I have always struggled with my mental health. I have struggled to cope with and overcome my symptoms, both psychological and physical. I've been diagnosed with CPTSD, bipolar 2, MDD, general anxiety, gender dysphoria, anorexia, and ADHD. The diagnosis that affects me the most in my everyday life is CPTSD, or complex-post traumatic stress disorder. This developed due to a lot of complex childhood trauma such as years of sexual abuse and emotional neglect. I won't go into all my trauma and how it's affected me but instead focus on how I'm working to lessen my symptoms. The main thing I struggle with as a side effect or symptom of my CPTSD is an addiction to self-harm. I first started cutting myself the day before my 12th birthday due to being overwhelmed by a mental health crisis and still struggling with getting clean from self-harm to this day. I'm almost 18 now and am currently 189 days free from self-harm. It's been a very long journey and an extremely difficult one. For the longest time, I didn't want to get clean. The pain and routine I got from cutting myself was soothing and helped me dissociate from myself. That dissociation helped me distance myself from my symptoms and feel more regulated. During the time of addiction I've gone to the mental hospital for it twice and had two different therapists to try and help me manage the urges to hurt myself. I didn't really even try to get clean until I turned 17. I finally decided that I didn't want to scar my skin anymore. I didn't want to live in a constant fight against myself to not hurt myself anymore. I wanted to be free from the pain, dissociation, and urges. It's taken me such a long time to get to a place where I feel safe enough to put down the blade and try to regulate myself in a different way. I tried so many different coping mechanisms to try and stop myself from acting on my urges to hurt myself, and for a long time, none of them worked. It wasn't until my therapist encouraged me to try a coping skill called "riding the wave" that anything worked to help me. To "ride the wave" means to let yourself feel the big, intense emotions, causing you to feel the need to hurt yourself. For me, riding the wave meant a lot of distraction techniques. Not to distract myself from the emotions, but instead distract myself from the self-harm urges. I wouldn't suppress the emotions or immediately reach for a blade to help me dissociate from them. Instead, I would take a break and read or listen to music. I would tell myself, "If I still feel the urge in five minutes, then I'll hurt myself." And if I still felt the urge after 5 minutes? Try a different method of distraction and go for another 5 minutes. Somedays that meant going for a walk, and other times, it was as simple as taking a break from whatever was stressing me out to do something calming. It still took a while for me to fully ingrain this coping skill into my life and remember to use it every time I felt the urge, but once I did? It was so much easier to just let myself feel without feeling that I needed to cut myself. After I implemented this coping skill into my everyday life, I started to have more and more days in between relapses. I haven't fully overcome my self-harm urges, but I'm so much better.

Ever since I started going to public school in 2021 for my freshman year in high school, I've struggled to have my gender acknowledged and respected by both teachers and my peers. All four years of high school, I've been heavily bullied for identifying as transgender male, and this has impacted my school work, mental health, and how safe I feel to apply for dual credit classes. The bullying got so bad in my sophomore year of high school that I almost ended my life. I was constantly dead-named, misgendered, harassed by inappropriate questions about my genitals, physically bullied in PE class, and this was ignored by the administration until my parent reported how badly it was effecting my mental health. Even then, very little effort was put towards punishing the people bullying me. I've always struggled with my mental health, and an addiction to self-harm and being bullied made it so much worse and pushed me to almost do something that could never be taken back. Most of my teachers misgendered me throughout the year I was in their class, sometimes even the next year if I was in a different class they taught. I have two teachers who consistently respect my gender and use my chosen name and preferred pronouns, and I've had one of them for all four years of high school and the other for the past two years. Being bullied and having my teachers not respect my gender and pronouns caused me to almost drop out of public high school and go back to homeschooling. It was through pure determination and spite that I stayed enrolled. Determination to prove to my bullies that they didn't affect me and that I will stand strong no matter what they throw at me. Determination to prove to my teachers that no matter what I identify as, I still deserve to be respected and treated as any other student. Determination to prove to my parents that my coming out was not a mistake or a phase but a serious lifelong identity change that will not go away. Determination to prove to everyone that transgender people deserve respect and a place in this world, education wise and socially. It was also through pure determination that I ended up applying for dual credit classes. I was terrified that my college professors wouldn't respect who I am and would misgender and dead-name me, but I persevered and have ended up taking 12 college courses. All my academic achievements have been my own creation. It's taken me years to be this comfortable being out as transgender to the world, and sometimes, it still scares me. Currently, America is in the middle of a genocide against transgender people (according to leading genocide scholars and experts as of January 2026). I want to use my future college education to teach schools and parents how important it is to listen to their queer and transgender children and to respect what their child tells them about their gender. My career goal is to become a therapist specializing in LGBTQIA youth, especially transgender youth. I want to work both as a therapist and as an advocate for transgender rights in all realms of society. Transgender people deserve the same amount of rights as everyone else, and I'm determined to dedicate my life and education to making sure that the transgender and non-binary youth of America are promised a better future. I'm determined to dedicate my work to bettering society and governmental policies to make sure that transgender and non-binary youth get all the help they need.

Ever since I was first outed as transgender, I've been looked at by everyone. Other transgender people look at me for education, for advocacy; they act as if I should've known everything I do now and fight for all of them since I was first outed at 13 years old. Conservative people look at me in disgust. They want me to know that who I am is morally wrong. They call me slurs and insult me. They misgender and deadname me on purpose. I want to see that change. I want to advocate for a change in how people view transgender people. I want people to see transgender people as a beautiful addition to the world and not someone to condemn to hell. I want to advocate for mental health help for queer, especially transgender, people. "One page of the Bible isn't worth a life"- WRABEL. I want to change the way queer people view their lives. I want queer people to feel that they're needed and valued in this world. I believe that America needs more psychologists trained to help queer people in particular. That is what I'll be going to college for. I want to be an LGBTQIA+ specializing therapist and advocacy worker. I want to be the change that I want to see in the world. I want to advocate for sexual assault and abuse victims. Especially victims of child-on-child sexual abuse and incestuous child sexual abuse. When I was around 7 years old, my sister started sexually abusing me. It lasted until I was 12. I want to advocate for survivors to be able to talk about those kinds of taboo experiences without fear of judgment from people who could never understand what those survivors went through. I want to see a change in the way people treat survivors who still have feelings for their abusers because trauma bonding is a real and valid experience that some survivors go through. I want to work on educating parents on the signs to look out for in their children. I believe that parents need to be educated on signs of sexual abuse, physical assault, bullying, and other experiences that can impact a child's mental health. When my parents found out about my sister sexually abusing me, they had no idea what to do, how to react. They reacted in a way that hurt me greatly. I want the pain survivors go through when they decide to tell their parents to lessen. Parents deserve to know how to help their children, and right now, there is little to no readily available information and classes to help them. I believe in equal rights for all. I believe that the way our current government is treating immigrants is criminal and that there needs to be more accountability for the government and how they decide is the correct way to act. The world needs to change so much to account for the discrimination and oppression marginalized communities face. There is so much more education that needs to happen to help reduce discrimination. I want to change the way queer people and survivors of abuse experience life. I want to change the way people react to queer people and survivors talking about their experiences. I want to create a safe space for anyone to talk about things that are considered taboo and to feel it’s safe to be themselves. I want to create places where everyone can be who they truly are. I want to be a safe and educated person whom others feel safe enough to come to in times of need.