My mind is a library of memories—some I visit often, others I've locked away. My body remembers things my mind tries to forget, and every response it makes traces back to a memory I once ignored or tried to replace. Anxiety was something I never thought I would experience; I wasn’t a “sad” child growing up. Nonetheless, I had been dealt with the cards of an overbearing sense of sadness and guilt that had been drawn out of me in an unexpected way. I struggled to feel, to talk, and to live without the burden of these emotions clouding over my head. I never thought I would be able to be open about what I was going through behind closed doors. But the first time I saw someone open up about their mental health, I realized how powerful being understood can be. It made me see that silence doesn’t heal, it hides. In my culture, we don’t talk about mental health—we survive it quietly on our own. We never talk about what is going wrong or how we feel. We simply put it behind us and move on with our lives. Although I grew up with this mentality, I knew that I could not let this be continued in my line of heritage. Dealing with my own personal struggles I learned that every response my body was triggered to react with was not a sign of me being broken, but a sign of distress. A sign for me to get help, to heal, and to breathe. I learned that I had to be patient and it taught me that there are others like me who have felt this way before. It made me curious. How many more children like me have cracked under the triggers of sound or touch? This made me have a more understanding approach to people. It made me more compassionate, taught me to listen without judgment, and to recognize the silence behind the voices of anyone I have interacted with. I have since then developed a deep sense of empathy that has become my drive for my desire to become a psychiatrist, someone who doesn’t need to cut you open in an operating room. But someone who sees you fully without needing to hold a scalpel to dissect what is “wrong” with someone. It is often asked why doctors need to have empathy or compassion in the field of medicine, and it is because we deal with patients who come from all sorts of backgrounds and different stories they have lived through. They need to be treated not as a patient but as a human. My personal goal in becoming a psychiatrist, whether I work with children or grown adults, is to see them for who they are and treat them as a person in need of help. Mental health is often a misunderstood and misinterpreted concept in health; those who have struggles or carry burdens are not crazy or delusional, but people whose pain has been dismissed. I aim to help in finding strength in vulnerability and find support to become and live authentically. As a young girl who grew up in a community where Hispanic culture ignores mental health and emotional expression, the need to raise awareness has given me motivation to advocate and create a space for generational cycles to be broken. All in all, my experience with anxiety, and the stigma having been created before me has made me determined to be human and to live treating everyone not by an illness but as a person. Psychiatry isn't about cutting and tying loose ends that just so happen to fail or erupt, it is about listening to even the quietest whispers and helping everyone despite where they come from, who they are, or what they've done.