I got saved after a failed suicide attempt. In highschool, I was really struggling with depression and with my faith. I no longer believed in God because of the things that had happened to me. I am a victim of childhood sexual assault and I could not believe that there could be a good God if things like that happen. I never grew up rich and could not afford to take the offender to court, hence, I never got justice. This made me lose my will to live and work towards a future. In the summer of 2022, I went to a summer camp with my church group. I had been pretending to be a Christian for so long due to the fact that my father is a Youth Pastor at our church. Me being anything but a Christian would ruin his career. One night I felt as though I could not move on any further and attempted to take my own life in the camp bathroom. Luckily, I survived. The day after my attempt I had a feeling I had never felt before. I then got saved after trying to hard to stay away from religion. My life has not been the same. I want to use my life to help others going through similar things to me. I want to be an example to others struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and self harm addictions to trust in God. I want to show people that suicide is not the answer and that God is so much more powerful than our mental illness. My faith in God has turned my life around. I did not think that I would make it to the age seventeen. Now, at almost nineteen, I see that so much has changed for the better and I can not imagine what would have happened if I had successfully killed myself that day. My family is definitely not the best off financially. My father is a youth pastor at our local church in the small town that I live in. He is very passionate about what he does. He does not care about the pay, he cares about the students that he works with. My mother has worked several jobs over the past couple of years to help us keep our heads above the water. She works so hard so that my younger brother and I can live the best lives we can. My mother is also currently going back to school for her master's degree. Money is tight right now, but I know everything we have is a blessing from God.

Through my many years of living, I have found it absolute that there is a God. I do not believe that there is any possibility that human life and life in general could be an accident. The fact that the earth is a perfectly suitable of life is no mistake. If the sun were to be even one inch closer to the sun, we could no longer survive due to the heat. If the sun were to be an inch further from the sun, we would freeze to death. There is such a very finite chance that this is an accident. Life itself is much too complex to be an accident. Everything we have in our bodies are there for a reason. I can confidently say that I would not be alive right now if there were not a higher power. In June of 2022, I was in a very low place in my life. Late one night, I attempted to commit suicide. There should be no reason for me to have survived that night. The day after that attempt, I knew that God had touched me and held my hand through the night before and an odd feeling began to well up inside me. I felt an urgency I had never felt before. I knew that I needed to talk to someone about what had happened. I could not simply return home. My stomach felt like it was about to explode and my heart felt like it was about to leap out of my chest. That night, I got saved despite my apprehensiveness towards God for all the things that happened to me. Before that day, I was 100% sure that I would be dead before turning seventeen years old. I had no plans for the future because I did not believe I had one. Everyday since that night has felt different, that is no accident. The reasons why I used to doubt there was a God was due to the evil I saw and experienced in the world. At the age of seven, I was raped by a medical professional after a dental surgery. I thought for years after that it was impossible for there to be a God looking down and doing nothing. Now I realize that everything happens for a reason. I have gone through so many things in this life, but I survived and grew up, but not by my own power. If life went the way I wanted it to, I would have died nearly two years ago. But I know that there is a God in control, who created me, my rapist, and everyone else. I know that all he has created is good.

When choosing a major for college, I was very conflicted. I had enjoyed calculus when I was in high school. In my Pre-Calculus class, I ended the semester with an 100 percent in that class. I also attended a math competition at the University of Tennessee at Martin and I placed first place in the calculus division of the competition. I really enjoyed calculus. It was like a fun puzzle to me, it made sense. It was obvious to me that I would want to take Calculus I my senior year of high school. I knew that the class would be significantly harder than my prior class due to the loss of most of my high school's math department. I had to take the calculus class online with no teacher present. It was definitely a challenge but it was fun. I went back to the same UTM math competition that year and placed third place in the Calculus I division. Despite my love of math, I did not feel that I could major in math because of the fact that I am a woman. I felt that I would not be able to do as well as my male counterparts. I began freshman year as a Social Work major. It did not feel right to me. I felt as though I was wearing someone else's clothes. It did not fit me. As I looked back at high school and how much I genuinely enjoyed math, I realized that I wanted to do something with math for my career. I changed my major to Mathematics specifically in the Actuarial Science Track when I realized that I would not be bad at it simply because I am a woman. It can be very easy to think that going into a primarily male dominated field is impossible as a female. I feared discrimination in the workplace and in my education. I did not want to be looked down on and seen as inferior because I like fashion and makeup. My goal now is to use my fear of being looked down on to thrive in my environment. I know that being a woman does not make me unable to do the math and be as smart as the men in my major. I want to prove to the world and myself that I can succeed in a male dominated field and be exceptional in my work. I am willing to work as hard as I possibly can to show that women can do anything that a man can do.

The consequences of early childhood development trauma are not only acting differently than everyone else, but feeling different than everyone else. I experienced a heavy trauma when I was only seven years old. I was raped by a stranger in the medical field after an operation. I was simply too young to mentally handle what had happened to me, so my brain blocked the experience out. For years, I felt that the way I saw people, especially men, was different than what I was supposed to feel. I was "irrationally scared" of men for years before I realized what had happened. I felt different than everyone else, and not in a good way. Trauma affects how you see the world and how you function in it.After what had happened to me, I saw the world through a different perspective. I was constantly very aware of my surroundings and who was near me and who seemed to be a danger to me. The trauma changed the fundamental way that my brain functioned. I could no longer just see a man, I would see a potential threat. I could not enjoy physical touch from anyone for years the same way that I had before. I could not see my naked body the same way as I could before. It took years and years of consistent therapy to even be able to change clothes without being reminded of what happened or constantly being scared of men in public places. In my future career in Social Work, I plan to help people the same or similar situations to me. I want to be their support system through that awful time. I want to make awareness of the signs that sexual abuse is happening or has happened. I also want to make awareness that such things can happen to anyone of any age. I think it is important to bring parents attention to the fact that there are dangerous people in the world and how to look out for them and protect their children from going through something like I did. Awareness is such an important thing when it comes to these issues. Many people just do not know that it happens, much less the signs that come with it happening. Awareness will make it harder for evil people to do the things they do without getting caught. I want to make the world a better place for fellow survivors of childhood sexual assault.