Energy and Smiles

The urge to write is strong tonight. I’m full of energy and smiles as I sit here at my pink desk. My first class of graduate school was tonight and I really enjoyed it. There are only 5 of us in the cohort and I have already started forming relationships with the other 4 women in the group. We all come from different backgrounds. We all have different stories. But we are all there for the same reason…we want to make an impact in this world.

We started out class by talking about what really drove us to the profession and I sat amazed as they confessed everything from family problems growing up to sexual abuse in their past. I refrained from sharing. I’m still wary to let them know about my past…I don’t know why, I mean I’m sharing it with you guys. But none the less I was in awe of the women around me, so much strength, beauty and life in them, and I can’t wait to get to know them better.

I shared about the first time I was involuntarily committed. I told them about how that entire process traumatized me more than what I was going through and that it actually lead to me withholding a lot of things that were going on for a very long time. I left out that it has been less than a year since I finally started talking about some things. It’s been only a few months since I confessed to seeing demons and hearing voices. I was sitting there telling them that I thought if my introduction into counseling and medicine had been a little gentler then perhaps I wouldn’t have withheld for so long. I left out that even though I withheld for so long I have still been in a psychiatric facility 5 times….twice involuntary and thrice voluntary. (Although, I’m not sure if you can call it voluntary if you psychiatrist and therapist tell you that you are going and you can either get someone to drive you there or you can go for a ride with the police…needless to say I would rather go for a ride with a friend than with a cop.)

So tonight I am alive with excitement of the path that lay in front of me. Is it going to be hard? You bet it is! But I’m alive with determination! The same determination that got me through undergraduate school. I got kicked out of school, dropped out one semester, dropped a few courses another and spent one semester out because of the knee injury…but I made it. And I will make it through this. I’m a lot of things (sleep deprived being one of them) but I’m not a quitter.

Love, Randi