I want to live a happy life, for all my life I've been sleeping with tears dried in my face in a house full of dark past, broken souls, and unfulfilled dreams. I wish for a house I can call home with people I love the most and who love me the same way I do. A house that is built with love, peace, and understanding. I wish to be with people who will give me joy more than pain, like the feeling of hurriedly going out of work just to be home and excitedly tell what went through my day with emotions unhidden from the masks I used to wear. I want to build a family stronger than I am. A family who would remind me that home is not the physical structure of the house but the bond that connects each ones' soul making it reselient to calamities and wreckage. I want to marry a man, not a random guy, whose family loves me more than he does, welcomes me warmly with gifts or without, excited to see me, and look for me when I'm not around like I'm part of the family although not connected in blood. I want my children to experience a love from aunties, uncles, and grandparents which I wish I had. I wish to marry a man, not a boy, who may not have the skills in cooking but prepares for me especially when I'm tired, stressed out, not feeling well, and when I feel like the world is fooling around. I wish to marry a man who believes that the best way to the heart is through the stomach. I wish to marry a man, not a young man, who asks forgiveness when he's wrong or even when he's not with flowers in his hand, maybe a chocolate, letter, a hug, or just simple little things he thought would make me smile. I don't need a man who would say, ‘What else I could give I don't have the money to buy you flowers?' Although, I didn't require it to be real, or bought. It's the thoughts that always count. I wish to marry a man, not a guy who assumes he's a man, who has plans for the future, a plan that involves me. A plan that doesn't remain in his thoughts, but he silently and diligently work-out, with me of course, to make that plan a reality. But how hilarious it is to think that what could make me live a happy life is laid in the hands of a man. How fool I am.

I was on my way to my new apartment one day when I saw her. I wouldn't have noticed her in the swarming crowd if she didn't extend her hands out to me when I passed her. I didn't stop at first and she got busy on other people. But I went back and gave her a quarter. Her face lighted up. She looked at me with her wrinkled lips parted into a big smile revealing her yellow crooked teeth. It was only a quarter, I thought. When I saw her again, she was sitting on a newspaper spread out on the pavement eating rice from a paper bag. All her belongings which included a bottle of water, a paper plate, a bowl with some coins in it and dirty rags were gathered around her. She didn't look up when I passed. She was too busy gobbling up her meal. I stopped in front of her and handed her a bag of apples. She beamed. She gazed at me with an open mouth and then took the apples. The hopelessness in her eyes made a little space for joy. She said a prayer and then asked God to bless me. Her crinkled hands were thanking me. She watched me walk back all the way with a huge smile on her creased face. In the evening, she was munching on the apples. I guess she liked them. Weeks went by and I gave her a quarter every day. She was always so happy to see me, even at times I didn't have anything to give her. Others like her never stayed in the same place but she could always be found under the old sturdy tree by the parking lot. In rains, drenched from head to toe, she found shelter under a plastic sheet. I wondered what was her story? Where did she come from? Had her life always been like this? Or was it because some misfortune had befallen her and left her homeless? Did she have any family? Where were they? Or was she all alone in the world? A month before when I was leaving for work, she was still at her old spot but something was different. She was not in her usual stained loose old clothes anymore, rather she was wearing a neat dress that was not shredded from anywhere. Instead of the newspaper, there was a basket full of ripe and fresh apples spread out on a mat in front of her. She waved when she saw me. The concrete cracks on her face looked a bit loosened. She offered me some apples. When I tried to pay her, she refused. Apparently, she had saved up all my quarters and started her own business. She did not want my money anymore but told me that I can take as much apples as I wanted from her and whenever I wanted them.

This was the year 1988 when I was in 8th grade. I have a vivid memory of that day. All the girls in our class were asked to take permission from their parents for an extra hour, after school, for the health counselor's visit. I, along with all my friends, was very puzzled at the reason for the health counselor's visit. We thought we were perfectly fine and in good health. Moreover, why would the health counselor come to school? Why not our parents can take care if something is wrong? This did not sound normal to me. Lots of questions like this were floating around in the classroom with all kinds of ridiculous answers. Those days communication was not so clear and open. The next day was not a normal school day; it was more like going to school, to the most inquisitive group of class with the hope that someone must have figured out the answer by now. Sadly no one did! So we waited till the school was over. Once the last class was over, and the teacher left, we took a sigh of relief with a palpitating heart, arms locked behind. We were ready to get the answer to our question. And we did! The Health Counselor came and talked about the phase of our life which was almost there, knocking at the door; the menstrual cycle. She told us about the phenomenon of monthly blood discharge, also known as “PERIOD”. She went on explaining to us the know-hows of the bodily changes that we would go through around that time, and how to prepare ourselves for that. The most dreadful information was, when she told us that it was going to happen to all girls, every single month. She also explained to us that it was not a sin or a bad thing, but it was the way our body notifies us of the next level of our growth and prepares us for other challenges. She explained to us that all this information was not supposed to overwhelm us, instead to get us prepared for the coming situation. Then finally there was the big revelation that we were going to bleed for 4 days every month. And with that, she handed each one of us a packet of sanitary napkins. Now my jaw dropped. The only thought that came to my mind was, how was I going to stay alive after bleeding for four days in a row. Conjectures about menstrual cycles were many and varied. Back then in India, this was a topic no one would talk about in public. It used to be such an unfathomable conversation to have, even with your own mother. There was no internet either so you couldn't google it either. Girls would learn about menstrual cycles when it really happened to them, or from their elder sisters, if luckily they happen to have one. Unfortunately I didn't have one. Talking about periods was such a taboo in our society, that while watching Television, if there was an advertisement for sanitary napkins, my father would immediately get up, go to the kitchen to drink water or do some mundane task. Only later, after the health counselor's visit did I figure out that it was all the pretend task and water needs. The thought makes me giggle now. So many years passed after that. I survived the bleeding of my menstrual cycle; safe and sound. Got married; had two beautiful daughters; life was all nice and pleasant. Going through those four days of cycle became like a second nature. It would come and go just like hair falls and grows back. Instead, if the period was ever late, worrying about it became second nature too. Fast forward a few more years, and a day came when I had to go through an emergency Hysterectomy, and all of a sudden, now no more periods! The most dreadful memory of my life. I couldn't figure out if I should be happy or sad for losing those years' long ritual of bleeding every month. I felt empty. It has been several years that I didn't have my periods. Do I worry now? Do I wonder why my period did not start yet? Yes! That thought comes to my mind with the speed of light, but does not vanish that fast. I feel a kind of stab in my heart, a pain which keeps reminding me what I have lost. “I have lost my womanhood.” The organ of my body which made me what I am, a woman, my companion, is no more in my body now. The routine of bleeding, for four days every month, doesn't happen anymore. Still out of habit, 14th of every month, I wait for my period to start. My despair becomes deeper than the sea. Sometimes I wonder, if I should be happy for the good riddance of every month's trouble and inconvenience, or mourn for the loss of my integral body organ, my “WOMB”, my womanhood. My Body has changed, but my mind still works like a woman. I wish there was a machine that could accurately measure my sadness and display it in numbers and I can record it .

So...lockdown's a thing now, and dare I say it's super fun, fresh, flirty and good for me! By that I mean, no, not at all, I am genuinely confused as to what day it is, how to process information, and just a general state of unease. It has led to more and more alone time, as I thankfully managed to spend 4 months away from my claustrophobic and highly tense household. A tiny glimmer of peace and quiet, however after, perhaps....3 days of on- my- own- gratefulness complete with "good evening moonchild vibes", I was struggling to keep things together. Keeping things together, maintaining a certain level of sanity differs from person to person, my version of this was making a conscious effort not to just, well to put it frankly, open my mouth and scream for a solid 28 minutes. (A personal all time record- not proud of it, well sort of, as a raspy, husky voice came out of my mouth for the next 5 hours.) The next stage of lockdown is well, what do I do now? The answer is- if you are already on the cusp of a low level identity crisis, to buy as many wigs as you can from a suspiciously cheap website, plaster your face in make up, and just go the whole hock. Not just the hock, I'm talking tail, snout, trotters, the whole shebang! Then you look in the mirror, giving yourself that pep talk, the 1 we all have, the 1 that makes us convince ourselves we can and will do anything, but ultimately leads to you crying, foetal position, on the nearest bed and or floor. The best ones end up with you on the kitchen floor, there is just something so gratifyingly pathetic, stupid, and disgustingly privileged of a "grown" white woman doing so. It's as if you think the cold hard tiles are a way of paying penance for being so ridiculous, but actually ends up feeding into the melodrama of the whole conflama of it all. After about 30 minutes of that hell-scape, what's the next step, what's the next stage? Well, you get up wipe off the make up, regretting it the entire time as you are perilously low on micellar water, oh the horror, and you realise you WILL be left with that black smudge underneath your waterline, for another day- minimum. Now that's done you check your fridge, freezer, cupboard and search for the serotonin lift that accompanies a sugar high; much to your despair, but unsurprisingly you can't find anything and it's too late to go to the shops. You curse yourself for having the audacity to refuse to buy junk food as you pledged to yourself not 2 days ago, to turn your li9fe around, get healthier eating habits, and for sure, workout feverishly, just so you can pretend you have some sense of control and discipline in your life. Fearing that even though they 're your friends they would somehow judge you for not losing that cumber band of fat, or not being able to solve world hunger and eradicate the patriarchy through the power of self love. The self love screamed at you anytime a petite influencer needs to sell the newest "fit tea", or indestructible toothbrush, not quite understanding the irony in the whole fuckery. Anyway, you have no junk food, you have no drugs or alcohol, so you sit in it, you sit in your feelings, your boo-hoo poor me feelings. It would almost be comical if it wasn't so inherently selfish and privileged. You need to combat those feelings and fast, quickly get yourself on change.org, sign a bunch of petitions, the more racially diverse the better, you find it eases the white guilt a bit and also you get brownie points, as you can brag to your friends, lord it over them, showing them proving to them that, yeah, perhaps I haven't lost weight, but at least I have proof that I'm a good person. I deserve to be seen. Please recognise me. Don't let me fade into the background. I'm clawing my way up the ladder of a superiority complex. Please just tell me I'm a good person, I don't want to be thrown into the fires below. Then you sleep, you've worn yourself on the emotional rollercoaster, you wake up the next day, and what do you know, you repeat the 3 day process again.

All over the world, the journey of a woman's life is predetermined by the patriarchal society we live in – it's not an opinion, but a fact. This restricted and claustrophobic journey is sadly amplified for those girls who are born in regular, unassuming and conventional families in developing countries like India. Although I was not born to conservative parents, their parents were very traditional. So, when I was born, a second daughter, my mother was subjected to a lot of emotional abuse from both of my grandparents. Not a great thing to learn when growing up, however, it does explain why I was never as close to my grandparents as my older sister and younger brother were. I don't know how this affected my subconscious?! Perhaps, me being fiercely independent from a very young age and a bit of a rebel would be a measured behavioural outcome of the knowledge that I had of how (un)loved and (un)wanted I was by my grandparents! Anyhow, getting to the crux of the story, I have always lived my life on my terms “unapologetically”, but never used this term till it was made trendy by millennials. I worked from the age of 16, got my Bachelor's degree, left my country to pursue my Masters (1000s miles away from my home) in pursuit of freedom and independence when a lot of my peers were getting married. I got a job, lived on my own, fell in love and married to a “gora / gringo” (it wasn't a done thing at the time in my home country). All of these things were challenges in their own right, but I was never phased by them. Also, I love a good challenge, a classic trait of a rebel! I must add here, my parents and siblings always supported me at the end and stood by my decisions and even, celebrated them with me. As a child, I always dreamt of travelling the world, and I got to do that a lot with my loving partner-in-crime, my husband. However, as expected from a woman, once you're married with a job and a house, the prospect of producing an offspring was lingering over my head. Now, this expectation, isn't just limited to females from certain conventional families, it's an expectation from females, full stop. Apparently, a desire to procreate should come naturally to women…only I didn't feel that way. It took me weeks to gather courage to tell my husband that I didn't feel the need to leave a legacy behind – a child. I wasn't worried about telling him that I didn't want to use my female reproduction super powers (we share an open and transparent relationship), but what worried me was, what if he felt differently – could I bear to lose my best friend? We went to our favourite Italian restaurant and after a few glasses of wine (of course) I told him that I didn't want to be a parent, but, instead, I wanted to see the world with him! He listened to me patiently and, he replied, to my surprise, that he shared the same feelings, but didn't know how to say it. Well, needless to say I was greatly relieved! However, soon after I felt relieved, the thought of telling our parents about our decision took over and that, seemed like a huge mountain to climb. Remember, I said expectations! It's not “normal” for people to decide not to procreate – human instinct and all that. It was easy for me to tell my mother, as I tell her pretty much everything, but to tell my in-laws of our decision was very daunting. My mother took the news beautifully, as always, she supported my decision and said “as long as you both are happy, that's all it matters”. Eventually, we told our in-laws and although, it was far from easy, and it took them some time to come around our decision, they accepted it. The declaration of our decision to not procreate and overburden the planet which is already brimming with children, didn't limit to our family and friends, it's something we have to do on a regular basis by answering questions, “so, do you have children / when are you planning to have a little one / when are you going to start a family?”, to extended relatives, friends' families, neighbours, my hairdresser, my local café owner, strangers…the list is endless. I have been tempted at times to say “we've tried but to no avail” – you see, you get sympathy to that response, but not when you say you've chosen not to have a child – you get judged for it and are even called “selfish”. So, here are the questions I contemplate – why is it “normal” to want to have kids and not acceptable to choose not to? Also, why do we have to conform to the society and live our lives dictated by it? My husband and I chose, NOT to conform – we couldn't be happier and are living fulfilled lives. Years ago, I came across a very powerful saying that I always go back to when I am feeling lost and unsure - “If Not Now, When? If Not Me, Who?” I keep reminding myself not to worry about what others think and I continue to make life choices that I feel are right for me and I do that unapologetically.

A black inkwell spills on the clean cement Trails of words the bread crumbs mark Splattering across the delicate cracks Deeply soaked in the dark underground Never forgotten A long lost tale so simple and elegant morphology.

Everyone thinks adulthood is something you need to get over with and not something to be eased into .For me it was terrifying being a female and reaching adulthood by female standards.I have always been a tomboy so when my body started changing i was scared because i didn't want to change my body into something i was so sure i couldn't identify with.It started at thirteen, one month and two days after my birthday.I had started realizing changes around my chestal area .Painful changes you might say as when i run or jump my growing tissues aches in pain.Puberty was setting in and to manage it i took steps. Step one, i started wearing bra and stopped hanging with my male friends for fear of rifdicule.It wasn't the hair or the physical body changes or the hormonal surge that clinched it,it was my period.At school we were taught menstruation and periods and such but i almost never pay attention to those topics because in my naivete thought i was above those bodily functions.Therefore waking up to bathe and realizing my underwear was stained was for me the end of my life not to mention the cramps that choose that moment to register in my brain.I was compelled to tell my mother who beamed and readily supplied the necessary materials saying that she has been waiting for this day for the end of my tomboyish ways and the begining of my womanhood.Step two,every month from then on it means that i have to go to my mom's medicine drawer and avail myself of her resources.I was forced to take a good look at myself and redefine who I was and what I was going to make of myself with what I have. I consumed so many self help books to understand my body better and if possible get the changes to stop.I looked forward with dread during the beginning of every month to the unwanted and scary process that my body would commence in addition to the pain that always accompanies it.Before the d-day i would get so cranky,withdrawn and annoyed at so many things especially at my mother because she is my mother and she is supposed to take care of me.She is supposed to take away that burden that i don't want even though i didn't voice it, she is supposed to know what am thinking and going through because as i said she is my mother.It was my sister who literally saved me from myself a couple of days to another d-day.Within myself i was convinced that i was going to become a boy whether anybody liked it or not and by anybody i meant my mother.I was convinced that if i wish and pray hard enough that God would hear me and magically restore to me the body i really was meant to have and make me into who i wanted to be and of course i wrote all this in my journal.My very nosy very curious sister with the knack for sniffing things out sniffed out my journal where i stashed it under a pile of dirty clothes and read it.When i came back from school and was doing my laundry in the laundry room,she came up to me,offered me a chocolate bar before sitting on my pile of clothes on the floor.She asked me how school was and if there was any bully tormenting me to which i snorted and told her that i invented bullying. She laughed and asked me why i was allowing a natural process God made to bully me.I quietly asked her to get up from my clothes carry herself out of room and never to ask me that again despite the anger brewing in me as i knew then that she read my journal. She laughed in that i-know-best-and-am-your-senior kind of way which is totally annoying.She proceeded to tell me about her own first time which she agreed was painful but which she bore wholeheartedly because it was a thing of pride.She told me how women are the backbone and silent leaders of the family and society and how being a woman is the best there is to be.By the time she was done i was viewing womanhood in a different light.She then told me things to do to minimise the pain and make the experience bearable and when it finally came again and i did all that she told me,it was wonderful.I barely noticed it all thanks to my sister and i stopped wishing for a new body. Now in many countries and culture ,females are struggling with the definition of self that comes with adulthood and puberty based on social standards .They strive to come to terms with the natural growth of their person and how they really want to perceive themselves. this puts them at risk of identity crisis and subsequent identity displacement.Mothers and female relations then should pay sufficient to the girl child during this period of transition in a child because if my older sister had not intervened who knows where i would be with my issues by now.

“Oye, choca, que lindos tus ojos,” a middle-aged man called out to me from his small, beaten up car on the small dirt road I dread walking on so much. This was not the first superficial comment I had gotten that day. Most cat calls directed towards me came from large, unkempt men whose appearance alone caused me to feel fear and unease. I hurried without giving him a glance for fear of fueling the fire that was his acute need for attention that he may go to desperate measures to quench. All my life, I had never been allowed to play out on the street with my friends. I had never been allowed to do something as simple as walk to the little corner store half a block away to buy a few eggs alone. I always needed an adult by my side, and even that was not a guarantee of my safety. As a young child, I had been taught to divert as much attention as I could away from who I truly was. This was done by simple things such as never speaking English in public, never looking people on the street I did not know in the eye, never going out without an adult - preferably a Bolivian man, and by dressing in an attempt to hide some of my snowy skin. Even my best efforts at blending in could not keep all the attention away; cat calls were a common experience to me for as long as I can remember, and this put an inevitable fear in my mind of men. For this reason, getting as far away from that man on the street as possible was my only concern in that moment. As soon as I got far enough away for me to feel comfortable, I remembered the reason I was walking; my mom was waiting for me at the other end of the street to catch a “micro” - a public transportation bus. My mind settled instantly at the sight of my strong, beautiful, Bolivian mother, and all the fearful thoughts that seem to short circuit my brain disappeared for a split second that did not last anywhere near long enough. As soon as I reached my mom's side, she spotted the micro heading towards us. She reminded me to keep my bag in front of me since the risk of either getting something stolen or getting inappropriately touched were high if I did nothing to prevent it. Consequently, I stayed by my mom's side as she paid the bitter, overweight driver who had already stepped on the gas pedal again. No seats were available, so we stood in the overcrowded bus until we reached the “abasto” - a vast market in which one can buy fresh food; cheap materials; and agricultural goods. Immediately after stepping off the bus, I was hit with the seemingly origin-less, inescapable stench. I mindlessly followed my mom through the weaving market that seemed to never be the same as she searched for the perfect bunch of bananas for her banana bread. On the side of one of the endless numbers of small fruit stands, there was a little girl sitting under a truck in an attempt to escape the powerful sun that so violently beat on everyone who dared stand directly under its rays. She looked up from the corn husks she was playing with to observe the unusual sight of a white girl with green eyes. A teenage girl sat in the bed of the truck with one leg carelessly hanging off the side. Contrary to the child's simple way of achieving entertainment, her fingers vigorously flew across the glossy screen of her small cellphone. Unlike the child, the teenager barely glanced at me, and as soon as she saw that I was just another girl, her phone retook her attention. The little girl, however, was still mesmerized by my appearance, so I smiled which seemed to satisfy her as she immediately smiled back and returned to playing with anything she could find. Meanwhile, my mom had decided that she had found the bananas that she wanted, so she asked the middle-aged woman standing behind them how much they costed. The woman, dressed in faded clothes and a threadbare apron in which she kept the money she had earned, readily recognized my fair colored skin and naturally assumed that I was not Bolivian and, therefore, ignorant. She chose to take a chance at gaining more money by charging us extra; however, we were used to being charged extra a countless amount of times due to the fact that I was different. My mom convinced the woman to charge us the honest amount of how much the bananas were worth, and we kept walking through the abyss. After an hour, we got on a micro and returned home - one of the few places I felt safe. This short trip had not brought about any terrible events; however, the possibility of being taken advantage of due to irrelevant and superficial things was a constant likelihood in my life. I have grown up trying to hide who I am because of a fear of those who I do not know, but I have never seen it as a fully negative thing because being different means that I am special; the unwanted attention is simply due to everyone around me recognizing that. Maybe, just maybe, someday I will be free to be whoever I want to be without a threat. For now, I live as a minority in what I consider to be my own culture.

One of the things I have always told myself is that I am not just one thing. I feel like in this society, we as people tend to put labels on people, condensing them into these tiny boxes. I never liked that, I never understood it because we are constantly changing, constantly learning things about ourselves. It is human to evolve. We are a universe of secrets. I am more than one thing. But with that being said...I do like to label myself as an artist. I was undoubtedly created to create. That is my life motto and I will keep it until the day I die. Whether it's filming, dancing, writing stories and poetry, drawing, or taking pictures, I am always creating. I do not think I could ever stop. But unfortunately, there was a moment in my life where I did not create. I wanted to be a marine biologist actually. I loved animals, especially marine animals. I still love animals but when my sister and my nephew disappeared from my life, that wanting of being a marine biologist went away. I blamed myself. They are deaf while the rest of my family is hearing, which meant that the relationships they had with us were not the same as their deaf community. It was a toxic situation and my family wanted to get them out but my sister did not feel heard. She felt babied and she felt like we did not understand her. And she was right, I never really took the time to learn the language. I did not have as strong of a connection with her as I should have had and I blamed myself wholeheartedly for it. I thought that maybe if I had took the time to get to know her as a person through her language, maybe that could have made all the difference. I have never felt so worthless in a situation. I felt so empty. We got her and my nephew back but, it still bothered me. So down I went into this deep well of emotions that I did not understand at the time. I could not find any thing to hold onto. It was dark, haunting, and echoed all of the nasty words that ran through my head. I was alone. Until I found a pen. With that pen, I wrote what I felt. With that pen, I drew monsters, heroes, villains, whatever I wanted. All of those emotions were tumbling out of me in a way that helped me heal. It had its ups and downs. At one point, writing and drawing weren't enough. I still felt this ache in my stomach. I wanted it to go away so I started moving my body. I started teaching myself how to dance. I gravitated towards hip hop because it was harsh but fluid. It was hard hitting and a release of anger, sadness, and fear. It was like this dragon was sleeping inside of me for years until finally, it woke up and breathed this spark of passion within me. I kept it hidden for a while, especially in high school. It was my little secret. I wasn't the loudest kid. That's when the label “loner” became to be the word to describe me. But I kept my head down, made good grades, stayed close to my two best friends, created my art, and tried to be the perfect little Christian girl all of my teachers asked for. At my parochial school, I realized two things. You did not matter unless you were outgoing and played sports. And if you didn't sit back and listen to what they told you, you were an outsider. We were told what was right and wrong, not how to think for ourselves. We were not meant to question religion, just accept. I hated it deep down, but I did what I was told. I didn't think my school was too bad, but when a gay male was kicked out for posting videos on YouTube about his sexuality, my feelings about my school changed. From then on, my eyes were opened. I saw the misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and prejudice all too well. But I kept my head down, those empty feelings came back and so I created. I ended up directing my own play, which was the light at the end of the tunnel. I was almost…happy. Then all of sudden, it was time for me to go to college. I was asked to choose which art style I wanted to succeed in. I did not want to choose. I wanted to succeed in all. That is when I found the camera. I realized that you could captured anything in a camera. I could tell stories in a camera. I could dance in front of the camera and create characters that fought the bad guys. I could use all of the skills I had and in return create something bigger than I ever could have imagined. So now, I am in college. I met some good people, I am creating, and I will continue to create. But I am not yet completely happy. I will not be happy until I make my own production company with shows talking about representation of all races, genders, sexualities, and mental illnesses in a positive, entertaining, and educational way. That is my goal. Until then, I will keep learning about my craft and evolving as a person. And learn ASL along the way. You know, I used to hate the color yellow, but Van Gogh showed me its potential. To me, it has become a color that represents a sad, hopeful kind of happiness. I am still so far from being who I want to be, but I will get there with time. I will.

I never really felt the need to classify myself into a particular group because I felt like classifying myself would mean that I would be stuck in one specific thing while I wanted to be so many different things. Now that I am a little older I can see that it is not a terrible thing to acknowledge that not only do I fit into a community, but that I also fit into many different communities and as cheesy as it sounds it really makes me the person that I am today. There are many obvious communities that I am part of such as the hispanic community and the women community, but there are also some communities that I am part of that relate to the things that I am interested in and passionate about such as the art and design community. I have been part of the art and design community for as long as I can remember. Since I was a little kid I have always been interested in anything that had to do with using the right side of the brain. The right side of the brain is the creative side while the left side of the brain is the more technical side. Some people are either right brained or left brained while many people are both creative and technical. I am more of a right brained person and have always loved drawing, painting, and anything that had to do with being creative. This creative spur started with the inspiration of my family because most of my family are artists so I was exposed to art very early in my life. Fortunately, I was able to see the work that my family showed me when I was a kid and used that inspiration to make doodles and paint with my fingers. Over time I started to think about the future and realized that I wanted a job that allowed me to be my creative self. By the age of ten I made up my mind and decided that I wanted to be a graphic designer even though I did not really know what a graphic designer was. Since this realization, I have taken so many drawing and basic art and design classes that I have really dug myself into the core of this community. Whenever I meet someone who is also into art I feel like I am meeting another club member, which is really funny to me because it sounds like I am in a cult. I just feel like whenever I meet someone who loves art just as much as I do, it is like we are on the same wavelength and we instantly get along so well. It is almost like there is this unspoken understanding of why we are in this community. With this unspoken understanding I always feel excited to see other people's art because I love seeing what they are inspired by. Seeing what other people are passionate about motivates me to keep creating based off of my inspirations from the other cult members in my community. Since I have been part of this community for so long, I realize that there are many words that we use to describe art and to communicate in general. For every art class that I have been in, the class was always given a list of vocabulary words to study and memorize. These words are only useful to the art community because it helps to describe an art piece in a more detailed way instead of just using the words “pretty” and “cool”. These words also help to know what a certain technique is called. Instead of just saying “move the pencil up and down a lot” it is easier to just use the word “hatching” which means the same thing. I never really realized that many people do not know these art vocabulary words until I say one of them. One day in the summer I went to an art museum with my friends and we were looking at a black and gray colored painting. After looking at it for about five seconds, I speak up and say “I like the monotone colors that are used in this painting”. My friends look at me and one of them says “what the heck is that” and while looking at their confused expressions, I thought about what I said and described that monotone means different tones of one type of color. After I finished explaining what monotone colors mean, I realized that they were already walking to the next painting and that they stopped listening. This was pretty funny to me because I knew that they did not care because they did not have to care and the only reason that I do care is because of my art classes and the career that I want have. Knowing and learning these art vocabulary words to describe art pieces and different types of technique was basically my first step into the art community. I have been part of this community for so long without knowing it. Looking back at all the things that I have learned while being in this community has made me feel secure in knowing that I want to stay in this community because I feel like I belong in it since I am so passionate about art and design. I know that I am qualified to be classified into other communities, but I also know that I am and will always be another art kid.