Our Written Stories

I have lived in Los Angeles all my life. For years I have felt drained because of inner city factors. Cities, like Los Angeles, are characterized by poverty among minority groups, which have become cross-generational, poor health (including addiction), community segregation (which I feel is the cause of so much gang violence), etc. 

Throughout my life many people have struggled with addiction, which has directly affected me in many ways. My Father was one of the first people in my life with a major addiction. My Dad became addicted after he was released from prison and his mother and father both died within a couple of weeks of each other. This caused him emotional damage since he wasn’t able to see them before they passed due to him being incarcerated. My Dad has always been a great man, but the drugs started to affect him negatively which changed my life drastically. I was 16 and I dropped out of regular High School and went to continuation school so I could finish earlier. I wanted to finish High School earlier in order to get a job. I had to pick up two jobs to help my mom pay the mortgage because my dad’s drug addiction stopped him from being able to obtain and maintain employment. I enrolled in Community College at 17 and was on a good path until my dad’s addiction caused his moods to change. This affected me because he began to kick me and my mom out of our own home, which we paid for. I was forced to get hotel rooms about once a week in order to stay away from him for a couple of days while he was going through drug induced psychosis. This caused me to fall into alcoholism and begin to not take my schooling seriously. One of the traits of children of addicts is that they become addicts themselves or tend to get into relationships with people with addictions. My Dad was severely hurt in a gang altercation which caused him to change his life. He has not drank or done drugs in years and now works in Harm Reduction helping people with addiction obtain medication and Harm Reduction kits.

My Uncle Freddy was an addict throughout his entire life. He was a veteran and became addicted to heroin at a noticeably young age. He was constantly in and out of prison with my father, but the last time he was released was in 2021 and was on the right track. My dad had already been clean for a couple of years, and he let my uncle live with us. We got him a job, a new car, he was meeting new people, but one day he got up and said he was moving out. The next morning, we received a phone call that he was found in a drug house dead due to fentanyl overdose. This is why I feel the distribution of overdose reversal supplies is so important. My Uncle died of an overdose using a drug he was not even addicted to. This instance caused a vast amount of self-destruction in my life and caused me to become extremely depressed. I took a break from school that year which caused a major delay in my completion. It is now 2023 and I am finishing with my classes in December. I never thought I would have made it to this point in my life because of the pain and struggle I had to endure. 
My education is so important to me because of all of the factors that I have had to live through that were put in place to keep me away from education as a colored person in Los Angeles. 

My education is so important to me because I know all the factors that were put in place to keep me away from education that I have had to live through as a person of color in Los Angeles. My passion now consists of doing anything to educate myself as well as doing anything to help people, especially people of color, who are struggling in my community. My family and I are now extremely involved in the distribution of overdose reversal supplies as well as general resources for those in our community. Every member of my family is part of an organization that helps different populations. My father and my partner both work in Harm Reduction, my Mother works with youth who are at risk of joining gangs, and I work with foster youth. I believe all social work is important and necessary to keep society going. For someone struggling with addiction I would suggest if they were not ready to seek help for recovery then they should make sure they do their drugs the safest way possible. Not using alone is vital to survival. Making sure reverse overdose tools are present in the place of use is important. I believe for someone who is ready to recover it is important to talk to someone about traumas and other triggers that have caused the drug use. I have repeatedly seen loved ones fall into addiction because of severe hardships in life. Talking about these things with people that understand you and have had the same struggles is very important for recovery. 

~Katrina

Grief is ugly. It is a rollercoaster of emotions that never ends. This rollercoaster may slow down but doesn’t stop. One cannot fully understand the journey of grief until being faced with the loss of a loved one. Personally, I didn’t fully grasp the impact that a loss may have until I lost my dad 10 months ago. It still crushes me just like the very moment I witnessed him take his last breath. My dad was and continues to be my hero and motivation. His story inspires me every day and he is the very reason why I decided to continue pursuing my degree. I began my first semester at CSULA 3 days after laying my dad to rest. This has been by far the most difficult stage in my life. I have been forced to push myself to get through assignments when all I really wanted to do was lay in bed and drown in misery. One thing I have taken from this journey of grief is the transition that happens in our life. The fact that the world keeps spinning and our days continue as if nothing happened really hits hard. I often hear, “Life goes on” and that indeed is the worst part of grief. Life keeps going without the person you love in it and it’s like having to relearn how to live. Going through this, I have learned that it is much easier on the soul when we give ourselves grace. A moment to breathe and tell ourselves, “One day at a time” or “It’s ok to feel all the feelings.” I still deal with random spells of sadness. I can be watching TV or driving and have memories come to me that will either make me smile or cry. Sometimes both. Grief shows us that death and what comes with it should be spoken about more openly. My dad continues to send me signs that he is with me, his choice of showing presence has been brown butterflies. This is a change that we all must learn to navigate and learn from.

~ Liliana

I have lived in the 626 area my entire life and I have always been around Asian people. The most hurtful experience I have as an Asian American was when I was at the metro station in LA, during 2016 when Trump was running for president. An old white man came up to me while I was with my friend, and he firmly told me “I’m a Trump supporter” and then walked away. That experience was very scary for me because I never experienced anything like that before. Another experience is that as a child, I was always assumed to be smart just because I was a good student that fit the “all Asians are smart” stereotype. Often, classmates of other ethnicities would depend on me to help them with their classwork and homework just because I was getting good grades and behaved quietly in class. I used to be very good at math until I got to Algebra 2 honors in high school. However, before that I would be placed in the classes with the kids that performed with the highest scores on standardized tests. From 5th grade to 7th grade, I was in the combo class with about 10-12 other students that were in my grade and then a class full of 20-30 other students one higher grade up. I even remember during one year, we were just assigned math classwork and homework, and the teacher had to go teach the higher grade in our class while my classmates and I taught ourselves and finished both the classwork and homework in class. Although I did get good grades in elementary to middle school, I honestly never understood what I was learning in class most of the time, but I just wanted to do well in school. Once I got to college level classes, I realized I needed to work harder in school, because my grades were not what I wanted. Because I believed I was smart when I was young, I was unable to develop a good studying etiquette for school. The “all Asians are smart” stereotype is harmful because it dismisses Asian students who are struggling in school. 

~Kayla

My name is Dani Lagunas I’m a non-binary transfer student from Pomona, Ca that’s attending Cal State La to get my Bachelors in Sociology and then looking to achieve a Masters to get into Social Work. I started this educational journey because of my diagnosis with HIV, it was a really big struggle at that time and it led to severe depression and since I didn’t have the proper resources to help with my mental health it took a really big impact on my health. I stopped taking my medications and I had nobody that I felt I could reach out to. It ended up developing into AIDS and I almost lost my life because of it. I spent a month in quarantine in a hospital because they couldn’t risk anyone giving me any sort of illness, even if it was just a simple cold. My immune system was that low, I lost vision in my left eye and my body couldn’t hold any nutrients, so I had lost so much weight, I ended up at 116 lbs.

Coming out of it I was able to be connected to a clinic that specialized in cases like mine, and they had in turn connected me to counseling and the proper medications that I needed to properly take care of myself. Therapy helped a lot and because of it I had this thought that maybe I could help others who are going through the same issues I had. That’s why I decided to go back to school. I thought that if I could help even just one person navigate this situation then my experiences would at least mean something. I came to Cal State La to try and make some change with anyone living with this illness. While the campus itself is very diverse I still don’t think a lot of people are educated on HIV/Aids and for those students who are dealing with the diagnosis, if they were anything like me, they are afraid to reach out.

I was able to create my own support system that has always been by my side ever since this whole thing happened. While I still struggle with some mental health issues, it’s nothing to how it used to be. I now have an idea of what I want for my life and I’m working hard to get to it. If I could help others in the process that would be even better. 

I was eighteen years old when I had my first daughter, a reason to fight for my dreams. Being a young woman, plus a Hispanic mother, I knew there was no giving up, and that I must work harder for a better lifestyle. I went to school to become a dental hygienist in 2006. I was a full-time student in a junior college for two years, then went to hygiene school for a little longer than two years and finished in 2014. I now have three daughters, ages nineteen years old, ten years old, and four years old.

When I was first in school, I got onto welfare and assistance to help my little family out. It was hard for me, since I was a single mother and took over a heavy course load. My family was supportive and made sure they helped as much as possible. I went back to school to get her hygiene license, where I met my husband and continued with my education. My husband's family and mine have helped me with my oldest daughter by being supportive. My struggles of being a mom while managing time divided into work, school, and family was challenging. You would think it would change once I was married, but that;s when my younger two daughters came along and joined my journey. I graduated and continue polishing myself by taking more courses to expand my career.

There is a stigma of thinking all parents have figured it out, but realistically it's so hard, and there are many things to worry about to ensure we complete everything. My story is an example that life happens; the clue is not to give up even when time becomes challenging. I wish we knew a better way to guide parents with all the help as much as possible.

~Andrea

Since I’ve lived in San Gabriel Valley all my life where I’m constantly surrounded by fellow Asian Americans, the discriminations and negative experiences I faced as an Asian American isn’t as frequent, hurtful, nor blatant as the ones that other Asians face in other parts of the world. When I recount my negative experiences as a person of East Asian descent, I realize that most of them were related to my external appearance, the way I talk and how I spend my day-to-day life on a personal level. Since I was young, I often be laughed at and get comments like “Why is your skin so yellow?” or “Your eyes are so small! Can you even see?” There would be some people who tried to imitate my eye shape by pulling on the ends of their eyes to make their eyes smaller. Another experience is when my high school classmates comment on how “weird” it is that I sleep on the floor instead of using a bed. When I told them that’s normal in Japanese culture to sleep on the floor, they didn’t believe me and simply thought I was too embarrassed to admit that my family was too poor to purchase beds. There were also multiple times when people thought I recently moved from Japan because of the way how I speak English which was a little different from the typical Californian accent. Often times, even when I repeatedly told them that I was born and raised here, just my first language was Japanese, people wouldn’t believe me. These experiences affected me on a personal level, leading me be very self-conscious and hyper-aware of how I looked and spoke. After high school, I started to hide the fact that I don’t use beds from people, I started to use whitening skin products so that I won’t look so yellow, and practiced enunciating English words so I don’t sound Asian.

~Akane

 Hello, I am Trisha Panganiban I have been diagnosed with depression, social anxiety, complex PTSD. I am currently dealing with all three conditions stated previously. I am not being treated at the moment. The CSULA experience has been awful, CAP's has limited staff and doesn’t allow students to make regular therapy appointments. I often had to wait at least a month until my next appointment, and they don’t communicate well with students either. I feel CSULA lacks in supporting students dealing with mental health. I do not feel stigmatized because I keep my diagnoses to myself. Some things that can be done to better support us is add more therapists to the CAPS team, reopen all of the health departments at the SHC (dental primarily) so students can get all their needs taken care of, holistically.

~Trisha

 Hi my name is Michelle, I have been diagnosed with MDD, PTSD, and BPD. I am currently dealing with depression,stress, and impulsivity. At the moment I am not being treated for any mainly because I have not seeked out a therapist for this year. I am currently doing well this year. Dealing with mental health and my experience at CSULA is the fact that I allow assignments to be piled up because I have a hard time getting to them or understanding the material. I’m so focused on my personal life at times that when I switch to school mode I have a lot to catch up on. Whether or not I believe CSULA has been supportive of students dealing with mental health, no, I mean I know the teachers can accommodate but CSULA support feels very generalized. Not saying they should be super personalized for each student but they make me feel as if their support is like a bandaid over a deep wound. I do not feel stigmatized on campus because I always keep to myself. Honestly, I don’t expect students to help me especially since I feel like we're all in the same boat. I wish faculty could continue making their lesson plans easy and manageable. It’s hard when professors assign super long readings and get upset when someone barely reads it or assigns multiple work and doesn't accept late work.  

~Michelle