change someone's life for the better

So I’m pretty sure I know what I am going to do for the next two years of my life!

I had an interview today with Teach for America…it seems like just the thing for me. It’ll provide me with good work experience, it’ll be very applicable to any later work I do with children and adolescents, I’ll have the beginnings of a financial base to work with in the coming years, and TFA will help me immensely when it comes to finding a good graduate program for child development/ psychopathology. Also, I’ll be able to teach in eastern NC, so I won’t be far from Matt. Hopefully I’ll be able to teach English. Oh I’d be the best English teacher. Oh I’d have so much fun.

So there is still paperwork, placement, interviews, etc. to be done, and I won’t know for sure until April, but I think this may be the way for me to go!

Also this would solve a very big Life Problem I have been having. You see, the former plan was to live with Matt and get work in the area, and then do the grad school thing after a year. However, Matt’s fundamentalist Christian dad was threatening to cut him off if we lived together. (He’s not a jerk…he really believes he is doing the right thing, which makes this so hard.) So, essentially, this would fix most things. I am very happy.

I woke up this morning, went downstairs and found my mother in the kitchen, mopping the floor and sobbing. She had just received a call that her Uncle Frank had died. Uncle Frank was a paranoid schizophrenic. He had spent nearly fifty years, starting from the time he was my age, in a mental institution. I never met him, but mama did. She said he used to shake, a consequence of the years of shock therapy. He saw and heard things and was always afraid. Twice he had tried to commit suicide, once laying down on the railroad tracks outside my mother’s childhood home.

There is a certain mental volatility in my family. Mama has celiac disease. Gluten and casein make her body and mind sick. I have the same sort of anxiety problems as she, and have also struggled with depression, weeks of being unable to leave my room, uncontrollable crying, vivid nightmares, daytime hallucinations. Mama’s cousins, one a concert pianist, one a champion swimmer, all show a history of depression, mental breakdown, attempted suicide.

I study psychology. In a year I will go to graduate school, work to earn a degree, and go into practice as a clinical psychologist. People need to understand the delicate balance between mental and physical health; the link between disorders such as my mothers and mental instability needs to be further explored. Research is already suggesting that the symptoms of some schizophrenics and autistics can been greatly improved by a gluten-free diet. Mama cries because she thinks Uncle Frank might have also had the problem that she has. Mama cries because nobody knew enough to help him.

For my mom, and for my uncle, I hope that someday I can help those who suffer.