“I’m not just a gem, I’m not just a human, I’m both,” is a line I resonate with from Steven Universe, a cartoon I would watch as a child. Growing up biracial, I always felt disconnected from my roots, as I never felt “Black enough” or “Filipino enough.” My experience reflects my favorite cartoon character, Steven Universe, a half-human, half-alien teenager raised by three extraterrestrial beings known as “gems.”

I don't remember when my prayers turned into apologies.

Or when the constant loop of “Let It Go” became an endless cycle of self-depricating thoughts. Or when my daydreams about being a rockstar princess turned into imaginary scenarios of waking up in the hospital after a failed attempt.

Growing up, I was labeled as “quiet but bright.” I was always a hard worker, always eager to help others, and often ahead of my grade level academically. I remember when we would do Achieve300, I had the highest score in my grade, and was at a 12th-grade reading level in the 4th grade.

Temperatures stay at around 80 degrees in my small North Alabama town, yet I continue to wear my leggings, sweatpants, and jeans. I would rather sweat and sweat than have people see these marks. Marks cover my legs and draw attention. Concerned mothers asking, “How many bugs have gotten to you this summer?”

It was the weekend I’d been waiting for: the 14U Championship swim meet. After surviving my middle school years plugging along in the swimming pool with minimal success but having a lot of fun socially, I had finally sprouted from puberty and was ready to compete.

Most people will never understand the feeling of a musician following a heartfelt performance. It is not about the cheers from the crowd or the bouquet of flowers in your arms. It's about learning that music isn’t separate performances but a lifelong experience.

I stepped onto the familiar tiled floor of my enormous school, tickled with nervousness but fueled with hope. My sophomore year was here, and I was determined to make it memorable. I quickly became involved in my school’s student government, made new friends, and danced under homecoming’s glowing lights, certain the year would only get better.

I have lived most of my life with a quiet, persistent fear sitting in the back of my mind. It is not the kind of fear that appears suddenly and disappears just as quickly.

I felt invincible as a kid. I would run and jump and dance and do it all so fearlessly that getting hurt was more shocking than painful. I was never the fastest or the strongest when doing sports, but it was okay because I would laugh when attempting to slide during kickball the same way I saw baseball players do.

In second grade I told my friend that the fries served with my elementary school’s lunches were too spicy for me. She reminded me of this conversation years later when we reunited in high school, mentioning that they were just barely dusted with black pepper. Growing up in the bay area, most of my friends were South Asian like myself, so I was met with a response along the lines of “how are you Indian with a spice tolerance that low?” and similar phrases throughout my childhood.

Fifteen years, or a decade and a half, seems like a long time to know someone. It’s a long time for someone of my age, but my grandfather had lived five times that amount. For the fifteen years that I knew him, my grandfather had always been the stubborn, resilient, and stern veteran that had a soft spot for his grandchildren. PopPop, we’d call him. He had a stroke around the time I was born, so I had always known him walking with a brown wooden cane, glasses dangling around his neck, living in a house slightly secluded in the woods.

Maybe my mother was right. No, she never directly called me selfless, but her eyes always seemed to say it. I often disregarded my own feelings to please others, and though I didn’t recognize it at the time, I was teaching people how to treat me. I was allowing them to treat me as if I were beneath them.

Developing a disability as a middle schooler felt extremely similar to the two deaths. That first death, the exit from life, similar to the new changes and obstacles. The second death, the final one, much like the newfound separation from my peers. First the self I would have been was gone, and then the self I was before. At any age, disability makes you different, but I believe teen development might be the worst. We aren't young enough to roll with the punches but still too young to be seen by the average person as "properly sick".

“You’re just too odd” was not an uncommon way I was described. I had always been weird. My earliest childhood memories include me sitting on swings alone. Making friends had never been my strong suit. A memory that haunts me is when my class had to be separated into pairs for an activity. When I recall the boys begging my teacher not to be paired with me, I still get emotional. For some time, I was partially okay with it.

There was once a time. I don't handle stress very well, medically proven PNES or psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, long name if you ask me, it really just means instead of being able to process my emotions or my stress, my body acts out and seizes uncontrollably.

Is the doctor really certain this works? Am I really about to do this? These thoughts swirled around my mind as I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting to ingest the very thing I was told could kill me.

When people speak about community service its mostly focus on what we give which is our time, effort, and our energy. But I’ve learned that sometimes, what was gained is far more greater than what was given. As a Black young adult battling Major depressive disorder and Generalized Anxiety disorder, service wasn't found because I was strong. It was found because It was what’s needed in my life.

From the age of five, my ultimate dream was to be a doctor, not for the money, but instead for the ability to help others in a way that not only healed their physical wounds but also their emotional ones. My faintest memory of when my love for medicine started was when I was five. I remember taking a ziplock bag, opening it up, and spinning around in my living room, trying to inflate the bag with air.

I’ve spent most of my life fighting to breathe, not just physically, but emotionally, too.

I was diagnosed with asthma as a young child. At first, I didn’t understand what that meant. I just knew that every time I ran in P.E. or played outside, I’d feel like my chest was caving in. Like the air around me didn’t belong to me. Like my body was betraying me in front of everyone.