Growing up, traveling to hospitals every few weeks was my normal, sometimes getting the call for the next day that suddenly I needed another surgery. when you're young fear isnt the same, you're afraid of the monsters in the closet, the thundering sounds of storms thinking something was out to get you. I was raised with different fears, tomorrow was never promised to me. I was afraid of the people in all blue lowering the mask over my face, I was afraid of the looks on adults faces that I was to young to understand that, those looks, were the true look of fear, anger, sorrow, sadness. Looks that at 4 years old I should have never understood, knowing that my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, were hiding secrets about my future, a future that should have never been given to me.

As a teen in highschool I once did a essay, the assignment was about what we wanted to be when we graduated, I at fourteen wrote how I just wanted to make it to prom, to grad, to even make it to my first year of college, then my second. I got a %25 percent on that project. my counsollor said it was too negative for a high schoolers prospective, that I had to have embellished the story, no teenager could go through such a medically complex life, I wasn't old enough to be medically complex, I wasnt old enough to be traumatized from growing up the way I did. so I aimed to prove, looking like the every day person doesn't make me any less disabled, and being disabled never made me less capaple, so now as an adult, who was never expexted to make it passed middle school, I aim to be someone those like me can look at that they are not alone, and show, just because I was listed as a failure to thrive, doesn't mean those labels stick, that anyone can push past the limits they were given.