My dad was eighteen, my mom was six- seventeen. And they just fell in love, right? But the funny thing was like, they couldn't speak to each other. So like, my dad was learning English, my mom was trying to learn Spanish and it was a really interesting experience.

So growing up, he didn't want us to learn Spanish because he got discriminated against and got bullied for having an accent. So he told us, he was like, I'm not gonna let my kids grow up and have an accent. Which sounds really crazy, but that's how it was growing up north. It was something different then living on the border.

And so I lived in Michigan until I was twelve, and then we moved to South Texas. And moving to South Texas, I lived in San Juan, Texas. So it's like in the RGV. And it was the first time - even though I hated it, right? Because I was a kid, being rebellious, like, I don't want to leave my friends. But it was the first time when I realized, I was like, oh, there are a lot more people like me out there.

So when I was in Michigan, I didn't have that sense of, like, identity, of culture because I was stuck between, like, oh, I'm white, but I'm also Hispanic. I'm not brown enough to be with the brown people, not white enough to hang out with the white people.

But then I went to South Texas and I just felt like I belonged.