While I am from a less than well-off family, and could talk in exhaustion about how many times I was almost homeless in my life, I have always been told I am "financially stable" and to "quit my whining". So instead I will tell you all about how stable I was growing up. I stayed in one place growing up, never moved from the big house my mother had built for us, always had food on the table, etc, etc. life was very good for me as a child. My mother definitely never had to skip meals to make sure me and my brother had food. (If you can't tell, that last line was sarcasm.) My extended family has never been the kindest to me and my immediate family. My father passed when I was very young, and he was the sole moneymaker in the household before he died. He was paid very well, which may be where the disconnect between what we actually went through and what we were perceived to have came from. My mother was not financially savvy and would spend money we simply didn't have on useless items that made her feel better. In return, we ate beans, rice, and on the odd day chicken if we were feeling fancy; and had the extra money to spend. My mother would wake me and my brother while she cried over bills we couldn't afford on multiple occasions. She would take out loan after loan, and loan to pay off those loans, and so on. We, as little as me and my brother were, knew money was a sore subject for our mother, we would set up small tables while my mother had garage sales to sell our childish art to try and earn a little more for her. In the end, we would always go out to eat with whatever measly earnings we would gain and spend half of it. In hindsight, not the smartest thing we could have done with it. I remember being a little older and urging my mother to save instead of spend, just to be told that I didn't know how much things cost (I didn't) and didn't I like my new toy? (I did). These cycles would repeat for years, loans and garage sales and our household hemorrhaging money from every corner it could while none of us knew how to make the cash last. I think things changed when my mother mortgaged the house. We got a sizable amount from that, and after paying off our debts my mother was FINALLY able to say she didn't need something. A little too late for my formative years, but I'll take it. She's now out of that loan and has been steady for a while, whilst I'm about to move out into my own apartment. Where was I going with this, I had a point... My perceived situation was not that of a child in a struggling family, but that of a child living in a large house getting whatever they wanted; both were true, one at the expense of the other. What would I do to fix socioeconomic adversity in my community? I can't. Plain and simple; I live in one of the biggest cities in the USA and exist as just one person. Besides, I've tried to help before just to be told it's not my place. Remember the extended family? I guess I can lump some ex-friends in there too. It did affect what I'll do with a family though, I wish I had more space to say it.

I was taken out of school when I was 9. Fourth grade was the last time I was in any type of structured education before I acquired a GED. I only sought out a GED because the school system was, and honestly still is, terrible in my district. You can still see the remnants of one of the "senior pranks" on Google Maps, just look on the roof of the Medina Valley High School! However, before I attempted to get my GED, I felt worthless. I felt as though I would always be a minimum-wage worker, not even able to make it month-to-month. Any job I could get was less than 10 dollars an hour, which was almost nothing compared to the bills I would face living on my own. In fact; I would never live on my own, not with an hour of my work being worth less than a full meal at any restaurant. I didn't think I would ever get a general education equivalent, let alone go to college. Bogged down by my own sadness, as well as the disappointment of my mother, I could barely bring myself to get out of bed or even go to work. Then, one shitty day, I met a now very good friend of mine. He told me all about the GED course he was attending in the nearby town of Hondo, Texas, and how excited he was to finally have some sort of education. It lit a fire underneath me, to see someone in my same predicament with aspirations to be more than what Walmart says he's worth. I started attending that same course and completed it as soon as possible. I felt amazing, I got the highest grade of the first-ever graduating class that program ever had. I was ecstatic while applying to the nearest community college, Northwest Vista College, and started attending later that year. Everything I had been through and everything people told me made me feel like I would never amount to anything. I didn't deserve a living wage or the respect of my family. My brother was attending college, but I couldn't even finish highschool? How sad was I... but now, 3 years later, I have a degree. I even got it before my brother got his, who had 2 years on me. I felt, and still feel, worth something now. It gave me something. Something to strive towards, something to dream of, and I've never felt more where I should be than now. I've found a joy I can not express just by trying to better myself. I have barely any preparation for what comes next, but I'm so excited to see where this goes and where I end up.

Firstly, I have never once heard queer explained as "gender expansive". That sounds weird and gross. Secondly, I have a long history of questioning my gender and sexuality, as most autistic people do. Also as most autistic people come to find out, autism does a funky little thing to your brain that makes you not fully able to understand sexuality and gender as constructs created by the society we grow up in. When I was 12 I started experimenting with gender expression. I cut my hair short, started wearing 2 way too tight sports bras each day, and wearing baggy clothes to pass as a boy. There is nothing like getting your gender affirmed by a pastor that went on to preach that God tells him who is gay or trans and who isn't, so he is able to save them. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me and I still revel in it. I believed I was definitely a trans man, no doubt in my mind, for 2 years after that. Then, I got a dress. I HATED this dress with a burning passion, utterly despised this garment like it had personally offended me on every level imaginable. At 18, I put it on. I felt beautiful in a way I couldn't fully grasp in the moment. I felt confident, flirty, feminine, and free. So, there goes my want of being a trans man. This feeling, this horrible, feminine feeling, this couldn't exist if I was transmasc! So I quietly recanted myself. If I wasn't trans, I was gay. I believed I was definitely a lesbian, no doubt in my mind, for years after that. Honestly? I still do. Women are hot, I am almost exclusively attracted to women. But then... there was a boy. A really nice boy. A really nice boy with curly fluffy hair who laughed at my jokes and drew me beautiful things and gave the WORST kisses like who taught this man to kiss?? I don't want to taste what you had for breakfast or swallow your tongue it's not that hard- and I was a lesbian again. Or at least, I would stick to women and gender non conforming people. That's where we are now. I'm not a trans man, though I do prefer he/him pronouns and the prefered name of Michael (if you read this far you have no excuse. Use my prefered name.) And I'm DEFINITELY not at all interested in cis men of any caliber. They are gross. They have cooties and my mind can't be changed. My gender has always been fluid, so has my sexuality, it's kind of hard to pin down, so I like queer. It's like a one size fits all when it comes to... "gender expansive people". Let's speed run the rest as I'm running out of words. I am an art history major! Though I plan to change my major very soon to anthropology. Or at the very least minor in anthropology and focus on Mayan culture. I want to be an oral historian as well as an archeologist! I plan on applying to my current anthropology teachers Belize program in a later semester. Did you know that the Maya had non-western ideas on gender? Yea, so did every other indigenous peoples on the planet. Thanks, britan, for ruining that.

Oh fuck OK, I'm gonna admit something I really don't like: I could watch and rewatch Ouran high school host club endlessly and never get tired. I'm SORRY I know it's bad I know the writing is horrendous and everything about it sucks I know I know but listen. Hear me out. It's the funniest god damn thing out there. The writers KNOW it's bad, it's SUPPOSED, to be bad!! Ouran high school host club is a satire take on a harem anime; they reverse the roles and make the protagonist utterly uninterested by what's going on around them. It's so so stupid and it works. The characters are all idiots, even kyoya. They're all big dumb dummies that would probably die without kyoya or Haruhi there at any given time in the series. But ANY fan of this god forsaken show can tell you that; just look at the following it STILL has! They rise from the rat infested trash cans we all reside in as anime fans ready to defend their faves at the meer thought, meer BREATH of someone shitting on this show. No one watches it because it's good! We all know it's a shit cake with shit icing, it's so bad that me and my nephew hate watched it twice just to be the nastiest versions of ourselves for a little bit. And that was okay! It's rage bait! It's set up as a reverse harem romance anime, which unreversed are historically bad, but the writers of Ouran high school wanted it to be a particular type of bad. They wanted to pick at the way classic harems are written, Ouran became a critique of the way women are written as nothing but fan service in these shows, the overused tropes, the lack of writing skill and technique used in the harem anime that was coming out at the time. But at the same time, it became so bad its *good*. Haruhi is genuinely not a one dimensional female character, which was hard to come by in the 2000s! She doesn't care how she presents, she loves her trans parent, is still dealing with the grief of loosing her mother, all the while trying to make her remaining parent proud by overshooting the moon and getting into the most prestigious school she could. Then joining this merry band of idiots due to blackmail, the story starts. This show, while not quite standing the test of time when it comes to this, did stand for LGBT rights at the time. The terminology used, specifically "tranny" to refer to Haruhis trans parent, was genuinely what transgender people at the time called themselves. It was their version of reclaiming the word queer for me. It was the first time I was introduced to a girl having a crush on another girl on screen, albeit unwittingly. It was my introduction to LGBT anything, and after growing up in a Christian household it was an insane leap. I am now a queer person who loves other queer people, who shamelessly enjoys this shitty queer media from eons ago. I am cringe. I am free.

I'm about to say a lot of things that will make a lot of people angry. I would like to let you know that I don't care. This is my lived experience, not yours. My mother is a great, loving woman who enjoyed raising her children to the best of her ability. Sadly, her ability is riddled with childhood PTSD, trauma, undiagnosed ADHD, and mental health problems and illnesses that she has constantly refused to take care of. This was bequeathed unto her two children in the form of emotional neglect, C-PTSD, eating disorders, mental health issues and illnesses of their own, undiagnosed ADHD and autism till their early twenties, along with a myriad of physical health issues that were brushed off till many near-death experiences for both children. When a single mother decides to not deal with their own problems and learn to love themselves, they never realize that they can not learn to love their children as they deserve. Mothers who choose to be single mothers without first becoming mentally and physically healthy are a special kind of evil, but my mother didn't choose this. My mother was married to someone she believed was a wonderful man. I will have to take her word for it, as he died a little over a year after I was born. It was a very hard time for her; she struggled with her mental health and suicidal ideation for many years in her grief. Despite this, she pushed through and learned to live for her children: me and my older brother. My mother loves me and my brother, I'm sure of it, but she has always chosen a specific one of us to love just a bit more in the most obvious ways she could. My brother is the golden child: can do no wrong, will never do wrong, and will remain perfect in my mother's eyes till the day he dies. I on the other hand had to struggle with my own depression and suicidal ideation for many, many years before discovering the root of my unlovability- I was autistic. My father had autism, and the way it presents in Afab children was infuriating to my mother. She simply couldn't understand me or my wants or needs when it came to her support, so I was pushed to the side in favor of my equally autistic brother- he just wasn't afab, therefore his neurodivergence was expressed differently, and he seemed like the "better child" I guess. That last paragraph was mostly speculation on my half. Honestly, what kind of mother who sees herself as a loving mother would willingly tell their emotionally neglected child that they had a favorite and it wasn't them? But the proof is in the pudding people, and I wasn't the only one to see how I was treated. My aunts have always told my mother of her own favoritism, she just refuses to see it. Parents can tell themselves they were good parents till they are blue in the face, it never matters, they aren't the final judges of this. When you become a parent, you are taking the assignment to make a good person. It's not up to you what grade you get: no matter what you want and believe, the child gets to decide if you were a good parent. My mother was not. I have said this to her. If this were graded, she failed. But she did make a good person, a person who still loves her despite her flaws. Because she loves me. That counts for something, right?

I'm I'm going to talk about the struggles and hurdles I've had to overcome for my education we're going to have to start at the beginning. At the age of three, I began grieving. It was at that point I had registered that every other child had a mom and a dad, but I only had a mom. This was because my father, who worked in the United States Armed Forces as a chief warrant officer in the Marines, died when I was one year old. He died on his trip back from his station, my mother calls him a product of the war. I was 6 when my mother put me, my brother, and herself into grief therapy. None of it worked; no matter what we were told to do, how to treat each other, how to be kind and loving and understanding of each other's grief, we- me and my brother- fought like dogs and my mother tended (still does) to take my brother's side whether I was at fault or not. We viscerally hated each other for a time, but because of this favoritism, I strived to be better than him; and prove myself worthy of everyone's attention. I surpassed kids my age in intelligence and diligence in my work and joined the gifted and talented classes at my school. That would be one of the last times I attended grade school. My mother was the sole caretaker of my grandparents, despite having 3 siblings all equally able-bodied enough to help with their parents. My mother realized that taking care of two elderly people was taxing while trying to take two small children to and from school, extra circulars, and the like, so I and my brother were taken out of school when he was in 5th grade, and I in 4th. She would try to homeschool us but would fail a few months in. Me and my brother would continue to not be in any type of education system till he joined high school at 18 years old. I would go on to get my GED instead. After my brother graduated high school he joined our most local institution Northwest Vista College, where he attends now. I would follow suit and attend the same school, but graduate in 2022 with my associate degree in art. I now attend the University of Texas in San Antonio (go runners!) and am very happy in my first few weeks of what will be a happily spent 4 years here achieving my Masters degree. I have had a very unusual go about how I have attended school, sometimes overachieving and sometimes not attending at all, but I have tried. I have faced hardship in my life which made school hard, trying, and terrifying in some cases, but I am here. I have achieved one degree, and plan to be the first in my immediate and extended family to get a Bachelor's degree. How exciting!