I can’t handle school. I’m not smart enough. I can’t function. It stresses me out. I can’t see myself handling work or my career in general.

Everything builds up and destroys me. I can’t do anything. I’m just stuck there. And I hear papers screaming at me. And I feel everything falling apart. And I feel I’m to blame.

And I know they’ll be waiting. And I can’t run away.

-Cassandra Alexa

These ignorant ass rich White kids at my school make me so fucking mad. When we talk about race or about Mexican people specifically, the things they say and do make me embody a screeching teapot. Every day butterflies angrily chop at the insides of my stomach and I feel an anxiety and a sadness and an anger so powerful that it disturbs my whole world. It’s the ignorance of their words. It’s the lack of care and appreciation for my people. It’s the entitlement of the White man. It’s the erasure and exclusion of me and my people. It’s a screaming to be recognized and heard and empathized with. It’s the money or the mark of hood that divides me out of a room or out of a screening. It’s the desire to leave and be one with my people and my neighborhood. It’s arguments. It's subtle racism making People of Color The Boy Who Cried Wolf here. It’s not being counted. It’s stereotypes. It’s a lack of representation. It’s a lack of acknowledgment of our history and what makes us who we are in our blood and the suffering we face. It’s being their token. It’s being the odd one out. It’s feeling too stupid and too hood and too poor and too ethnic to feel like I belong here as a scholar or as a filmmaker. I feel so belittled sometimes. I feel so angry.

And I know it’s not my fault and that I should believe I deserve to be here and I deserve to be here just as much as the next kid and all this, but I don’t truly feel that sometimes.

I come back to my apartment and I just cry or I can’t figure out how to get my anger out.

-Cassandra Alexa