When I was a child, my family would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, and the most conventional answer I always gave them was, “I want to help people.” There was a truth to that, I always planned to be a mental health counselor, and I will one day exert every hue of my soul into each and every one of my clients, but more specifically, I want to experience the poetry of being human. I didn’t choose mental health counseling for the wealth or for some contemporary sociocultural statement of healing my own trauma through the healing of others. I choose counseling to be enveloped by the fog of the other, not only to experience the romanticized, clichéd mess that encompasses tragic literary figures and humans alike, but the actual dysfunction and pain one carries. What disenchants the romantic is what I want to witness, and I will find humane compassion and acceptance for the most injured soul. I want to know their pain and reflect that the poetry of being human is simply in the being and the redemption. The hereness and the preservation of humanity within the individual is the essence of mental health counseling and what my life’s work will be.

Hope is love’s most enduring form. There is nothing more romantic and invigorating than the idea of rebellion and the amelioration that follows the rising fists. However, it can also be nothing more than just romantic ideas that remain passive among abandoned dreams. But I am no such torpid believer. I want my impact to be of benevolence and good-will, specifically in mental health care, for I once was lost in the mire of disillusion without guidance. I want to be the lighthouse, guiding those amid the tempest to shore. With your help, I can be the inevitability of change. As I have alluded, I have not always been so impassioned by my circumstances. My childhood was unconventional and certainly not ideal. My mother preferred to maintain a distance, and my father worked as an international truck driver, so I had to reside with my grandparents most of the time. When my mother died of breast cancer, my youthful innocence expired. I visited my father on the weekends, but he emotionally, physically, and psychologically abused me. My father would erupt in volcanic rage and instantaneously expound in exorcistic intervals. To my trepid consternation, that was the life I knew. I learned to dread the weekends, and by extension, living. I was already rendered insecure by my humiliating weight, but the abuse from my father made my anxiety all the more debilitating. All the while my grandparents wilted like beautiful flowers, and I was upheld to responsibility. I prepared their meals, I washed their clothes, and I toiled with all the house-work whilst keeping my grades saintly for their approval. I grew bitter, ill-willed, and angry with the inescapable everything. In translation of my difficult home-life, anger festered into self-loathing. Eventually, my hard work to maintain their health delivered futility. My grandfather was institutionalized, and my grandmother was no longer self-sufficient. When my paternal aunt, Julie, came into our lives, she arrived with a cohort of family members seeking a withheld inheritance. With ardent protests from me and my grandmother, my aunt Julie furthered her invasions, going as far as to gravely threaten my life with a knife, leaving me traumatized thereafter. My battle with mental health has been my most challenging adversity but my greatest redemption. In my darkness and despondency, I sought guidance and solace in mental health counseling. Through a harrowing journey, I found closure and acceptance. In reflection and vulnerability, it was possible to heal. Of course, I acknowledge that no trauma I sustained will ever be right or validated, and the post-traumatic agony is in no tangible way good or justifiable. Yet, in my acceptance, I choose mercy instead of bitterness. I forgave my abusers and sought to bandage the severed relationships. Nothing will ever be the same after trauma, but one can keep healing and achieve the once impossible. My search for meaning in my suffering is why I am enthralled in the subject of mental health. I am alarmed at how massively undermined mental health is in modern America. Mental health is as significant as physical health. The fact that mental health counselors or just the practice of maintaining one’s mental health are not as common as physical healthcare is astounding. More importantly, I witness every day a disturbing trend in public education. Children and adolescents are coming from despairingly dysfunctional homes and it's clear that guidance counselors and education administrators do not dawn the proper concern. I know from experience that it can be daunting to voice your feelings and fears to authority figures, and it especially does not aid how rare it is to find someone who can validate your concerns and hear you out. When my current legal guardian was battling custody from my abusive father with social services, I often felt left out of important discussions that concerned me and whom I felt most protected to stay with. Even my case directors failed to give the proper validation at times, and I felt I was in a fight with the system. I felt conspired against and orphaned. My experiences have brought me to the conclusion that there is a virulent plague of toxicity, dysfunction, and corruption in today’s society. I once was under inhumane conditions, and I am extraordinarily fortunate to break the cycle of abuse. However, I simply cannot remain grateful and return to normalcy. I want to share my enlightenment, and that is why I decided I want to pursue a career in mental health care. Not only in mental health counseling, but I want to publish my own concerns about society and my solutions. I want to publish fiction that is indicative and didactic, and the biographical tellings of my experiences and how I found light in the void of crisis and self-deception. I want to advocate for mental health and the right to pursue balance and health. Mental health care is a human right, and I will state the innate fact that our feelings and thoughts deserve to be validated regardless of opposition. I will be a voice for those who cannot speak and the sense of validation for those who do not know where to seek it. It is not the song; it is the singing. It is the action that we take as individuals and the self-amelioration and self-love that heralds the dawn to split the night from the day. Activism, the advocacy of mental-health and progress, is an act of love, a compassion most endearing and essential to the human experience. However, such enlightening conclusions would have never reached me if I had not yielded to change and acceptance imperative for healing. I want my voice, my action to be of healing, to be the amelioration for humanity. Through me, I want to help you as well, the person reading this message. Every living being deserves understanding and acceptance. Some may call it folly, but it is my bold purpose and duty.

Scholarly pedagogy is a noble pursuit for every student, and it is a disheartening reality that many take their education for granted. Many encounter unrefined and monotonous coursework that has not yet stimulated their growth. Our school system is imperfect, but our methodology is not merely the arithmetic of a calculus class; it is the burgeoning nexus of self-identification and transition, the impassioning of knowledge, and the promise of the amelioration of tomorrow. With the epiphanies of my student-life, education is immutable to my individuality. I recall the memories of my childhood, wherein youth I lost my innocence in the scorn of the bellicose elementary recess. There I learned the suffering of being different and discordant in whimsical uniqueness. Outcasted and turgid with anger, only in the subsequent years was I awakened to my folly. I learned to accept myself, and I realized my inherent volition. Not only did my acceptance effuse health, but it evinced the invaluable temerity of my individuality. I learned to appreciate other’s differences and to extol my own. Since then, I have not only simply met incongruous individuals, but I have known the very animation of their souls. My erudite teachings provided a connection with others, which vitalized the fruition of life and appreciation for independence. Education is not just the shared coiling of sinew, but it is the blossoming coalescence of ourselves. There is a healthy addiction to learning and growing once you realize it is possible to do so. One benefit of our human strength is our ability to raise our hands and question. To question and ponder is simply to live. The intended goal of our instructions is to skepticize and to allow the process of information and expand it into a stream of curiosity. When there is a curious mind, there will be a passion for understanding the external reality and an allowance of the questioning, inner-self to accentuate. Our teachings and knowledge bring us together in omniscience, and together the human race is liberated from the bondage of ignorance. Education is not a phlegmatic directive but a tender act of affection and humanity. Although schooling is necessary, the system is flawed. The Limiting dress codes in some districts have ridiculous mandates, crucial history is left out, archaic textbooks lead our classrooms instead of critical discussions, and the lack of focus on the individual student and personalized learning is criminal. My personal experiences with harassment and the common ignorance of mental health in America’s school system is alarming. However, the beauty of imperfection is the potential for redemption and righteousness. Our education system has not only taught me information but the possibility for progress through the action of recognizing the faults and the importance of addressing these issues of today so they can be justified for tomorrow. Out pedagogy is didactic in not just the inherent lectures, but the bildungsroman journey every student endures, our drive of intelligence, and the bold path to our future.

Music is the calling of the soul, but much more than that, it is the human lyric. The playlist I have accreted reflects not only the inner-resistance of the human spirit but the song our hearts verse in the acquisition of righteousness. My inspiration song, “Achilles Come Down,” is a mantra of inner-conversation, for the most powerful change and insurgence starts within. Not only is this one song a rebellion song, but this playlist is a calling for common humanity and the emergence of ineffable righteousness. Music is the strident, calling poetry, and the boldest avowal and testament of mankind.

The secular and holy pain of rejection asperses a man’s integrity and mocks his endurance. Ramparts and fetters hold an immensity but will not entirely trammel. Rejection is an immutable aspect of myself, but my talisman of empathy and goodwill. The rejection of inclusion from my father, my grandmother’s denial of my feelings, and the ultimate rejection of myself concluded in a tumultuous spiral and the redemption of my life. My father and I’s relationship had always suffered from his mental illness and his total negligence of its existence. Although countless medical professionals expressed their empathic objections, my father remained in denial. His mood swings were only exponentially worse when he discovered he had pancreatic cancer. My father was no longer eligible for employment, but social security would now allow him his benefits. Thus he lost his home, and he had to move in with my grandmother and me. His violence was only burgeoning, and I was a victim of his abuse. As a young teenager, it traumatized me to see my father’s schizophrenic wrath. It reached its climax when I had to defend myself, and the police came. The police wrongly sided with my father, but that day I was taken away to my maternal family and DSS. For a while, my father and I’s relationship seemed to recover. We attended therapy, but my father would never allow the session to continue for long. His rage would erupt in volcanic escalations, and consternation would be mine to experience. I ended up patching things over rather timorously, but we had some conclusions that were filial. However, it was not long before things went awry. He had called me many times before therapy to belligerently rant about how I was worthless to him, how he wished my death, and inappropriate sentences I cannot reiterate in my writings. Eventually, he disowned me as his son. With all my patience and pleading, my father was unable to see past his perspective. I understand my father does not ultimately hate me, for he has pushed countless friends and family to this extremity. It is only an act of self-destruction and fruitless escape. My father deprived me of a normal childhood and denied me a benevolent father. My pain from him is insurmountable and agonizing. Although I lived with my father on the weekends, my father was not available to support me during the week. My mother passed on at the age of eight, so my grandparents took me in. I developed a close attachment with both of them, and I felt, for once, security. However, my grandmother, Nana, was by far the mother figure of my life. Our connection was endearing, and I trusted her above anyone else. However, that meant she saw the heart of my father and I’s relationship. My grandmother always supported me, and she knew my father was not sane. However, she was oddly calloused when it came to my residence with my maternal family. I understood that my father was her son, but I could not comprehend my grandmother’s animosity with my move. However, it was when I was older that I understood. When I left my grandmother, it split a gulf between her and me. We had always been together, but we no longer were. I recall many calls where my grandmother argued my reasoning for moving and exclaimed her biased objections. The calls always ended in Nana hanging up. I felt disrespected, but I always accepted her apology. I knew she must have felt abandoned and alone. However, my Nana passed away, and I lost the opportunity to ever talk the situation out with her. We left things on good terms, but I mourn to this day. I never got closure from my grandmother, and I never was able to truly help her see what my father had done to me. Ultimately, my grandmother was selfish. She wanted me in her care, but my grandmother misunderstood I was unsafe under a roof shared with my father. Rejection laid in even her demise. My life’s circumstances brought me into the darkness of suffering. I was once a product of my environment. I could not understand my father’s malice, my paternal family’s slights, and why the events all happened to me. In my confusion, I amassed ignoble coping mechanisms. I grew turgid with emotion, entrapping the stress within the very depths of my heart. I felt almost unworthy of my life, and somehow there was an internal, rolling darkness inside of me. I felt that everything was my fault, and I somehow deserved the torment. Instead of facing my emotions, I decided to attempt to escape. I refused the process of affirmation and healing. The accretion of anxiety and turmoil eventually became too much for my strength to bear. I found my way into counseling, and suddenly escape was futile. Mercy was shown, and justice felt like acceptance. I found liberation in the allowance of pain. I did not have to suffer alone or ignore the pain itself. I could feel it, and I could cry and release my anger in healthy, productive ways. I no longer had to escape, for I could go forth and through. There is liberation in pain if acceptance only follows. Rejection is not only meant to be felt but necessary to know one’s mind. I believe my rejection is the reason for my aspiration to become a mental health counselor. Instead of allowing myself to succumb to suffering, I decided to find meaning in my pain. I chose to perceive my rejection as the greatest form of mercy. Rejection can lead to meditation, soul-searching, and redemption. My redemption lies in my rejection, and I find freedom in the wisdom I now possess. Rejection is my greatest adversary, but I spare it the hatred, for I am greater than any anguish. I define myself.

It is said to be true that failure is the pedagogical hallmark of learning and wisdom. Although a lot of my mire accreted through abuse and neglect, failure was the coping machination I choose and ultimately learned from. My failure in forgiveness and acceptance has been my wisest teacher, and I have been its loyal apprentice. I lived in familiarity with death for most of my young life. My mother’s death was oppressingly traumatic, but my domestic situation only distended further. My father and I had a very complicated relationship at the time. My father’s mental state endowed him with inexorable mood-swings. My father’s psychological and physical abuse could erupt in volcanic rage to my trepid consternation, and instantaneously he would expound in exorcistic intervals. My relationship with his sister, my aunt Julie, was similar. I cannot explain the circumstances of how she entered my life in 2017, for my words are limited. However, Julie treated me with cruelness and total disregard for my humanity. I had to call the police on Julie to protect my grandmother’s residence, and she exploited my youth as a weakness to the policewoman and lied that I did not reside in my own home. Later on, when I sought to make amends with my aunt Julie, she physically assaulted me and almost killed me with a knife. These unfair situations were, of course, not due to any personal fault, but the falter of their civility and mentality. I grew turgid with fear and betrayal over the actions of my supposed loved ones. However, my fear turned into fury, and this righteous indignation transformed into hate. My emotions constructed bitter tension with my father, and I found myself lost. I refused myself a healthy outlet of emotion, and I choose to captivate my torment into myself. Instead of allowing myself to feel the pain, I choose to suffer alone. I choose to distance and to implode rather than letting go and being vulnerable enough to reach out for connection and help. However, I found that this was ultimately self-destructive. My abuse was undeniable, but I further tortured my sanity by my grievous neglect of mental health. When someone is in the depths of darkness and blind in misery, it is themselves who gives off the light and the inner-strength to see again. I learned that pain was inevitable, and nothing could ever make what happened to me right or justifiable, but refusing myself to accept and let go was unbearably circuitous. I had failed to forgive, so through my self-actualizing pondering, I finally choose mercy. I started to understand my family members were not mentally sound, and for me to ever move on from the pain they caused me, I must find closure in acceptance. My failure was not forgiving and accepting, but I was earnest in once and for all doing so. My failure did not define me; I decided my success in healing will define me.

From ancient Greek epics, American cinematic classics, and even sowed in our grist, role models are grand portraits of what we aspire to be. Role models are hallmarks of our lives; we want to be more than just us. It is a very human concept that we pursue a romantic deity of absolute valor. We all should endeavor for the amelioration of ourselves because we are emphatically not perfect. We make mistakes, and we have tragic, inherent flaws that we must remain persistent in correcting. Yet it is also critical to discern that we are human and who we are is enough. I am not saying that having a role model is a wretched waltz into the dark because having a role model only reinforces our dependency on validation. Possessing a role model is not a calling for an identity crisis, but a promotion for change and realization of even with our fractures, we are humanly whole. My role model taught me to seek light in darkness, and that I am enough. My grandmother, who I called Nana, was the light of my life. I feel like my life started when I was seven. I was a young, corpulent elementary student, and my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer that past year in 2009. She passed away around thanksgiving of 2010. I did not understand the concept of death, but I knew death left a hole in reality. Yet where there was darkness, there was light. I remember being with my Nana all the time. My mother frankly did not settle for a motherly lifestyle, and my father was mentally ill and worked as an on-the-road truck driver. I remember my Nana would tell me I was special, and she loved me just like her own. She made me feel like I was understood, and I belonged. I always felt as if no one understood me, but somehow my Nana. Yet as I grew older, Nana grew weaker. Soon I found that responsibilities normal parents took for their children, I started taking. I was cooking, cleaning, and worrying. I had to do these things because Nana was incapable. She would fall, and it took my grandfather and me at times to help her back to her feet. My grandfather was wilting too, so I was left miserable as I stridently felt the pressure of their decline. In the moments of my blind stress, Nana stayed patient and indefatigable even when I was unpleasant to be around. She encouraged positivity and supported me even when I was bitter. I took that for granted, but now it means everything to me. Nana fell again one day, and this time my grandfather went to help us and managed to shatter his vertebrae. Within two weeks, my grandfather was in a nursing home. Nana and I were in misery, and it did not help that she was faltering every day. Ultimately I called the ambulance, and she left for the hospital. I had to stay with my maternal aunt during this separation but followed Nana home once she returned. My father moved in with us due to his disability, but this move caused a lot of dysfunction. My father almost struck me, my paternal aunt tried to stab me, and my paternal uncle-in-law threatened my life over the phone. My Nana was determined not to confront the crimes but instead, focus on our shared strife. Although Nana knew what happened to me was wrong, she could not resent her murderous care-takers. We had a lot of arguments over the phone because I was infuriated by her selfish want for me to return and her denial that she could not provide me with a secure home anymore. I was traumatized, and Nana did not understand that. We both had to reconcile our differences and accept how the cards had folded. At that moment, my Nana taught me acceptance and forgiveness. She felt like it was her duty to apologize for all that occurred during her care of me, but it was not her fault what happened. Nana was there for me, even in school, where sometimes I felt insignificant with social anxiety and the shame of once being overweight. She would hold me while I would cry from the day’s labor. Nana would tell me it was okay, and there was nothing wrong with the way I looked and how nothing defined me but myself. One thing that she would say that stayed with me to this very day was a little rhyme she sang to me. I would lean my head into her, and she would softly carol, “Darlin’ the ships are on the ocean, loaded with silver and gold. the storms are on the ocean as the wind begins to roar but before my darlin’ should suffer, I’d anchor those ships to be sold.” There was something in her gentle song that made everything feel okay. It would be an unfathomable underestimation to say my grandmother was just a role model. My Nana cast the mold of what I am today. Nana helped me decide I wanted to pursue a future where I can be who I am without questioning if I am good enough. In her selfless, unconditional love there was something so inspirational and pure it made me passionate about a career in mental health counseling. I wanted to be a certified healer just like her. Nana may have gone gentle into that good night, but I think there is true confirmation that she is a real role model to me when she inspires me even after death. My Nana helps me strive avidly to love with all that I am. To love others with a passion, to guide like the counselor I want to become, but also to love myself. My grandmother was not perfect, but she was my Nana, my motherly figure, My warmest hugs, my saddest goodbye, and my greatest role model.