Sides of ourselves, rejected by society like a neglected child, pushed aside because it makes others uncomfortable, and repressed because it overturns social norms. Involved is everyone from the government. Police too. And concerned parents even more. It starts by being pushed, harassed, and questioned by male classmates. All because I am a woman: Our first taste of unjustness. They embraced my story, and they told me theirs. I could not have survived if it had not been for them: women who underwent the same traumas. From their comfort, I learned that a bad experience is never isolated. It might not seem this way all the time, as proven by the lonely childhood of a Mexican Queer kid. No one seems to be like you. You are the isolated experience. Because of this, I needed to explain myself, looking for answers on the internet. Suddenly, the word "isolated" seemed foolish as I stumbled upon a historical community of isolated people. The LGBTQ community -my community- had been pushed out from the mainstream world, backed into a safe space that we created. I was not alone, and I was also not the only one to feel this way. The beginning of human civilization has been paved by BIPOC LGBTQ+ folk, but our work has been covered through colonization. I advocated against hate in my classrooms because many Queer people were an arm's length away, looking for a hand to rest on their shoulder. Prayed upon like meat in the middle of the jungle, they had no vocabulary to describe what they felt and were, so whenever mocking bigotry would swift along, they would crawl back into questioning themselves and not their world. My people’s survival is called resistance: through illness, social rejection, objection by the government, and incarceration. All of this I learned and spewed back at the people that questioned my communities because I knew I was helping other LGBTQ folks survive too. I found power in educating and uplifting the people who want to live, letting them know that the world fabricates unjust experiences to make us feel isolated because our unity makes them afraid. I want to continue this fight in the future and dedicate my learning and teachings to guiding the upcoming generation of BIPOC youth. It is still possible for us to change the censorship around our identities. We have seen lawmakers taking away our resources to understand America from its diverse perspectives; The separation of my people fuels my passion: To keep company to all the other lonely, Queer, Mexican childhoods.

One walkway, Kicking plushies and old toys, tightly hugged by plastic bags of hand-me-downs, warmth emerging from the cluttering mess of an impulsive disease. Money cannot buy happiness, but money can buy material goods that compile and rot around you. My grandparents came from nothing, Mexican folk of good paces where they met in Tijuana, my hometown. Their convoluted background explains their cluttered homes and how their children earned a hereditary disorder. My parents are hoarders. I remember opening my mother’s closet, pushing through the force behind the wooden door, and laying on the pile of sweaters, dresses, and elementary school uniforms my mother kept "just in case." Jumping down the hundreds of steps down to my grandmother’s house, I knew toys galore would await me on the floor, closets, walls, and kitchen. It seemed normal to me, as that was all the life I knew. I never got to step into my grandfather’s room, for the floor was lost to the objects that covered the room like quicksand. With time, I could no longer open my closet door. Going to my elementary friend’s house was the sudden realization that homes have clear floors, closets are for tidy organizing, and that my house was embarrassing. I wanted to break the cycle. This endless quicksand that consumes my family is a part of my identity, but I do not wish for it to consume me. It is part of my child-like wonder to dig through the mysteries that awaited under the surface area of a simple glance, but instead of indulging in the buying of material goods, I found the same wonder through the artist Walter Wick and his collection of I SPY photographs. Walter captured the chaotic nature of my living situation and inspired me to use my art to do the same. Art gives me a way of projecting my childhood as it allows me to grasp the suffocating but comforting nature of home. Painting helps me process the material world my parents hold so dear. I am happy to visualize the escape from the quicksand that consumed my family lineage. Art has become my therapy as I gladly call myself an Artist, not a Hoarder. I wish to continue life free of the mess around me, except for canvases that reflect my childhood. I've come to grow as both a person and an artist, and I hope to create images for children's books in the same fashion as "Where's Waldo?", "I SPY", and "The Big Book Of Search And Find". I finally have a clear path ahead, and one day I hope to have the money to clear my parent's homes and restore their living space.

Whenever creative activities would come up at schools, teachers would arduously await the wacky creative endeavors I brought to school: From a hat made of rag dolls to a full cosplay of the Aztec God Mictlantecuhtli. Teachers would pat me on the head, knowing well enough that the mastermind behind everything was never this 10-year-old standing before them. Of course. And just like a hero in disguise, my father is a carpenter on the surface but an artist at heart, building replicas of cartoon structures, sewing plushies for me and my sibling, and making pyrography signs for his friends. My grandmother is an artist too, but contrary to my dyslexic father, she reads and writes poetry every morning and night. Then comes the third generation of the family. If she happens to be an artist, she is set up for greatness, backed up by her creative family support, right? One would think that. But, surprisingly, the answer is not quite so direct. Sure, they feel great that I have followed through with being creative as a hobby, but as a career? And digital? And Queer? I somehow came to disappoint them in every way possible. They do not consider digital art to be real art. Throughout my entire life, this disappointment has plagued my family relationships. 'Why not become a tattoo artist? Or a mural painter? If you like digital things, you should do computer science.' And as if my medium was not enough to make their hearts heavy, the subject of my art drove them further into this sad belief of failure. They consider activism to be ugly and Queerness to be taboo. They are not interested in learning about my community history and think of it as a waste of talent. In their eyes, that has been what hammered down my setup failure. It is not about my creativity but about my identity as their daughter. But all of their beliefs are what I am trying to turn upside down. They fuel my career as an artist and activist. I want to prove there is a place for artists like me; To have my identity as Queer and Latin American be worthy of representation in art. If it had not been for other LGBTQ+, Latinx artists that inspired me when I was young, I would have followed the path of my past generations: I would have stopped creating, and I would have stopped fighting. But I have not. Because now that I have grown as a person and a creator, I understand my responsibility to inspire other teens who are going through the same doubt about their identities or their success in pursuing art. Still, the odds are against me for being a low-income immigrant. So much doubt has made me stronger. I have placed myself in all types of creative leadership positions to prepare me for what will come in my career. I enjoy working with teaching artists that have walked the path I want to walk. Art has inspired me to reach for the stars, and people who doubt me push me higher toward my goal. But even through all this, I wonder what would have happened. What if my father and grandmother had not been discouraged from pursuing their passion for art? I hope they can use me as a vessel of their unaccomplished dreams and one day laugh off the doubt they ever had in me.

Walking the busy streets of a Tijuana Swap Meet, my dad and I stop at a stand with translated American books. The lady looks me up and down and grasps a book with a dark cover. Bearing the title Love Letters to the Dead, “Este te va a gustar” (You will enjoy this one), the lady tells me. I swipe its pages and glare back at my dad to confirm: This Is The One. I wonder what the lady saw in me because I do not believe I knew myself before I read that book. I recognized myself in the background of the action, in the shape of two teenage girls. For the first time, I encountered a Queer storyline in public media. When I mean first, it is not like I had never seen Queer people on TV or in books, but it was the first time they were not the punchline of some cruel joke. Their storyline was pure and taken seriously by the author herself. A month after finishing the book, I came out to my parents. And ever since then, publishing an LGBTQ+ graphic novel has been my dream. In a world full of censorship, it is the responsibility of individuals to speak up and create. If it had not been for the art of Rebecca Sugar, or the writing of Ava Dellaira, I would still be questioning my place as a Queer person. Rarely do we see ourselves on TV, let alone stories that highlight our virtues and the beauty of our love and fight, as their storytelling does. Art allows me to put our experience and history in the limelight of the spectators of my art. I started simply drawing LGBTQ+ characters in my sketchbook, then I continued giving lectures and presentations about Queer Historical events, and I finally became President of the school Pride Alliance. My biggest accomplishment followed, winning the San Diego Public Library Pride Card Contest, where I illustrated the beauty of Masha P. Johnson -the black Mother of modern LGBTQ+ activism. Her portrait is framed by a pink triangle, with rainbows swirling around her silhouette, leading to the doors of the Stonewall Inn. My art does not stop there, as the purpose is never to look pretty but to spark interest in our fight and history. Through this, my place as an activist has been recognized by the city of San Diego itself, naming me one of the “25 most Remarkable Teens In San Diego'', in the category of LGBTQ+ activism. Besides re-telling history, I want to illustrate new stories of our experience. Looking back to that book I read years ago, I realize the importance of representing the lives of everyday Queer folks, especially our youth. We see so many of our suicides and homicides on the news that it discourages us from living publicly. That is the importance of our coming-out stories: of acceptance and joy we experience after the worse has been through, the message It Gets Better. I want to celebrate the intersectionality of our experiences. So little do we minorities see ourselves in TV and books. And with our Queerness by our side, we feel the sting of rejection by mainstream society. That is why my career as an artist will continue its activism for LGBTQ people of all races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds. I want a new generation of Queer youth to find themselves reflected in my graphic novels because my art will always stand to be a Love Letter to my community.