Hope Springs Eternal

Spring has finally cometh. Finally. With the weather has come an upswing in my mood caused by a few goings on worth mentioning. First my birthday is on Tuesday (04/02), and no, folks, it’s never too late to ask for my personal information so that you may bless with a gift of your choosing. Nah seriously though, aside from that, I also got my tax refund and it was sizeable: a little over 1,100 dollars. But the loyalists among my readership know that the good must be counterbalanced by its opposite. That refund money is going straight to the dentist, as years of dental neglect have left me missing a tooth adjacent to the front two (sorry, I don’t know the technical name for it).

Since I filled out my taxes on a whim (it had been years on top of years since I last filed), this was money I never expected to have, so to see it go doesn’t hurt nearly as much as if it were saved up incrementally. Besides, celibacy, is a hell a drug, and should I ever want to kick it habit so to speak, the hideous gap needs to be fixed like yesterday.

I’m still working at Whole Foods. It’s been a little over four months now, and everything is copacetic. I have become good friends with my co-workers, and aside from that I’ve been seeing more of my roommate. Initially, the social skills were so rusty that it took a good deal of blazing and drinking to even entertain the prospect of holding an extended conversation with him, or anyone else, in close quarters, but thankfully, I have been able to cut back on the Mary Jane, as well as the alcohol.

I stepped on the scale for the first time in months the other day and it read 192.5. This is about 10-12 pounds higher than my ideal weight of 180 lbs, but it’s nothing for me to tighten up on the eating and get back to exercising. I started doing pushups again and am up to the low 40’s if I from fresh to failure. I did some running yesterday, as well, and once I get some shoes that actually provide some ankle support, I’ll be going hard again on the fitness tip. I was in a complete, “get it right, and keep it tight” campaign around this time last year, where I wittled my body fat down to 10.9% and weighed a mere 174 lbs. I doubt I’ll get that obsessive with it this year, for a number a reasons, but I’ll make sure there won’t be any anxiety about taking the shirt off should the situation call for it this summer.

Though much of the same is still weighing me down, the aforementioned seasonal change and the goodness and warmth that accompanies it, has left me feeling lighter if you will, but under the surface here’s a list of things that I wish I could change:

My location (still have Georgia on my mind)

My finances (you know the medical, credit card, and loan debt, lack of disposable income)

My singleness (now that the tooth is getting fixed I kinda fancy having a womanfriend at some point)

While this is an abbreviated list, here is an equally abridged list of things that I’m happy about:

My independence

My bed (a queen sized mattress and friend, with extra plush bedding to match its regality)

The weather (while I don’t think I qualify as having seasonal affective disorder, the warmth definitely does make me happy). 

Statement of Purpose

The following is a statement of purpose I wrote after flirting with the idea of returning to grad school (again) to with the hopes of ultimately being a therapist. Since I haven't posted in a while, I figured I'd share this as the external prompt certainly helped me crank something out. Still waiting on the intrinsic motivation to alight for further traditional posts. 

__________

Most simply and broadly, the social work field as I understand it exists to provide services for those individuals and communities who seek to improve their quality of life across any number of societal spheres. As a profession it functions as a critical intervention against any number of complex ills that can maladaptively plague peoples of all backgrounds. Being a field that spans many disciplines, the syncretic nature of social work provides no shortage of entry points many of which stand in stark contrast to the profit over principle dogma and direction of many other domains that eschew essential human need in the pursuit of self-serving aims and objectives.

In general my purpose is to be of service as an agent of change; more specifically as a psychotherapist that will most ideally and impactfully benefit peoples of typically underserved and underrepresented communities whose direction may have been compromised amidst the chaotic and corrosive forces that virulently affect persons on any number of psychosocial levels. In short, there are many in need of basic services, yet due to a confluence of factors (e.g., limited access to and/or awareness of certain resources, or generationally entrenched and ingrained misperceptions of the field and its directives) these services may have gone overlooked or unaddressed altogether.

The social problem that most concerns me undoubtedly is the untreated abscess of mental illness that plagues society in general and minorities in particular. Unfortunately the festering sores of injustice affect access to treatment. When combined with deficiencies in awareness, they form a perilous coupling whose combustion is not spontaneous but on the contrary, is painfully predictable. The subterranean bubbling of suffering untold from both an individual and collective level, puts minorities especially, who already bear the brunt of many a spirit-breaking burden, at greater risk than their societal foils of pathologized behaviors that not only cripple chances for success as it is commonly understood, but exponentially amplify the latent potentiality for catastrophe. The prematurely and unnecessarily truncated potential of certain life outcomes would undoubtedly be serviced by someone whose unique set of experiences and inclinations would translate naturally in field of social work.

After indirectly experiencing such trauma matrilineally, it is my purpose to do what is within me to remedy this communal ill. My maternal grandmother not only committed suicide when my mother was in her youth, but the truth of the matter was swept under the proverbial rug for years, and this information was withheld from her until she was well into middle age. While the loss of a parent is indescribably traumatic, its cover not only masked the symptoms that would rule my mother’s own undiagnosed yet readily apparent depression in her adulthood, but also mirrored the aforementioned opacity that renders discussions of treatment silent amongst those who find themselves already on the outskirts of intervention. While religiosity has been an anchor to the black community for centuries, it also has doubled as an obstacle in the servicing of its mental health needs. While the pulpit and prayer books have been traditional home remedies so to speak, they are supplements to, not substitutes for clinical mental resources that are so often regarded as signs of weakness or in the black community especially. Moreover, if these essential dialogues are silenced as taboos in my family, one that reflective of so many black households, it stands to reason that similar silences echo in those like it.

As an advocate for minority affairs and mental health the MSW will allow me to act as a conduit, not only apprising said communities of these precious resources, but delivering them in a manner that is commensurate and consistent with their growing need. Moreover the distance that is maintained from the problem only serves to maintain an equidistance form the solution. As an aspiring clinician, I want to help close this gap. There are resources available to those who should have the intrapersonal wherewithal to take advantage of them and should be shared with those who may not.

Though I strive to service communities in need via traditional community mental health avenues, this aim is merely a reflective of the triage of tragedy. That is to say that is it far from an insular attempt to only serve those like me, but a rush to aid those who may need such services the most yet may be least likely to seek them out. Though I seek to increase access to the forgotten populations, I would be remiss and hypocritical to isolate and channel my efforts and energies towards those with whom I may share a mere phenotypic or narrative bond.

My main strength as it relates to the field is my naturally sensitive, empathetic, and intuitive nature. While in a hyper-masculinist culture these may be seen as weaknesses, my own positionality as a subject who has been no stranger to discrimination on a personal level and injustice on a systemic one would conversely function as assets in a clinical setting. It is my hope that these traits may attenuate the pain of individuals on a one-on-one level and that they may help effect change on an institutional one in the ultimate service of something greater than myself. My objective is to pull others as I push forward and to use my experiences and interpersonal insight and inclinations on a broader societal scale would be to leave a mark, no matter how faint, on the eventual uplift of those person(s) who may need help during their journey.

While I was raised in a middle-class black suburban household, my experiences to date in interacting with people have been a direct effort to counterbalance the miasmic and material shelter that was thrust upon me growing up. That is to say, my worldview is one informed by both college and untapped knowledge. Though I grew up in an affluent, mostly white neighborhood, I made it a point to venture beyond the city limits and immerse myself in the affairs and goings on of those who looked like me, but were from the other side of the tracks. This immersive affair with experiential awareness continued as an undergraduate and beyond to the point where my interpersonal conversance stands as a strength of which I am most proud. Though far from readily quantifiable or observable on paper, it could easily be argued that as nominally suggested by the field of social welfare that such social skills are just as important as any letter grade or score may be.

While I am acutely aware of my own identity, I am blind to difference and bound to commonality. That is to say, my range of experiences have helped foster a sense of oneness that elides centrifugal forces of otherness in favor or centripetal forces of sameness. In sum, people are the driving force in the field of social work (again as implied by its titular descriptives), and we have far more in common than not or that is typically realized.

It is my range of experience and relatability, grounded in an everpresent humility, honed by countless interactions amongst the rich and the wretched (to borrow from a phrase form famed psychiatrist Fantz Fanon), that gives me the unique potential to bridge gaps, to inter and intra personally introduce people to aspects of themselves and others to which they may have previously been ignorant. That is to say specifically for instance, my comfort level at a “high” class fundraising gala at the Waldorf=Astoria is the same as it is in the “low” (here I use the quotation marks to question the absurdly loaded arbitrariness of said constrastive distinctions) class ghetto of North Oakland, places I have been countless times (as a member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation and the Oremi mentoring program respectively). I have spent time in both circles which has endowed me with the capacity to relate to either who may be strangers to each other but are both common to me. (For the more visually inclined, one may picture a Venn Diagram whose interlocking overlap between two circles is the space I have occupied and mined for commonality.

Finally, though I have my times of extroverted ebullience, my natural tendency towards introversion has also endowed me with an ability to listen as opposed to simply waiting to talk, or worse yet, not hearing altogether and to learn rapidly. Numerous times, my friends have been nonplussed at my ability to recall the minute details of conversations years old that bear repeating in times of counsel and distress, and one even went to so far as to say that my ears are more like antennae registering and recording everything from the broad to the banal. This interpersonal fluidity, coupled with my desire to be of service as a beacon of hope for those lost in the darkness of tribulation would serve me well as future MSW candidate. Like most endeavors, my interest in social work is birth by an aim and buttressed by aptitude. In my particular case, the former is derived from a wholehearted interested in the welfare and wellbeing of others and the want to see them both secured, and the latter is derived from years of experience, both conventional and otherwise.

While graduate school in general and the pursuit of an MSW is undoubtedly a rigorous endeavor, it is an undertaking whose very rigor will most ideally yield to the vigor that I bring to the classroom. While some time may have passed since my foray into the ivory towers a near decade ago, critical thought knows no physical or temporal bounds, and it is a skillset that once learned is embedded in the psychic resources to be recalled at a moment’s notice and subjected to the will of those who been exposed to it. My indomitable will and work ethic will work hand in hand to not only maximize my chances for success at the graduate level, but far beyond, as I truly believe that the diligence and determination illustrated my by resumé, both academic and extracurricular will help me effect and influence social change. The MSW from USC’s top tier program will function as the breeding ground for the seeds of change to be planted to day in hopes of reaping the shared harvest of tomorrow. 

Back to it

Much has changed since my last entry. I ran into a good friend from high school a little over a month ago, and as my luck would (finally) have it, he was looking for a roommate. It didn’t take long for me to close on this one. I offered what little I could, and he accepted. With the shelter ordeal finally being over, I’ve just been getting used to normal living again. You know, not having to wake up at 6:30AM to be kicked out into freezing temperatures, no curfews, and most importantly, having my own space again has given me the liberty to use.

Though I am hardly a heavy weed smoker, on February 2^nd, I had bought some cheeba (while still at the shelter), and decided I was getting high, even if it meant I had to puff in my mother’s garage. That same day (a year to the day I got out of my friend’s living room and into a two bedroom in the Atlanta, might I add) turned out to be the move in date. If there was ever a time for a celebratory smoke it was then. Well that celebratory smoke turned into something of a habit for the rest of the month. I started drinking more than usual to compliment the high, but now that something of a tolerance has built the thrill is gone as they say.

On a brighter note, I am now re(eyeing) the prospects for sobriety, and that means putting down the cigarettes as well. I had about six months under my belt as I went from 3.27.12 to around October without smoking. The sad thing is I really don’t know, or at least have forgotten other ways to enjoy myself when left to my own devices. Of course there is the retail therapy that often leaves me feeling swell, but with about half of my income now going to rent, there isn’t much left over to play with. I bought a laptop, with a paycheck that was higher than average, and here’s to hope that it doesn’t put too much of a pinch or cast too dark a shadow over the spending for the next month, lest it will have to be returned (again). 

Brief Update.

During the last week temperatures have dipped (to a balmy five degrees this morning), and it seems the bitter cold has paralyzed my productivity for the time being. As things stand now, my main concern is staying warm and out of the way of the folks at the cramped, congested, overly crowded, and increasingly foul shelter. A couple of incompatible goals if there ever were some.

Last week however, I did put together some very random thoughts that hopefully will form the groundwork for the memoir. My goal is to have something full length and publishable before I would have had my Ph.D. (assuming normative time, Spring 2014). Now let me never speak of said memoir again, until it is complete.

Diagnosed

"Bipolar. Extremely manic to be precise," That was the diagnosis that required about thirty seconds of Dr. Henderson’s sustained observation. His professional demeanor seemed a bit shaken, if not altogether troubled and wholly disturbed by the mass exodus of verbiage, equal parts desultory rant and enraged black thought that was the culmination and height of my first episode as he called it. But this was not a TV show, it was my life, and it would be for the better part of the next decade.  

He had but one question for my concerned parents: “Is he always like this?” My parents, who put aside decades of marital distance for their son in crisis, were nonplussed by his query, and equally shaken by my recent behavior. 

Certainly, I was not always like this, in fact, all reports pointed to mania's diametric opposite. Considerations of my countenance and comportment from my earliest kindergarten reports to those who knew me well had always began with that terribly vague word, "quiet." In retrospect it must have been the 23 years of calm before the storm, the eye/I of which would be topic of many a discussion involving from those close to me to detached clinicians. 

Maybe it was genetic predisposition as my mother's brother, Darrell, is bipolar, and was also diagnosed in his early twenties. Whatever the case may be, no one, least of all myself saw it coming, or if anyone did little was made of the perfect storm of unsutured angst and unexpected circumstance that bore my first steps into troubled waters. 

In retrospect mentions and recollections of a dyadic personality were noted by my mother as she recalled these aforementioned teacher reports that always had me pegged as acutely quiet, very studious, and always respectful. She told me of how she nearly asked the teachers at their subsequent conferences if they had the right child identified on paper. To hear her tell it, as soon I as came home from the academic bootcamp the same child they had pegged as "a pleasure to have in class" threw toys and caution to the wind, roughhousing with my sister Jessica, and raising the decibel level at our quaint Jamaica Plain duplex somewhere between jackhammer and jet engine. Certainly this was not the keeper of the inside voice she had been informed.

Embracing Stability

As of a few days ago, I hit the one month mark at the shelter. Combine this with close to two solid months of work, and you have the recipe for stability, at least relatively speaking in my case. While there is an impending move in a couple of months, at which time my three months of shelter-dom will have expired, I have come to realize that this is what stability feels like. At first it felt incredibly predictable and terribly monotonous, but after some thinking, it seems this is what normal people do on the daily. For someone whose only stability has been instability for quite some time, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t require some getting used to. Part of me feels like I should be awaiting the next step, the next move, the next big thing, but the part of me that craves normalcy and a return to a certain level of functioning realizes the necessity of said stability.

I read somewhere that once incarcerated, especially at a young age, inmates will mimic the incarcerated lifestyle to which they had become accustomed on the outside as well. It struck me that there is most likely a corollary with my circumstance as well. After being “locked down” in any number of institutions across three states, there comes with a tendency for flight and preparation for it. For whatever reason many of my manic episodes have seen me purge close to all of my possessions at any given time, inclusive of, but not limited to clothes, jewelry, electronics (e.g., phones, video games, DVD’s etc.), furniture, and personal affects either by giving them away, many times to perfect strangers, or by simply tossing them in the trash. While the point of this entry isn’t to psychologize this particular behavior, because it does seem so out there, I’ll just say the purging helped me find a measure of control during periods when I had little control over anything else, with my mental stability being atop that list. However, as it relates to my flightiness, this ongoing process of destroying and rebuilding ad nauseum made picking up and moving at a whim all the easier.

Since I am resolved to establish myself, I am doing all that I can to keep things stable because there are certain things that I do wish I still had, despite my preference towards minimalism. Starting over again and again can be burdensome in its own right, to the point where the excitement of newness has yielded to the tedium of stability. Though it feels like groundhog’s day, and will until I move out of the shelter, this period is giving me a chance to 1) save money 2) embrace the camaraderie of those around me and 3) enjoy the sense of pride that comes with doing things without having to lean on family and friends for assisted living situations.

My everyday routine looks something like this.

1)      Get up at 6:30 AM

2)      Leave the shelter by 7:45 AM at the latest (usually earlier as I get antsy or annoyed with the cramped congestion of the morning)

3)      Take the bus to the library and chill there until it’s time to go to work

4)      Return to the shelter in the PM, and prepare to do it all again

In between there is a lot of waiting and walking. The former has given me patience as I am often forced to wait for places to open, buses to come, and shifts to start. The latter is my newfound preferred mode of exercise, one that is cheap, peaceful, and a metaphor for life. Outside of work, I probably walk a couple of miles per day, and though it’s slow (relatively speaking, despite my typically speedy gait) with one foot in front of the other, eventually I reach my destination.  That’s how I have come to see my goals in general; they are coming to fruition, gradually materializing upon the horizon of hope and happiness.

The Dream Team

Despite feeling constricted by the cramped quarters at the shelter, my social worker, Antonio, reminded me how much progress has been and is being made. Though as of late it hasn’t been as easy for me to recognize strides, with  the productive pre-holiday trajectory tapering off around the week of Christmas, he was quick to note that how my overall demeanor and diligence as it regards filling out application after application (e.g., for  housing and transportation), have brought me to a juncture far removed from where I was even a month ago. As always he helped to reframe the plateau that I’m currently experiencing as a place to bask in the comfort of no longer having to worry whether things will work out at the job (I was voted on the team, after a 40 day probationary period).

Things are slowly becoming routinized at the shelter, which for the sake of stability bodes well. Despite having a backlog of paperwork to fill-out and file, my temperament has remained upbeat. Though it is far from ideal, the living situation is only temporary. Furthermore, it is an improvement and an upgrade from my previous dwelling as far as my mental hygiene and sanity are concerned. I have two months left to save money before my time at the shelter expires, and to that end, I saved nearly one hundred dollars out of my last paycheck for six hundred. Thankfully, with the tapering of the productivity has come with it a familiarity of having money and means to the extent that it doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket. I cleaned out my cubby at the shelter, and folded all of my clothes to find that I had done quite the job finding the winter sales at every outlet within bussing distance. There aren’t any items on my wish list that are worth delaying the prospect of having my own place in a couple of months, which feels incredibly good to say.

I would be remiss were I not to note that the dream team is in place. My therapist, Francis, has always been exceptional during the two years or so that we have worked together. We did about a year together pre-Atlanta, and have worked diligently since last Fall towards maintaining my wellness. Though the thought is hardly new, the company you keep, especially for those in situations similar to mine, is incredibly important and instructive in determining the course and of things.

My prescriber is excellent as well, and she rounds out the diverse team that has my back. She is a younger white woman, with all the credentials in the book (though I am not sure of her institutional training, just what is intuited from our monthly meetings suggests she is top notch). My aforementioned social worker, Antonio, has a positivity and expertise that belies his young age.  Francis, who bears a striking resemblance to a young (albeit taller) Bruce Lee, has what positive psychologists call, a high vegal tone, meaning he is without fail or effort seemingly is always upbeat and cheerful. Though getting to appointments puts me at the mercy of the cold and the bus schedule, these are my clinical anchors for whom I am grateful. On the job front with some effort and the kind ways of my co-workers the attitude I once had, “Work to make money, not friends” attitude has dissipated, and were it not for me misplacing a co-worker’s number, I would have had an outing to list atop my updates.

I am happy to report that I click with all of the people with whom I have chosen to surround myself. The links in the chain are all equally strong, and the chemistry amongst the variables in the equation seem to be setting up for a most productive reaction.