're vampires, and no I'm not ashamed of it. I'm going to finish this book and let everyone taste the type of freedom writing gives me.