My mom sometimes says we lost our dad twice, and I completely agree with that statement. My father was a good man during my childhood. He was a nerdy guy who introduced me to video games and anime, and also a total goofball who would make us laugh everyday. One of his favorite jokes was to ball up his socks, usually dirty, and throw it at us while yelling, "SOCK!" Unsanitary? Yes, but it got a giggle out of me and my sister everytime. He worked hard to support our family, and was the primary income for our family for years. I loved my father dearly, and that just made the following events so much worse. When I was in late elementary school, my father had a tumor grow in his brain and had to get it surgically removed. That surgery changed him for the worse. He became loud, yelling and me and my sister over the smallest mistakes. At times I was scared of him, and my mother made the decision to seperate from my father for our sakes. This news broke me. I was still so young, I couldn't comprehend that my family was breaking up, nor could I really understand my father was already gone, in a way. The next few years were tough. Visits were infrequent, and I felt more and more distant from him as monthes of no contact drew on. The struggle of all these changes gave me mental health struggles that I still somewhat deal with to this day. Then one day, on June 20th, 2020, my mom gave me an update that my father's brain condition had gotten worse, and he had to go into a facility with nurses to help him. He had memory issues, probably wouldn't even remember us if we visited. It's screwed up to admit, but I wondered out loud, "Would I even care if he died?" I got that answer later that same day, and the answer was yes. I cried for hours after I found out. Even though he was no longer the man who introduced me to some of my favorite hobbies, the man who could always make me smile and laugh, the man who loved my family with all his heart, this was what truly made him gone. He truly was the man I lost twice. They say time heals all wounds, and in some ways that's incorrect. It's true that I sometimes don't think about my father, about all the pain that caused me in my childhood, but you can never truly get over such a loss. I still see him when I toss a balled up pair of socks, or play video games he once enjoyed. And when I learn more about him I mourn the things we couldn't bond over because I wasn't interested back when he was still him, like Dungeons and Dragons, or new series that I think he would enjoy. It's like a piece of myself is forever missing. However, it's not like I can just give up. Even though he died a stranger, I'm sure my father is looking down on me, proud of who I am becoming. I'll become a woman he'd be proud to call his daughter, no matter what.

While I was born to a very supportive family, I was not born in a supportive world. My mother is bisexual, and I am pansexual, and because of my identity I made many good queer friends within my small rural town. However, my hometown is quite conservative, and that means me and my friends were not eactly welcomed by most people. I was unusually sheltered from the hate myself, likely because of my aforementioned supportive family and general good relationship with my classmates, even though, thanks to my autism, I was bullied for being a "weird" kid. However, I still saw it in my community. My high school GSA had so few members because a homophobic kid had apparently outed kids before I joined in my junior year. I've had to misgender friends in front of certain people for fear that conservative family would harass and outst them. Even when people are nice to me in town, I wonder if they would judge my identity, that if I was a bit louder about my identity that people that are usually kind would turn on me. That kind of mindset wears on my mind and makes it seem rough to open up to people. It certainly doesn't help that the administration we currently live under is absolutely terror inducing. After Trump was elected it seems every bigot was given a free pass. LGBTQ+ hate feels more accepted than ever, and you even see it in companies no longer celebrating pride like they used to because society has swung the other way. When Trump won his second term, my mom told me to hide myself from strangers, that this is now a country that hates us, that if we are to proud of our idenities, we'll be silenced, violently. It made me scared to write, to talk about my stories with my friends because what if they turn on me? Writing for me has always had an element of escapism. Why live in reality when you could turn to a world with dragons and vampires, where all the threats are defeated at the end of the story? But even fiction isn't perfect. Queer characters have always had a close place in my heart, especially when they're just shown to be happy and normal, away from the homophobia and fear we face. But both stories need to be told. I want to write queer characters that both allow a queer person to idenitfy and escape from the terror we face, while also showing a world we could have if we stood up for it. Safety for LGBTQ+ identifying people shouldn't be just fantasy, and I want to write that into reality through my story telling.

This is incredibly topical for me, as just last November, the day after Halloween, I lost my grandmother to a ruptured bowel. My grandma was incredibly important to me, as my family had lived with her for most of my life. She was like a third parent to me, and was always there, with her strange but uplifting sense of humor or a helping hand to help bring you up. Grandma was a confidant who has helped me through many crises, including my spiraling mental health in middle school and my current college journey. I wanted her there for all of my accomplishments, my graduations, my first career, my wedding, and her death took that all away at the worst possible time. This was during the last few weeks of my last semester at SUNY Brockport, during a time where I had many projects to do and I was away from home. The moment I heard she had a chance of passing I rushed home, and that night was the night I said goodbye. My motivation completely tanked afterwards. I had stayed a week away from classes and the idea of doing any schoolwork, especially reading and writing projects, felt like torture. It was all pointless in my mind, and it felt so unfair when the world wouldn't stop because one of the most important women in the world to me was gone. I almost wanted to give up on college and my writing goals and just rot away. But I remembered what my grandmother had said to me growing up, that she would always be with me. I couldn't give up with her watching over my shoulders. It was hard, and there were many times the mere thought of my grandma made me break down in tears. But I kept pushing through, through the tears and the holidays, all the way to the end of the semester. I finished with a 3.95 average, and I plan to finish my classes, keeping such an average, and continue with my dreams to become a writer. My grandma will still be with me through everything, and I want her to look down on me and smile at what her grandaughter has become. I can't fail now, even if the world feels a little more bleak, because the effort isn't pointless. From now on, my success is from my dedication to my passed grandmother, and I will not let her down.