As a kid, I was always told to look at the bright side of things and to be thankful for what I had. As I grew older, I realized that accomplishing something like this was not going to be as simple as it sounded. My anxiety started at the young and innocent age of four. At that age, most kids would be living the best years of their lives, but I had an exceptionally stressful childhood. Trying to achieve a relatively stress-free life was more than I bargained for.

Ten years ago, I lived in a small apartment with my single mom and my sister. We lived in upstate New York at the time, and my mom could barely afford to pay rent. I was just a kid, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that my mother was overwhelmingly stressed. Unfortunately, some of her stress rubbed off onto me and my sister. Our entire family suffered from the disease of poverty and anxiety. Luckily, our mother was amazing and never gave up. Her courage shaped me and my sister into young adults. She worked hard to keep us under a roof, and would soon graduate from Northeastern University as an undergraduate.

We lived in our cramped apartment for about four years. In that apartment, my anxiety and stress grew. It is also where I learned how to deal with my stress. We couldn’t afford counselors, so I came up with my own ways to fight off my anxiety. One of these ways was through art, a way to express my emotions clearly in a way that no one else would understand, but myself. No matter what you chose to put on that dull, white piece of paper, you would make it your own. You would make it an escape from reality, a realm that only you, the creator, would understand. Drawing was something that I would do all day long. It helped me do away  with stress, and gave me an opportunity to be myself.

Ten years later, I now attend a high school in Massachusetts. My mom got married, I have another sister, and pretty soon I will have to start looking at colleges. The only thing that stayed the same in my life is having the ability to eradicate anxiety with something I love doing. Art formed me into the person I am today. It is easy for me to express myself, and I have a relatively positive standpoint on life. Art helped me become a very optimistic person. In fact, now I realize that achieving that impossible dream of having a stress-free life is not that hard after all.