Nowadays there's a really big movement for mental health and freeing people from gender roles and stereotypes. I find it fascinating how far society has advanced in the last 23 years since I've been alive. I'm not sure if these movements have always existed and maybe I just never noticed because I was a child, or if this movement has only grown so much since I've been old enough to understand critical thinking and politics. Regardless, I'm grateful that I have learned these resources available to youth and older people even now. Unfortunately, the cage that I have been trapped in is a solid gold prison that I've grown comfortable in. Growing up I had 2 loving parents and 2 great sisters. Our household was a traditional Hispanic household but it was normal, however, if you grow up in a neighborhood where drug abuse is often, doesn't that seem normal? If you grow up in a warm and loving family, isn't that what you considered normal? The people in my community are all similar: Hispanic, former/current immigrants, and family members involved in drugs and/or gang violence. Even after knowing this, I still think the household I grew up in is normal. Being a tomboy was actually pretty tough growing up. I never got along with the girls playing princess or dolls, but playing with my guy friends was difficult at times because I had to suppress the little voice in my heart that sometimes wanted to be a princess. As kids, you tease each other over just about anything, so for some reason, that little girl inside my heart was something I was determined to keep hidden. I didn't kill the little girl in my heart, but she was so frail and scared, I decided it was best to leave her untouched and protected. In my Hispanic household, there are rules that were enforced constantly such as: your opinion didn't matter because Mom and Dad knew best, your feelings weren't taken into consideration because feelings are whimsical, mental health problems don't exist, no matter how old you get, you're never allowed to tell your parents what to do, and most importantly, never tell anyone what problems go on at home, or you might be separated from Mom, Dad, and sisters. The last rule was especially important because we had quite a bit of problems. My parents would argue constantly, slam doors, threaten each other, call the police on each other, and as if our neighbors didn't know what was going on, we were to remain silent because children had no voice. Oddly enough, that didn't stop them from using us as leverage against the other. Sometimes a relative would rush over whenever we felt unsafe and lock herself in the bathroom with us while she would send another relative to calm my parents down. To be honest, I can't remember if this was a common occurrence or if this was an infrequent occurrence that was really traumatizing and I just remember it as a common occurrence. To sum up, I ended being someone that never felt comfortable expressing myself or sharing my problems, and the little voice was trapped for a very long time. I grew up fighting the gender stereotype that were being force fed to me because it was tradition, I was fighting myself because of the voice in my heart, and I was fighting my environment from the belief that the way our home was, was normal and couldn't be helped. It isn't hard to believe that all of this ultimately caused me to have depression, and I could never figure out if my endeavors to break free from this prison were foolish, childish, or plain stupid. Maybe the reality was that there was no prison and I am just a person that likes to victimize myself in order to gain pity or attention. Fortunately, I had found an outlet to all my pent up frustration. One of the things I always appreciated were the arts. My art helped me encrypt my emotions while telling others that my drawings were just random with no meaning, and that the characters in my stories aren't me. The suffering little girl in my drawing, the protagonist that grew up in a toxic environment, the very detailed bullying in the stories, the vivid pain in my drawings, no, it's all fiction. I told myself that I was just enjoying inventing and creating new worlds, when the reality was, I wanted to escape to another world, because unlike in real life, stories have happy endings. I would create these suffering and pained protagonists with sad back stories and have them overcome their struggles and achieve happy endings. It wasn't long before I realized that my stories helped more than just me. I'm still in my prison, and there is no happy ending, but I'm much happier now then I have ever been before. I still live in my prison, and I have made myself comfortable, but the locks are broken, and the binds are loose. I know one day I'll muster the strength to walk out of this prison, and when I do, it'll be because I found the power in my own words. If you haven't found the power in yours, I hope you find them in mine. Isn't that the power in stories?