My story

By the time I could hold a crayon, I wrote stories. Either in the form of diary entries or various fantasy adventures that I would star myself in, I left no emotion or daydream undocumented. Over time, I became dependent on writing as a means to organize the chaos in my own brain. With access to technology, my Google Drive became flooded with poetry and personal anecdotes from when I would romanticize predicaments and vulnerabilities I found myself in. 

My upbringing is somewhat unorthodox. Having moved seven times, across two countries and five states, my nomadic lifestyle brought an uncertainty and animosity into my life that shaped my identity and how I view the world. Later developments of serious mental illnesses only hindered me more as I did everything in my power to turn the gray skies blue.

So I’ve always had a peculiar fascination with sadness. I found an eerie, magnetic pull to the stories and dreams that made my heart speed up, my stomach lurch, and my nose tickle while trying to hold back tears. I learned from an early age that my brain doesn’t function in a way that prioritizes stability; I crave the sense of unease that comes with pain and discomfort. Extreme emotion helps me delineate my own sadness and dissatisfaction I feel with myself and my surroundings. 

That dissatisfaction forces me to collect and examine fragments of a moment to analyze the way I interact in situations. I find comfort in consuming my surroundings, taking in every possible detail that I can (as evidenced by the startling amount I can recall from my early childhood). It justifies how, whenever I find myself vulnerable, my first instinct has always been to write my experience down.

It was when I got to high school and found my school’s newspaper, The Lion’s Roar, that I realized I could use the strength in writing I’d honed in solitude to contribute to something beyond me. 

I had recently undergone my first of two severe physical injuries through my sport, so the chaos in my mind was as prevalent as ever. But by writing articles, I not only distracted myself from the pain that comes with the loss of a sport, but I began to expand my horizon, and find a story not only within my identity, but within the rest of my world. 

And there was so much to explore. 

All around me, I found stories that made me sick to my stomach. Robbery, sexual-harassment, racial targeting, even murder, never failed to pique my interest. But I’m not drawn to these atrocities because I’m scared. I’m drawn because I know there's more to the story than what's on the surface, in the same way that I know there is more to my story than just my sadness.

The most important lesson I’ve learned from journalism is that perspective is the most important aspect of storytelling. During my first in-depth article, investigating a Title IX case at my school, I discovered a discrepancy in public belief. While many thought the case involved only one Title IX infringement, there were actually two, and one was committed by the school. 

I also recently wrote an article about the way my school community reacted to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel and subsequent progressions of the war. I witnessed the extreme hostility that had been occurring between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims in our school. Hostility that began as social media feuds eventually metamorphosed into physical violence fueled by racial pride and prejudices. 

Telling the stories that are not easy to hear is my passion. I am driven by my intent to spread awareness through the written word, whether that be about an overlooked perspective or the intricacies of one under scrutiny. 

By exposing these perspectives, I seek to foster an environment within the journalism community that is dedicated toward telling the truth. The whole truth. The truth of our humanity: love, loss, joy, and pain. 

And in telling the truth, comes giving justice to a perspective misunderstood. I learned to love telling stories because, upon reflection, I wished someone would tell mine. I wished someone would ask how I struggled to get where I am today, because I wished I had the chance to define my life story as an act of persistence, not just one of pain. 

And I know that I’m not alone. In my time on Roar, I've conducted countless, immensely personal interviews; yet, with every tear or voice crack, I'm struck by how people insist that the record stays on. Journalism can be overshadowed by intricacies and dry information, but its ultimate purpose is to reveal the human angle. It’s to understand the stories and struggles of those around us, and to allow people to define themselves in their own terms.

I tell stories to help others define the human condition for themselves. Learning about unfamiliar ideas and people drives our curiosity: from the sadistic jargon of politicians to the pressed lips of a victim of hate, there’s always more to see, more to tell, than what’s on the surface. My pursuit of a story is an addiction, one that I'll never break so long as there's more to understand, to explore, to humanize. 

Because what is reading and writing for, if not to really understand the human condition? To strip a person of expectation, to see them at their lowest, and try to understand? What is a story, if not empathy woven into experience?