The summer of my third-grade year, my mother sent me to the YMCA summer camp like she had done every year previously. As a single mother, she needed all the support she could get and used every resource available to support me. This wasn’t new to my young brain. The environment was because the YMCA that summer wasn’t hosted at the YMCA building at all. That year, it was instead hosted at an elementary school I had never been to. Changing the entire environment of the place I had known and been comfortable with for years. Leaving me feeling alone, even while with the people I had known years before. It was strange and new; the people I had known were now cliquey, and being poorer than all the other kids left me feeling like I was always being judged. I knew my mother was working hard to pay for the YMCA tuition, so I didn’t complain. Instead, I turned to something that could distract me from the uncomfortable environment I was in. I started to draw. It was something that distracted me during my free time at camp when I didn’t have any friends to talk to, and gave me an avenue to express my feelings without judgment from others or guilt about complaining to my mom. As I grew even after summer camp, I kept my love of drawing. I developed my art and grew a sense of individual pride from it when I felt insecure about anything. As my life changed and the world changed around me, my art did as well. My drawings now had meaning and expressed feelings I started to have about the world, and opinions I gained from situations that happened to people connected to my life or me. During any situation where I feel negatively about something, I express it through my art, embracing the emotions that I feel by drawing lines on paper or painting as a form of therapeutic self-expression. Now, as a person going into college, I want to use my art to make a living, even though I know it will be hard. I plan to draw visuals in the books I want to create and tell a story that has never been told before. This will at first be a side hustle, but I plan to make this a full-time career if I succeed. For that reason, I am pursuing a visual art major with a minor in English.

I have always drawn since I was a little kid. At first, I wasn’t good at it, like most people, but I kept practicing. I redrew the images from color pages, watched YouTube videos, and tried to replicate my favorite artists’ drawing style. I practiced for years, drawing every day, until my hands cramped and my eyes grew sore. Then, one day, I became good at drawing. But all my practicing wasn’t just out of pure love; I did it to survive. As a child, I had felt alone; my mother was always at work, trying to make ends meet, and my dad wasn’t around. I felt out of place at school, with no father and a busy, tired mother. On top of that, I was poor compared to my peers. I wore threadbare, old clothing and never had the newest anything. So drawing became my only way to feel like I belonged; it was my sanctuary for my thoughts and insecurities. It made me feel secure, and when my art piece was finished, I felt inspired, like I could do anything, like my differences didn’t matter. As I’ve grown older, my love of drawing has only become stronger, though now it isn’t my only method of cheering myself up. Now, I try to put my talent to good use to help others who are going through a tough time, just like I did when I was younger. For the past four years, I helped create the homecoming banners and portraits for my school, did art for Belmont Park, and have started working on a mural for my school. I am motivated to complete these projects to make my peers feel secure and happy, like art makes me feel. When I go to college, I hope I can keep doing that. My artistic process makes me feel like everything in the world will be alright. I can't quite describe the feeling. In the simplest terms, I start confident and proud of myself in a way I usually don't feel. When I look at an art piece that took long hours, and left my body feeling sore, and see the masterpiece I have created, I feel on top of the world. When I make art for others, be it for events or for family, I feel happy for myself, like I've made something important and special that others can enjoy just as much as I do. I like to see the wonder in people's eyes when they look at my creation.

September 7th will always be a day I remember, and ironically, it is also the day that always passes me by. Somehow, someway, I end up never realizing the day is September 7th before it is gone. I remember September 7th because it’s the day my father passed away, and the day my perspective on life changed. I don't remember much about him because he wasn't in my life for the majority of it, but I do remember how funny and unique he was. My father was creative just like me and had big dreams of what he wanted to do in the world, but life forced him on a different path. From a young age, he dealt with household problems. Both his father and mother were drug addicts, and due to that,t his mother passed away. His father then became absent, leading to my father and aunt being taken away by. After that, for years of my father's childhood, he was raised in the foster care system, dealing with things that I'll never know of. That led him down a dark path where he started using drugs and other types of stimulants to deal with his situation. After a long time battling drug abuse, he went to rehab and met my mother. He represented my childhood and an innocence I had lost long before I was ready or supposed to be. I used to beg as a child for my father because of what he could have meant to me. When he died, that youthful part of me was lost too, and slowly, I’m building it back. When I had first learned about his death, I was shocked, then sad, then unfeeling. I bottled it all up and acted like it was never an issue. I would cry in anger at the slightest irritation and burst with rage if anything made me mad. I didn’t think, I just did. Then, I would act like I had never said or done anything wrong. I was never called out for my behavior, but I knew my actions were wrong, and that was enough for me to fix them. My mother had raised me to be a better person. So, I put my energy into other activities, like schoolwork. I channeled my feelings into every assignment, and it showed. That semester was the first time I had earned almost all straight A’s. Achieving those grades gave me confidence in my academic ability and taught me to turn pain into something else, something that I never thought I was capable of. Now, years later, when I face difficult situations, I remind myself that I can overcome them because I have already done it before, and that gives me strength.

September 7th will always be a day I remember, and ironically, it is also the day that always passes me by. Somehow, someway, I end up never realizing the day is September 7th before it is gone. I remember September 7th because it’s the day my father passed away, and the day my perspective on life changed. I don't remember much about him because he wasn't in my life for the majority of it, but I do remember how funny and unique he was. My father was creative just like me and had big dreams of what he wanted to do in the world, but life forced him on a different path. From a young age, he dealt with household problems. Both his father and mother were drug addicts, and due to that,t his mother passed away. His father then became absent, leading to my father and aunt being taken away by. After that, for years of my father's childhood, he was raised in the foster care system, dealing with things that I'll never know of. That led him down a dark path where he started using drugs and other types of stimulants to deal with his situation. After a long time battling drug abuse, he went to rehab and met my mother. He represented my childhood and an innocence I had lost long before I was ready or supposed to be. I used to beg as a child for my father because of what he could have meant to me. When he died, that youthful part of me was lost too, and slowly, I’m building it back. When I had first learned about his death, I was shocked, then sad, then unfeeling. I bottled it all up and acted like it was never an issue. I would cry in anger at the slightest irritation and burst with rage if anything made me mad. I didn’t think, I just did. Then, I would act like I had never said or done anything wrong. I was never called out for my behavior, but I knew my actions were wrong, and that was enough for me to fix them. My mother had raised me to be a better person. So, I put my energy into other activities, like schoolwork. I channeled my feelings into every assignment, and it showed. That semester was the first time I had earned almost all straight A’s. Achieving those grades gave me confidence in my academic ability and taught me to turn pain into something else, something that I never thought I was capable of. Now, years later, when I face difficult situations, I remind myself that I can overcome them because I have already done it before, and that gives me strength.