What is my origin story? I’ve been really struggling with this concept all week. What singular moment changed me? Was it a good one or a bad one? Was it the day I first held a video camera for the first time? Was it growing up in a mixed, White-Latinx, bilingual household and the struggles of not fitting in with either demographic? Was it my diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder at 15 and subsequent hospitalization? Was it my kidnapping at age 18? Or the sexual assault I experienced at 20? Or meeting my wonderful partner and coming out of the closet at age 22? I think one event builds on the other, and through each experience, I’ve formed a new version of me, each experience is an origin story in itself. I struggled so much to pick a defining moment in my life that I built this prompt up in my head into something way bigger than it needed to be.
So, while I think it may be therapeutic to eventually write (or just create art in general) about each event that I feel shaped me into the 27 year old, somewhat functional adult I am now, I think I’ll start with a happy formative experience, when I fell in love with filmmaking.
For as long as I can remember I have been in love with art. I have loved art in all its many forms and expressing myself through the arts has practically become my third language. I started dancing when I was two years old (though somehow now I feel like I’m super awkward when I dance), but that was not nearly enough to satisfy my craving to be creative. As I grew older, I discovered the world of theater and realized that being on stage and a part of a large production was intoxicating to me.
I still remember what it felt like to fall in love with filmmaking. I was nine years old and had just joined a group called Youth Leadership in the Arts (YLA), a space of youth-led, multimedia political activism and artmaking. I was an apprehensive child, shy, and did not always make friends easily, but I immediately felt at home at YLA. This youth group taught me the value I held as a young Latina girl in a white-washed society. I was told that my voice mattered, and that people wanted to hear my message. My mentors at YLA made sure that I knew the history of political and social movements throughout history and understood what it meant to grow up with marginalized identities in the United States. It was through this group that I was brought into the world of arts and activism and from there, I never looked back.
Youth Leadership in the Arts also taught me the power of the media and the influence it can have on our society. I was very aware from a young age that when I turned on the television, there were no families that looked like mine: mixed race, bilingual, and low income. My experience, and even more so my identity, simply was not reflected back to me on screen. I began to learn more about white-washed media, lack of representation, negative depictions of characters, and harmful stereotypes and how this shaped young people’s perceptions of themselves and others. After being made aware of many injustices in the world around me, I was then handed a video camera for the first time. I remember being told I could make a project about something that inspired me. The initial excitement that came over me when that camera was placed in my hands is a permanent fixture in my memory. I felt like I had been given a piece of myself, a piece of power I could tap into and strengthen my voice. I realized a camera was a tool. I instantly fell in love. I became enthralled with every aspect of filmmaking, from writing a storyboard, to setting up the perfect shot and pressing that record button, to the countless hours in an editing room, I could not get enough of it all. Somehow, at nine years old, I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
My journey took some sharp turns, as mentioned in the first paragraph. I experienced some immense traumas, and it took me the majority of my twenties to get to where I am now, I’m not perfect nor am I immensely confident in myself most days. But I now recognize that my journey shaped me into the artist I am today. It will probably take years to continue to process some of the events that I have experienced and I’m starting to accept that fact as okay. So yeah, I think the me that we see now, was in part born the day she held that camera for the first time. I realized at that moment that I was meant to be an artist and I’ve never been able to let go of that euphoric feeling.
