My depression looks like rain. My depression looks like the steel jungle of Houston when Hurricane Harvey flooded the city with raging, angry water. My depression looks like a gun to my uncles head before he pulled the trigger ending his own life. My depression looks a lot like my dead uncle. In late summer of 2017, my magnificent, gentle, loving uncle shot himself in the head, just a couple years after I attempted to take my own life for the first time. The difference between my uncles tragedy and my own is that there were people there to save me. Someone out there heard my cries for help, but his were drowned out. I am guilty of sitting complicit in my uncles death. I was so busy trying to run from my own pain that I numbed myself to everyone else's as well. My apathy costed me one of the only other people on this planet that understood me. It costed me the man who made my parents let me stay home from school for much needed mental health days and left me sweet little notes in my lunch and drove back and forth from Austin to Houston just to ask how I was doing. My apathy costed me my uncle. We dealt with similar traumas, we had similar pain, but only I was granted any relief. This initial realization after he passed left me cracked and hollow. As time passed and I grew up a little more, my interpretation matured and I started making decisions with an entirely different thought process. It took a great deal of temper tantrums and meltdowns after he died for me to reach a point of productivity and emotional growth, but eventually I did. My thinking evolved to stop viewing this loss as unfair, but rather a wake up call. Yes, my uncle was taken from me a lot earlier than he should have been, but his death also reminded me to be brave. Running away is a cowards move, and I actively decided that I would not be a coward. Losing my uncle caused me to focus on processing and growing, rather than numbing and avoiding. Ultimately, the loss pushed me to fight for my own inner peace rather than accepting I am broken, and additionally this event encouraged me to face the pain of the world no matter how messy and agonizing. That is what life is; it is a fight to hold on to each other as tightly as possible and offer what support we can because that is the only thing that will get us through the test of planet Earth intact. There is no do over or easier level for us to play. The scary world that we live in is all that we get, and wasting time trying to pretend that it isn't ultimately led to my uncle dying alone in his room at 4 AM while the flooding world outside was in chaos, each man for himself. The death of Mursaleen Ali Syed focused my energy into a fight to survive and ensure that the people around me survive as well. I learned that I am not an individual. I am a part of a larger community that needs me and whom I need as well. I am not a coward. I am a survivor, and I have much to see and experience before I fly my white flag.

If I was asked this a few years ago, I'd tell you that the most important personal finance lesson I've learned is that money turns into more money if properly handled. The power of investing is criminally underrated. You don’t need to be some old, rich, white man to plant a garden of wealth. All you need is capital to invest with, and a smart choice on what to invest in. I learned this quite early on. The sole reason I made money was to cram it into my bank account and let it sit there looking pretty. As of five months ago, I had so much money that I was drowning in it. As of three months ago, I own nothing. The story is hurtful and long, but I'll say this: I am glad to have lost all that I did because it freed me from an obsession I had chained myself to. A few years ago I may have answered this question with investment; today, the most important financial lesson I have learned is that money only has the power that you give it. My fixation on growing my wealth didn’t leave space for much else in my life, and I never want to sit tightly bound watching the rest of my life pass me by as I stay stuck in my own obsession. Today, I'm more comfortable doing financially scandalous things like treating myself to a Starbucks when I am tired or splurging on a $7 movie ticket...on a weeknight! I've learned that money comes and goes, but life goes on. I want my life to be full and rich in a whole different context than wealth. I want my life to be full and rich in laughter and sweet treats and freedom from everything, including money.