My history with mental health is long and complicated. It's been a rocky road from the very beginning. The first time I was sent to a therapist I was about seven. I had been having trouble focusing and I kept forgetting things that happened only a couple of minutes before. Apparently I told my parents that I wanted to die, and I didn't even remember it. They took me to some old man in Grand Rapids who sat me down and pulled out a Monopoly board. We just played games the entire session. It barely felt like therapy. The cards were questions about my mental health and my feelings, but that wasn't exactly helpful or healing. When my mom came into the room right before our time was up he hit me with the real stuff. I had to answer questions like "Why do you want to kill yourself?" and "Are you happy at home?". Even my mom realized that this guy wasn't going to help very much. If all we were going to do was play board games she figured we could do that at home and save a little money. I went back to therapy in middle school. I was stressed, anxious, and depressed. My friends sucked, I was probably gay, and I had a boatload of homework I just couldn't bring myself to do. I had a lot I wanted to talk about, but we played games again. It wasn't even the same doctor. I guess this lady was a child specialist like the first one. Not a great fit for a teenager. I spent my first session coloring. Yep, coloring. I'm dead serious. She had me color in a chart of emoji faces that represented how I was feeling. We didn't talk about which ones I was feeling, she just had me color them all in. I spent the rest of my sessions playing Uno and talking about my friends. Sometimes she said stuff that actually made sense. I remember she gave me a really good piece of advice when I was feeling down about playing a camel in the school play. She said something like, "Without background characters, there wouldn't be anything for the main characters to act in,". It checked out, and it made me feel better. That was the last good piece of advice she gave me. I took an extended vacation from therapy after about 6 months of swiping my mom's insurance card to go have a games sesh with my "therapist" Remember how I said that I was "probably gay"? Well it turns out I'm definitely gay, and I told my parents. BIG mistake at the time. My mom made an appointment with my second ex-therapist for the next morning. I went into her office prepared to have a conversation about how my parents could support me as a queer individual. Instead, they told me that I was probably just a confused young boy. I was read bible verses and books whose theme was "Jesus loves you". I'm not anti-religion, but after that anything having to do with God or Jesus leaves a seriously nasty taste in my mouth. To be honest, I've just about given up on therapy. I can't find anyone who takes me seriously, and it just doesn't seem worth the money to sit in an office and play some stupid game. Therapy turned me away from religion and encouraged me to hide who I am. I know not every therapist is like that, but I don't think I can take the risk.

Ambition, determination, leadership, cunning, and cleverness. These are all traits that define the House of Slytherin. A house that is often shunned due to a stigma surrounding the kind of wizards we tend to produce. That is to say, most people believe all Slytherins are evil. I don't believe this to be true. I mean, do you see the word evil in that list? Because I don't. What I see are traits that I know are in me and, consequently, ones that I love about myself. Ambition can often be misconstrued as a negative trait, but I disagree. Ambition is listed as #1 out of 15 in Indeed's Top 15 traits article. A quick Google search will tell you that ambition means "desire and determination to achieve success" or "a strong desire to do or achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work". Doesn't that sound like something positive? I know that, in my experience, my ambition has been appreciated and viewed in an exceedingly positive light. It's enabled me to earn Employee of the Month and be a valued employee at every job I've held. At my first job, I was promoted twice in a single week! And when I won Employee of the Month at my current position, I'd only been there for a month and a half. Determination lends itself to ambition. It's what fuels the work you do to achieve your desires. Without determination, ambition would shrivel and die. You can dream all you want, but unless you put in those extra hours; take on those additional tasks; and work as hard as you can, you won't get to be employee of the month (or whatever your personal goal may be). Determination isn't always something you just have. It can be a learned skill. I know it was for me. I pushed myself hard and have put so much effort into everything I've done. After a while, it just became a part of who I am. Leadership isn't a quality that most people would think of if asked "What traits define Slytherin House?" I didn't make that association at first. After giving it some thought, it does make sense if you think about leaders in the Wizarding World. Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, is a Slytherin! He heads the British wizarding government! Other notable leaders hailing from Slytherin are Severus Snape, Horace Slughorn, and (of course) Tom Riddle. While not all of these leaders make great role models, they all excel when it's time to take charge. Tom Riddle especially! He led an army! The terrible purpose of which doesn't diminish his skills as a leader. Leadership in my own life has come mostly as a result of the previously mentioned ambition and determination. Due to my hard work and drive I was nominated for Student of the Month, served on Strategic Planning Boards for my high school, was assigned Low Brass Section Leader in the marching band, and helped to start a mental health committee. In my opinion, we Slytherins make great leaders! Cunning and cleverness are the twin traits that instantaneously come to mind when thinking of Slytherins. Am I clever? I'd say so. What makes me clever though? Is transforming an essay on how I display Slytherin traits into proof that not all Slytherins are evil clever? Is using rhetorical devices to lure in the people reading my essay clever? Possibly. Is it clever to conveniently run out of words before I can talk about how I'm cunning? Since being cunning involves acts of deceit by definition, I think it's pretty clever.

Have you ever wanted to be terrified? To be endlessly captivated by gruesome images that make your stomach turn. Do you want to choke back vomit and gag at the images displayed before you? I do! I love that feeling. The disgust I feel during a horrifically gory scene in a horror novel is something I live for. After exhausting libraries full of written word novels by King, Shelley, Stine, and Stoker I needed more. That's when I found Junji Ito. His sickening sketches transfixed me. Sucking me into his spiral of horror. To put it simply, I fell in love. I purchased as many of Ito's books as I could without fully emptying my wallet (although I came scarily close). I absorbed his icky illustrations with a vulgar vigor. Uzumaki, Soichi, Lovesick Dead, Remina, and Venus in the Blind were my firsts. After reading as much as I could afford I turned to an alternative form of media. One of my friends had mentioned Netflix releasing a collection of Junji Ito's stories. Immediately I opened Netflix on my phone and searched for it. There it was. Exactly what I wanted. "Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre". Right after I arrived home from school I sprinted to the couch and hurriedly turned the TV on. The show was everything I had imagined and more. It was so perfect. The series was practically overflowing with revolting scenes. Floating heads that string you up, people who dissolve into mold, tombstones that grow out of dead bodies, demonic carpenters, mold that consumes flesh, a man who can invert himself, and more! So much more! All animated into a moving picture! I stayed up for hours watching episode after episode after episode. Junji Ito had done it again. Ito had ensnared me in that twisted world he created. Before I knew it, I had finished the entire series. I had been so enthralled by the fantastic fiction on the screen that I didn't even realize how much time had passed. I was sucked in like Maniac was some sort of whirlpool. No matter how many times I watch this show I will never stop appreciating the shocking gore that Junji Ito creates. I could watch Maniac a million times and I would never stop adoring it. The show gave me a new source of brilliant, violent animation and inspired me to write several short stories. "Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre" is a true masterpiece created by the King of Horror Manga himself.

Have you ever heard anyone say "The pen is mightier than the sword"? You probably have. I know I've heard it a couple hundred times at least. No matter how banal it gets, though, it's a quote that's stuck with me. I guess you could say it's become kind of a personal mantra. In my mind, it means that peaceful words can always overpower violence. That's something you need to believe when you're queer in a small town. You have to convince yourself that by talking things out all the bullying will stop. But it won't. Bigots just won't coexist with people that they hate for no reason. Throughout high school, people have proved this to me over and over and over again. When you ask what my aspirations are, a million things come to mind. I could tell you about all of the stories floating around in my head that I would die to have put into paper, published, and distributed to the world. Or I could write about my dream of working in publishing. Getting the opportunity to read and edit new author's works to make our shared goal come true. But do you want to know what my biggest aspiration is? It's to get out of this town. I want to leave. I want to go somewhere I can grow, learn, and be exposed to diverse cultures, people, and places. I want to be set free from this small, hateful community. Don't get me wrong, we have a handful of wonderful people that live here. But it just isn't enough to combat the hate. I've grown as much as I can here. My mother and I have talked about this so many times. For a while, I wanted to be a teacher. Come back to Middleville after college and create a safe space for students like me. She told me that she loves me and that she thinks it's a beautiful idea. And then she told me that she doesn't want that for me. She wants me to leave. She said that this town is too small-minded for me to stay here. She said that the people here won't change because they don't want to. I realized what she meant in my sophomore year. That year I had been lucky enough to find some real friends. Other queer people like me who were trapped in a town that didn't want us. We were thick as thieves. Every day at lunch the group sat in our little alcove sandwiched between two rows of lockers. And almost every day we were relentlessly harassed by our classmates. We had food thrown at us, slurs yelled to our faces, insults tossed our way, and notes placed where we sat dictating how we were wanted dead. When I told my parents they wanted me to move. Change schools and leave, but I couldn't just abandon my friends. They would still have to face that every single day. So I decided we would face it together until we escaped this hellhole. That's how this scholarship would help me. It will enable me to leave this town behind and find somewhere I can be surrounded by love and light. A place where I don't have to keep my head down in the hallway. I'll miss the friends I've made and the few staff members who made me feel safe and welcome, but it's time for me to say goodbye.