I was maybe thirteen when I watched Hercules for the first time. It was intended to be a way to pass the time as I stayed up all night to be "rebellious" - an act that would just leave me half asleep in Algebra the next morning. I didn't anticipate enjoying the movie, as Disney movies were not my niche. But, from the introduction to the end, I was captivated. Hercules quickly became my comfort movie and has made its way into my top five movies of all time. I still rewatch it whenever I am particularly stressed or want to unwind. From this movie comes my favorite Disney character of all time, Megara (informally, Meg). Only in recent years have I begun to understand the amount of maturity in her character build, and how relatable she is made to be while still adhering to the myth the film was based on. Megara is, initially, a cynical and sarcastic character, and the heroine of "Hercules". She is shown at the beginning as having little to no regard for romance and love, seeing it as some sort of a mortal game she does not want a part of. It is revealed throughout the events portrayed in the movie that she basically sold her soul to Hades, God of the Underworld, in order to revive her boyfriend who had died. Once he was revived, he left her for another woman. Not only was she heartbroken and traumatized from the event, she then owed her soul to Hades for, presumably, all of time. Though displayed upon introduction as having no regard for Hercules, she quickly began to fall in love with him. Hades attempted to sway her away from this love but ultimately failed. She found forever love with Hercules by the end of the movie after he rescued her from the River Styx. Overall, Megara is my favorite Disney character because of her personality. Disney movies typically don't display snarky, powerful women as heroines. Megara breaks this role in swift motions, and I could not love her more for it. Also, her character story shows a perfect story trope; heartbreak and true love, sacrifice for sacrifice, destined heartbreak to destined love. I am a sucker for the writing of her character, hence why she has made it to the top of my list of my favorite characters!

I came out of the closet at age eleven, but not inherently by choice. One night of writing in my diary led to previously uncovered feelings I found shameful, and another sparked discovery by my mother, who asked to read the pages I was writing about my best friend at the time. She looked at me, at the paper, and at me again, and said - “I thought you only had crushes on boys?” And for the time, we left it at that. Conversations were later sparked when I was told I was “too young” to know I was anything other than straight or that she knew it was just a phase. Although many mostly met me in the middle with acceptance, some experiences were seared into my brain by my family when I think of coming out. I get reminded of my “friends”, too - being asked if I was a “homo” or “a gay” throughout those hellish first years in my journey of self-discovery. I get reminded of telling that girl who unintentionally made me realize my sexuality how I felt. It ended with her staring at me with a disgusted look on her face. Outside of the initial anxieties, however, I was not phased. I was still proud of who I was. I started my first job just shy of fourteen, openly queer, working in a Christian-based restaurant. My team was supportive of me every step of the way, and a few of my coworkers over the years were also LGBTQ. But, never mind my own growing relationship with God, I would’ve been a spectacle to the extremely conservative folk I was surrounded with most days if they knew who I was, or rather, who I loved. It took me until I was eighteen to start telling the customers I confided in that I was queer. Five years - on and off - in an environment I felt constricted in, and four years before I stopped lying about the gender of my lovers. I admire the bravery of the few coworkers I shared this identity with who were openly out before I was. I have not yet begun to uncover how detrimental that likely was to a growing child's ego, to hide who she was from the workplace she practically grew up with out of fear of ostracization. I have recently started my associate degree in the arts at Trident Technical College in North Charleston, South Carolina. I anticipate graduating a year early with this degree in order to move out of state and start a new life elsewhere. I do not know in entirety what I plan to do after getting my associate's. I know I will pursue higher education. I intend on volunteering my time to non-profits near me to begin helping my community. I intend on building a platform as time goes on to support LGBTQ folk in their journies, and offer help where needed. I have toyed with the idea of either becoming a therapist who centers on helping LGBTQ people in life or maybe a teacher so I can work with people from all backgrounds one-on-one and make an impact. I have left a lot of my future undiscovered, and that’s okay. I don’t know what I really want to do, but what I do know is something crucial to my identity. My name is Rebecca Beemer, I’m 19 years old and openly queer. I refuse to give that part of me up, even with any backlash I may face. It’s a part of me, and it will always be.

My whole life, I've been devoted to helping other people. I was the kid to run around the playground spitting out all the morals that my growing brain could understand to anyone who would listen, the sympathetic child who was insistent on sharing everything I had. I would spend late nights in middle and high school helping my friends who were going through rough times and would sacrifice my own emotions and feelings to prioritize their own. Where I can, I disregard anything set in place if it means I get to help another person or make their day a little better. Something I hope to do throughout my life is to maintain what I've been doing for the past 18 years - helping everyone I can and when I can. I believe that if I keep good boundaries with everyone I meet and continue acting upon my morals, I will be able to make the world a better place. I may not be famous, or invent something monumental, or even do anything monumental, but I hope that my impact will carry on with everyone I meet. I hope I am remembered for always lending a helping hand, and influence others to follow in my footsteps.

I was coming up on fourteen whenever I spent days begging friends and family for help. I had been struggling with something seemingly unnamable inside of my brain for years at that point - even throughout childhood - that, respectfully, made my life a living hell. Many extenuating circumstances hindered me from getting help for something I had been fighting with for years at that point. We couldn't afford therapy; my school's counseling system was overloaded with students in similar positions I was coming up on seventeen whenever I sat across from my current therapist. Loopholes and coincidence made way for me to find my way in her office, curled into a sort of mental shell that I still have not broken out of. We discussed surface-level things, never really gathering much depth due to my avoidance. Even so, I was seventeen whenever my therapist proposed that I may be struggling with type two Bipolar disorder. I was said to fit every criterion, and yet I have not yet been legally diagnosed. Healthcare is very hard to access for many people, and my family and I are, without a doubt, within that group. Tests and diagnoses would cost money that I cannot afford, even working two jobs. Thankfully, any setbacks have not dampened my outlook on future recovery. The way I see it is that, on one hand, a name would add some newfound knowledge, a title to the amalgamation of symptoms I exhibit. On the other, a name would produce a stigma that I already encounter on a minor scale whenever any of my symptoms are visibly present. It's a double-edged sword if you will. In a way, I find some comfort in my mental health still going unnamed. It is something I struggle with daily and something that always has found its way into every nook and cranny of my being. Despite all, I know that I will one day be able to manage my symptoms. I refuse to, even with my worst ideologies, become a suicide statistic. Being mentally ill has allowed me to strengthen my empathy and helpfulness to others, especially in times of need. After experiencing very adverse effects of both manic and depressive episodes, I have learned to see the details that make things flourish and grow within this world. Things aren’t always great within my view of Earth and every being, concept, or idea that goes within it. However, moments like those allow me to gain a deeper perspective of the fact that there are always many good things in the world, even if I cannot see them all of the time. A lot of the good in the world is seen within my close friendships. I currently have a tight-knit group of people I associate with who have been my biggest support group, by far. Every single one of the people I consider my friends have been very understanding and helpful about my mental health. We work in turn, helping one another at the drop of a hat. We understand, and often relate to each other's traumas, and work around anything that would trigger the other person and help each other grow from the trauma we've endured. I'm going very base level with my descriptions of events for sake of clarity, especially since I am describing other people, but in essence, they have all been lifesavers. If anything - my mental health, no matter how adverse, has preserved my recent friendships beyond compare. In some sick sort of way, I am thankful for the point of relation between all of us Relationships are a different story. Due to my mental illness, relationships between people are extremely hard for me to make and maintain. I struggle to make genuine connections and have many toxic traits layered within my depression and my mania. I have, through therapy and personal growth, and introspection, grown a lot from my toxic traits, but many problems in my past relationships have stemmed from my mental illness. As for my current relationship, we have struggled a lot - even with extreme commitment and time spent working on ourselves and everything within that - due to the challenges my illness produces. Toxicity, mania, horrid depressive episode, high anxiety are only a few of many. Regardless, though. I have been doing everything I can to preserve this relationship even if I am mentally ill. She is willing to work with me and similar to my friendships listed above, we help each other grow and work through our experiences. I once read that 80% of relationships with one partner with a mental illness fail. Whether or not that's true is a statistic that is hard to gauge, but I have genuine faith in being one of the 20%. I am more than my illness and my struggles. They make up many parts of me, and I am thankful for every building block of my being regardless of the adversity. I am enough, no matter what I live with. And I hope to forever hold that outlook.

The attached poem is one I wrote my senior year of high school and touched up as of today. It is written loosely about themes of sexual assault and my experiences with that event, both in childhood and today. I won a gold key for it through Scholastic's Art&Writing contest, and it is the piece I am proudest of. As for my vision, I have been using writing as an outlet for my emotions and experiences since I was a little child, as is prevalent in the piece submitted. I started with mild fairytales as an elementary schooler, short stories with no depth, and my work grew extensively as I got older into pieces with sustenance and depth in many formats, such as scripts, screenplays, and, most regularly, poetry. Using writing as a form of art has helped me through many struggles with mental health, my academics, and through working through events in my home life. I joined an art program in high school that was centered around creative writing and excelled in it. Even after graduation, I still write whenever I can about everything that matters to me in this world. Art is something that shapes me as a person in every format. I paint and draw the things I love to relax, I produce photography, I play instruments for the sole purpose of creation - I love art and find it in every bit of life imaginable. As for the future, I would love to eventually minor in creative writing, if nothing else. I feel as if, no matter what, I will always continue writing and producing my writing to the world, as it is something I love. I am grateful for this opportunity to share my piece.

Children are like sponges - soaking up new information constantly, spewing it back out when given the opportunity. Children, whether we like it or not, take in everything they see and everything they hear - and as a kid, I was no different. I took great interest in the world around me and, at least most of the time, listened to everything the adults in my life said. I conformed to their beliefs, agreeing with statements that held obscene amounts of bigotry and hatred solely because I felt like I should, and at the time I didn't know any better. This, for me, has always felt like a huge point of adversity within my life. Examples such as racially charged statements from older family members, homophobia and xenophobia from the people on TV and creators I found influential, being told by estranged family members that depression/anxiety/other mental illness should be beaten out of kids... The list is endless, seeing as we live in a world fueled by the opposing forces of love and hate. As I've matured throughout recent years, I can't say the world has changed much, unfortunately. But, what I can say is that as I learn more and more about our countries history, the rights and the wrongs, and major events happening today, I've done everything in my power to work to deconstruct the mindset I had about the world, including my biases and internalized hatred. I can't pinpoint exactly when the turning point was when I went from conforming to the ideals I had been raised around to having a mind of my own. However, despite still being around people that have strongly opposing viewpoints, I stay strong in my beliefs. I constantly research as more and more comes to light in the news, and stay informed on current events from not only here but around the world as well. I respectfully challenge people on their beliefs and try and educate them on what is happening around them if they are uninformed. Overall, I feel as if I can say that I have changed for the better due to the constant education and personal growth that I've been blessed with having. As for educational goals, I intend on going to a local technical college to gain an associate's degree in general science. From there, I am applying to a state university for biological or environmental science. I wish to focus on entomology in graduate school. As a career, forensic entomology is something that has always shown great interest to me. In general, as long as I am working with nature or with people, I am sure that I will be happy.

Throughout the span of the COVID-19 pandemic thus far - since arrival in not just the United States but in every country, a consistent problem not enough people tend to speak upon is the incompetency of world leaders in handling said situation. America's (former) Mr. Trump, in allowing the murder of roughly 600,000 Americans due to lack of proper action at any point ; India's leader, Mr. Modi, who spent more time attempting to rebuild his public appearance rather than helping the people of his country - those of which having just suffered another wave of the deadly disease spreading quickly as there were no plans made for new waves, and lastly Brazil's Mr. Bolsonaro, who disregarded the entire pandemic as a "flu" and made public claims stating that the vaccine used to prevent COVID-19 would turn you into a crocodile, thus inciting unnecessary avoidance to bettering their pandemic-based situation. These are just three measly examples of people in power not doing anything close to their share in preventing this pandemic from growing worse. As I am not a person who is in a position of power, nor do I seek it, I cannot speak exactly from the mind of someone who is. However - I feel one way we can build upon bettering the circumstances this pandemic is leaving us in is to grow from the opinions and ideologies given by any world leader who cares slim to none about their people, and work as a whole to decrease the spread - methods such as vaccination, lockdowns, and just common sense. Things like this are easier said than done, but adopting mindsets that give great room for growth between many nations is a terrific first step.