Where do you go when no one is paying attention? I have answered this question every day, without fail, for the last half decade of my life. It's a persistent question because I haven't managed to approach it fully: Where am I supposed to go on days when my spirit drags behind my body? Who can I trust to sit with me? Why is it that mental illness feels so particular in its pain, so lonesome and hopeless? This is a real train of thought. It's not one that I am proudly jotting down to fulfill scholarship requirements. In fact, I approach it with some hesitancy. I don't really want to resurrect these feelings. We're not really 'supposed' to interrogate my mental illness, are we? Usually, we are instructed to find medication and therapies that will eventually take us to a better place. This will mean that we'll finally be well-adjusted again both in private and around other people. But, that's not always how mental illness works. I mean, no one chooses to get sick. Especially not this type of sick. Despite mental illness not being so visibly painful, you still see sufferers lament, beg, mope, sob, some isolate, drag, bemoan, sleep without end, and cry. They do everything that someone with a terrible fever or a serious chronic illness will do. They do everything to have someone listen, and hear their cry. Much of my childhood was spent consoling my mother, who was going through it as a single parent taking care of me and my two siblings. She has many sisters, both parents, and a large extended family, and yet still, could barely keep it all together. All four of us were held together by little moments in that little apartment we shared. I remember feeling so useless so often as I could do little for her but listen, nod, and wipe her tears. In a lot of cases, people aren't available in the way that we need. Where do we go when no one is listening? Where do you go when no one is paying attention? As a kid, I (and I still do) love/d to read. Anything at all: books, magazines, graphic novels, manuals, fine-print disclosures, large-print newspapers, emails, physical mail. You get the idea. If it was written, I was all over it. I find escape in this way now, through learning. Back then, my quickly developing brain was incredibly adaptable (and the truth for most of us is that it still is). You can make a kid feel really happy and loved and they will take it for what it is. They will live moment-to-moment and cherish it all. You can also stain a kid with some manifestation of grief, suffering, abandonment, or malice. Breaking: The Vulnerable Youth are Vulnerable. I lived through both of these realities at a young age. Looking back, this must have been a huge part of me obtaining my bachelors in neuroscience (with a focus in neuropsychology). The brain is an organ at the end of the day, and any questions about mental health that aren't answered in the environment must lay within. I'm very grateful for my experience in the neuroscience program at UC, as they had programs dedicated to people dealing with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation and thus, had a reputable line of therapists and treatments produced from their health research labs. It was sometime while studying at a UC research lab, in fact, that I suffered the worst depressive crisis of my life. Junior year, first semester, shortly after moving into my new apartment, a support specialist talked me out of taking my own life. She talked me to sleep. My brain's response after the panic had set in was to crash and let me rest before doing something so terrible and tragic. The thing that keeps a person going through strife of any kind is support from the people around them. Societal support comes through family and institutions like the church. Governmental and local support programs as well are chock-full of helpful workers and rallies to bring individuals out of what can become very terrible outcomes. Still, some people will fall between the cracks. At every step of the way, it has been the grace and chance support from all kinds of places that have kept me going through my worst times. I know that this is the case for so many people now only barely hanging on. With a basis in neuroscience, I hope to scale what that support specialist was able to do for me. I want to use naturalistic observational research, data science, and probabilistic tools to model healthy outcomes for all kinds of people (meaning, not just patients who check in to the hospital, but also the people that don't make it that far). I want to use science to help people feel seen. There are many answers to the question that I posed in the beginning. To start answering it for ourselves, I believe, we must find where our love is.