I have always wanted to help people. But not in the way some surgeons or respected doctors would help. I wanted to help people’s minds. I have always had this vision of being able to help people reach the other side of their pains and struggles. My vision for the future gives people the help they need. When I was younger, I lived a simple life. I was the perfect daughter every parent loved. I fell for boys, was one of my studio’s top dancers, and loved everything around me. I was a happy kid. But as I got older things started to change. My perception of life itself warped into this distorted land of hate. I hated myself. The way I looked. The way I spoke. Everything about me, I found something to pick apart. I felt like I would wake up every morning and put on this mask of a happy-go-lucky personality. Nothing brought me joy anymore. It was a burden to be alive. After months of this cycle, my parents came to the realization it would be best for me to be put into a mental hospital. They were just as lost as me. All my parents could see was their “little girl” locked in her room doing what the doctors told me was classified as “risking behavioral tendencies.” The hospital was weird. It looked like a cabin with no windows other than the front door which was fully glass. I waited anxiously for the day I’d get to walk out of those doors. Every day we would have a group therapy session with the other boys and girls at the hospital. All of us in our sweatshirts and sweatpants (with the drawstrings taken out of course) would gather around in a big, blank room. The doctors there would set up a chair in the middle of the circle our bodies created. Then an assistant would hand out a sheet of paper we would fill out every single day. The same questions: “How are you feeling?” “Any thoughts of harming yourself?” “How about others?” I hated that paper. I found it so useless while I was in there, we would all just lie anyways. Every kid would take one look at that paper, and realize if they told the truth, it would mean a longer stay. And the one thing everyone learned fast was, do not tell the truth. It is such an oxymoron for children to just lie their way through something that is supposed to help them. Though the hospital itself was overall quite traumatic, I spent time alone, away from the people I knew and loved, to understand that I had the potential to be myself again. I gained an appreciation for living again, and that is something that I never thought I would get back. So, when I got out of that dreaded place, I knew that I wanted to make a change. I am majoring in Psychology, and my goal is to achieve my Ph.D. I want to open my place, my practice. No one should have to suffer in the dark, never being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. My vision is to make a change in the taboo world of mental health. No more lying on that paper, no more scraping by, hoping one day it will get better. There needs to be a new way of looking at people’s minds. We aren’t broken, our minds are just wired differently than some others. And that just means we need a little extra help.