This year has been a brutal lesson in what it means to be twenty-one, navigating a city in turmoil and the quiet devastation of losing my anchor. Yet, in the echoes of chaos and grief, I’ve found a fierce resolve to turn my art into a record of our struggle, capturing the resilience I see even when the world feels like it's trying to break us. It's a heavy burden, but for the first time, I feel like I'm not just surviving, I'm truly creating meaning from it.