Junior year, December, first semester. It was 2:30 on a Thursday and as I walked down the hallway without a thought in my head, greasy hair, tired eyes, and no motivation, that I realized I might be depressed. I was floating around in the dream of who I used to be. I was a previously all-A’s student failing my classes. I was a previously homework-enthusiast throwing my math homework away and skipping Chemistry. Junior year, May, second semester. I hadn’t slept in days. My arms were covered in the scabbed scars of self-harm. My grades were six feet under. I was exhausted but hardly doing anything. I was constantly on the verge of tears, didn’t talk to my friends. I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to eighteen years old. I was a previously joyous soul preparing for the end. Junior year, July, summer. The doctors were praising me now. I was taking my meds, going to therapy. My mom and I were growing back together. My family was laughing again. My friends had already left, but I was okay without them now. I was a previously angry-empty girl offering a smile to my mother in the morning. Senior year, September, now. I am academically motivated. I am still on meds, but I don’t rely on them anymore. I find joy in the growth I make from that place. My scars are just ghosts of lines now. I churn through the IB diploma with a grin, challenged by my classes, but motivated. My mother and I are closer than ever. She knows me like she knows herself. I made new friends, started new classes, and got new fish. At my lowest point, my darkest moment, I still fought. My rebirth from that, like a phoenix, was like being brought to a candle of hope. I have applied to colleges, have all A’s again, and I am truly, deeply satisfied. And the most important part of this journey is finding myself again. Sometimes we are lost. Sometimes we are leaving. But always we return.

I work for all, not for me. In the process of writing my first novel at sixteen years old, I included the most diverse cast of people to help me. I only used freelancers to support entrepreneurs, looked for profiles of BIPOC people, and worked with people who supported LGBTQ+ and POC. In this, I met people from around the world, including people from the Middle East, people from Africa, people from Europe, and non-binary/gender-fluid people. These people were the kindest, most positive kind of people I have ever met. In my life, I plan to be deliberate with who I am in my business. My crew and the people who help me along matter to me more than anyone else. When publishing my first book alone at sixteen, I found incredible difficulty in finding support, finding money, and finding the courage to do this by myself. I knew, though, deep down, that I would do exactly what I wanted to and be exactly who I wanted to be. Working with people who mattered to me showed me that even if it is harder, if it is more expensive, if it is more work, it is worth it. The people we are around make us who we are.

Bisexual youth are always undermined. We’re labeled as “confused” or “indecisive” like we need to choose to either be fully straight or fully gay. It can cause a lot of feelings of guilt, or questioning ourselves on our identity. Our world needs to change. For bisexual youth like myself and for all of the LGBTQ+ and POC members our of society. I want to see queer youth become visible in our communities. I want them to feel safe enough to be themselves and not have to hide their identities. I want them to know they are loved and supported no matter who they love. I want them to be able to live freely without fear of being bullied or harassed. I want them to have access to education, healthcare, housing, employment, and legal protections. I want them to live free from violence and discrimination. I still hear slurs flung at my friends from the hallways to the bathroom. Queer youth need spaces where they can go to feel comfortable and accepted. I want these spaces to be accessible to everyone regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, disability, etc. I want these spaces open to everyone and to be inclusive of all people. Places where everyone can just be. We need to talk about sex ed and how to protect ourselves from STIs. I want queer youth to learn about consent, boundaries, and what’s normal and what isn’t. Teenagers, especially queer teenagers, watch television shows with romanticized abuse during sex. This harms the way we think of sex, which should be a moment of trust and intimacy. I want them to understand that we should always ask before taking any action that could potentially hurt us. I want queer youth to be heard. I want them to speak out about their experiences and share their stories. I want them to tell their own truths and not let anyone else define who they are. I want them to stand up for themselves and others who don't have a voice. I want allies to help queer youth navigate the world and find ways to make things easier for them. I want allies to show up for queer youth and stand up for them when they need someone to listen. I want allies to be honest with queer youth and tell them what they think and what they believe, without undermining the feelings and beliefs of other groups. I want queer youth and their families to be shown love and acceptance. I want them to hear that they are worthy of love and respect. I want them to experience unconditional love and acceptance. I hope they never forget that they are beautiful just the way they are. I want justice for queer youth. I want them to get the same rights and privileges as everyone else. I want them to receive fair treatment under the law and equal protection under the law. I want them to stop getting arrested and charged with crimes they didn't commit. I want them to not be discriminated against based on their gender identity, sexual orientation or gender expression. What I want is a world where people are people. Where I can love who I want to love without worrying about who will yell slurs at us. I want to not have to worry when my transgender friend visits his grandparents in Kentucky. I want a world where disagreements aren’t a death sentence. I want a world made on the foundation of love.

Our universe. Our brains can hardly conceptualize the idea of a universe with millions of galaxies, each with planets bearing the potential for life. I believe that understanding the nature of our universe is extremely important because it gives us insight into the actuality of existence. We have a lot of questions about the world around us, and that outside of it, and I hope that using space science and writing, I can assist all of us in understanding the nature of space, time, matter, and energy. It is much needed that we work harder to see the bigger picture when we look at our universe, since we humans have caused so much damage to our planet as we stand. I want to know if there is anything beyond our current perception of reality. I want to know what happens after death, and if there is any sort of afterlife. I want to know why we exist at all. I want to know who created us and what their intentions were. I want to know the purpose of life. I want to know whether consciousness exists outside of our bodies. I want to know about the future and the past. I want to know everything. And without the work to do so, I might not be able to. I believe it's important that we try to understand the nature of our Universe, because if we don't, then we won't know how to live in harmony with it. We'll just keep destroying it. I want to use my knowledge of words and how we use them to communicate to help us as a species understand the nature of our world and our place in it. I want to use the findings of science and the tools of our minds to explore the mysteries of the cosmos, and to answer questions that have puzzled mankind since the beginning of time. In order to do that, I plan to study sciences, activism, and journalism in college to assist me as I go out into the world looking for the answers we need as a human race. One might question the role of writing in a science-based issue. However, writing is the secondary form of communication, aside from physical/verbal. Our ancestors recorded their stories in the form of wall art, others on engraved stones. Then advancements in the recording of history came with language. The universe held our ancestors and today it holds us. What better way to share the knowledge we need to connect to our planet and our existence than to continue on the ancient tradition of writing to share?

Matter, in any form, takes up space. For me, taking up space is not trying to confine myself, both physically and verbally. I will not step out of the way of a man on the sidewalk, I will not hold my tongue when something is wrong, and I will not limit myself in my projects because of who is telling me not to. I will take up as much space as I need to. I am a writer and a filmmaker with one published novel and a film in progress at 16 years old. As a rising Senior in high school, I have achieved more than most adults have in their life. I’m a full time student, have a full time job, and still have self-published a book and have a documentary in the works. I have had male teachers, my father, and even strangers telling me it will be hard for me to get anywhere and I should be realistic. I have had comments telling me I will fail no matter what I do. I have had remarks telling me I can’t succeed. Every single time I prove them wrong. In my daily life, I allow myself to flourish. When I say what I mean, I am funny. I am smart. I am creative. When I walk where I want, I find new paths. I meet new people. I discover new animals and plants. When I do what I want, I create killer lines. I get the top grade on the project in class. I make someone’s day with a compliment or a smile. When I wear what I want, I feel beautiful. I feel comfortable. I look good. When I hang out with who I want, I feel appreciated. I feel valued. I find laughter. When I let myself take up all the space I want, I inspire people. I find peace in myself. I achieve my goals. In this world, women are paving their own roads to success. We need to push the stereotypes, the sexism, and the hate away. Women are strong. They are smart. They are creative. They are brave. They are courageous. They are inspiring. They are beautiful. Women are exactly what they need to be. And in my life, I not only plan to be one of them, but I plan to inspire other women to spend their days creating their own path.

Greasy hair, dirty clothes, and bloodied sleeves. This was how I went to school. I didn’t care about my grades anymore. I didn’t care about my friends anymore. I didn’t care about my life anymore. A previously aspiring, straight-A student was now entering semester two of Junior year with the intent to die before it ended. Someone’s daughter, ready to throw the rest of my life straight down the drain. Now I’m about to go into Senior year. My hair is clean, my clothes are new, and my arms are scarred, yes, but clean. Having my mental health plummeting like that changed everything for me. After my family and I dug me out of that hole, put me on new meds, and found a therapist, I found myself. I published a book at 16 years old, made friends who support and love me, discovered the joy of living in other people, and lifted my grades as much as I could before semester two ended. I lifted myself up with hope and lifted others up with humor. Though my memories will always carry the gash I left in my family, I know I am still loved. Though my transcript will always reflect the hit I took on my mental health that semester, I am confident I can still succeed in life. My worst moments do not reflect who I am inside and I know that now. In one year from now, I will be preparing to leave for college. My goals for the next five years of my life as I go through Senior year and college are few, but not small. Most people want to see the world. As do I, but what’s more, I want to experience it. I want to connect with every culture, find the heart of every country, discover the light of every kind of person. I want to continue writing, not just for me, but to share the perspective I have with the rest of the world. I want to inspire. I want to inspire another student to keep going, another writer to publish that book, another teenage girl to believe that she is worthy of everything she thinks she isn’t, another young man that he can be understood, another woman that she is strong, another man that he can be vulnerable, another child that she is loved, another senior that he is still cared for. I want to spread the kindness this world needs and offer the support our children crave. I was that Junior, ready to take my own life. I was that girl, staring in the mirror and hating what she saw. I was that writer, terrified that my words would never be good enough. And now, I am the Senior who sees her struggling. I am the Senior who loves her no matter how she looks. I am the Senior who will tell her that book will rock this world. To put it simply, in my life, I want to be the person I needed.

At eight years old, my grandmother forced me to recite lines of the Bible before I could eat. If I messed up, I restarted. Every Sunday, she would bring me to a new church and leave me there. Uncomfortable, I asked her to not leave me. She refused. This stuck with me for the rest of my life and my anger was misdirected to the Christian religion rather than my grandmother. I actively avoided my Christian friends, never spoke of religious ideas or events, and was filled with distaste whenever I saw a church. Last year, I decided enough was enough. I’m growing up and the trauma of my grandmother needed to be resolved. Reluctantly, I enrolled in an IB World Religions class. Immediately I was astounded by the beauty of culture. Each and every religion we studied was from a different part of the world. I saw the strength of Jewish traditions reflected in their importance of ancestry. I saw the bravery of Muslims practicing after 9/11. I saw the creativity of Hinduism in the grooves of their statues and the colors of their festivals. I saw the community of Christianity in the faith that each and every one of them had love within them. I saw the peace of Buddhism in the hum of the guest speaker from the Dharma center. I saw the release of Taoism in the movement of the Tao. Not only was it healing to release my experience from the religion itself, but it was enlightening to see the world through the lenses of people I have never met. In the future, I plan to travel. And I know now that the world is a colorful, diverse place full of tension, yes, but also full of the peace and light a religion can bring.

On Christmas Eve of 2021, everyone around me was partying and I was sitting at my desk sobbing. At fifteen years old, I had finished writing, editing, and polishing a 356 page novel. My favorite book is the one I created with my own hands: Yours Truly, The Truth. Why? This novel is a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, memories, people, and events I had experienced in 2020. Every line was painstakingly typed on an old iMac in the middle of my kitchen while I listened to the news of George Floyd’s death. I was creating chapter titles while Kobe Bryant’s body was pulled from a helicopter. My characters were fighting for their next breath while the Australian Bushfires churned out suffocating smoke. Gideon, a young black soldier in my story, was protecting his friends in battle when Chadwick Bozeman died. It is my favorite book because it is full of all the pain and all the feelings of 2020. And it is my favorite book because it radiates the hope of my little sister trying to learn online. It illuminates the inspiration of the BLM movement. It holds the love of my brother holding my hand while we walked the dogs in orange smoke, barely able to breathe. It is my favorite book because I made it when the rest of the world was falling apart. It is my favorite book because I healed my traumas with every word. It is my favorite book because it is the essence of me.

Halfway through Junior year, I decided I wanted to kill myself. My grades plummeted, my friends disappeared, and my hygiene went down the drain. I was convinced I wouldn’t make it through the year. But here I stand, in the summer after Junior year, ready to face Senior year with clear arms, a clear head, and a bright smile. I plan to be a mental health mentor next year and lead the way to having a school that is trauma-receptive, language-smart, life-engaging, and aware. Far too many teenagers struggle with thoughts of suicide and fall to self-harm, drugs, or alcohol to cope. It is up to their classmates, myself included, to make sure we see the signs, support the person behind the behavior, and find the love within ourselves to create solutions for bad behavior that do not shut down the student and rather see through to the reasons beneath. With my mentorship next year, I plan to create support, implement safety plans for each and every struggling student, and assist the counseling office in providing the legal, mental, and emotional support our students need. Outside of my school, I plan to promote mental health resources on social media, spread the word about each and every kind of struggle a teenager in this day and age has, and allow people today to be exactly who they want to be and get exactly where they want to get. At the end of the day, my hope for this mission is to help just one person. Just one teenager who stood exactly where I did and felt ready to throw away their shot at life. If I can do that for one child, I will have done exactly what I was there to do. And that would be enough for me.

If words were seeds, I'd have a forest by now. There are so many things I want to say and share and teach and explore. I've wanted this my whole life and what better thing to do than just to do it? I wrote a two-novel series and I am in my junior year of high school. I find the courage to explore the human condition and its truths with my keyboard. My goals for the future are as follows: explore the world, understand it, and share perspective with it. I am fighting every day to get into a school that allows me to get out into the world and writing every day to put myself on a foundation of reputation. The world deserves perspectives they've never seen before. The people deserve to be heard and seen as people. And we all deserve the chance to find ourselves living what we've wanted forever.

The eyes of the young man in front of me filled with tears. My hands formed each letter again. He was deaf, I knew this now, and it was clear he had not been seen like this before. He eagerly signed back to me, his toothless smile wide and eyes bright. I was a volunteer at Family Kitchen, a soup kitchen serving anyone and everyone who needed it, on this very Saturday morning. He came up to the counter and acted out as best he could what he would like to eat. It brought tears to both of our eyes; him because he hadn't encountered someone who accommodated him as I had, and me because I was able to use my limited sign language skills to make someone's day. This memory grips me to this day. I know Oregon, my state, has the fourth highest rate of homelessness in the country, and 39.5% of recorded individuals meet the requirements of being deaf. Today, I encourage my classmates to take ASL and my fellow volunteers to learn the basics. The woman on the phone choked up. I glanced at the project members I had led through this endeavor. We had raised 287 pounds of food in two weeks for Bend Food Project, effectively feeding eleven families locally for one week each. When the phone call was over, we cheered and jumped with joy. We had done our research and knew that over 38 million people in America are food insecure today, and though it felt insignificant, we had provided a week of relief for eleven families. Food insecurity is a struggle for 10.5% of Americans, including 12 million children. Action is power, and together, we can offer the world another chance at peace.