Friday, May 20, 2011

Steven Tyler, for lack of a better title.

I am currently terrible at updating this. I am not so blog savvy and have far too much paperwork to tend to for school to remember to keep up.. I plan to post weekly by the end of the summer.

I am currently reading (more like hanging onto every word of) Steven Tyler's book, "Does The Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir."OHHHH, how madly in love I am with this man! If you have never listened to any Aerosmith (other than that wonderfully amazing Armageddon theme song), then I strongly suggest you do. The book is amazing (even more so if you too have ADHD)!!! Really, I just love how much he talks about his love of Janis Joplin and other music that has moved him. I really hope he knows that his music moves people too. He has this soulful voice, and an amazing ability to stay fabulous as an entertainer even with the change of times. If you've never listened to music from the 1960s-70s and compared it to today's rock you would be surprised. It was the perfect combination of rock and R&B. Moving, and exciting. These people were living during a time of massive change & they helped music evolve forever. I love Steven Tyler, and his music... and how he puts his passion into words. It is nice to know that someone out there feels passion as strongly as I do. For awhile I was beginning to think I was CRAZY!.. While I haven't the slightest goal to become a rock star; I am extremely passionate about becoming a psychiatrist. I hope I get to explain that to the world one day. I hope I find the right words to explain it to the person interviewing me for acceptance into medical school. HELL, I hope I can say enough in my essay just to get the chance to have that interview!

I encountered a physician awhile ago, and he asked me why I would ever want to become a psychiatrist. I couldn't respond. This wasn't because I do not know, but because it would take about an hour to explain why. Then I would spend another hour ranting on about how mental illnesses aren't taken nearly as serious as they should be! Why in the world would I ever want to become a psychiatrist? Perhaps it is because of my untreated, self-medicating big brother who overdosed on heroin three years ago. It could be because of my psychologically unstable, abusive father who I am still trying to understand after years of no contact with him. It could be because of the anxiety disorder I suffered from as a young child. Maybe it is because I feel I have a good understanding because I was exposed to it young, and had an incredible comprehension of the books I was reading.

Does it really have to be one thing? Should I have had some huge epiphany one day where I felt I was called to do this one thing? I am sure there are many careers I would be satisfied with. I could avoid the possibility of being turned down when I apply to medical school, but when I read about psychiatry (or the field of medicine in general) I feel like a fire starts raging inside of me. It is all so humbling to me. We are such fragile creatures... animals... but we've found out so much about bodies.

When I was little, we're talking four or so, I wondered about what might happen to the food we eat. This was after hearing my mom tell me that if I swallowed my gum it would be stuck in my stomach forever. I imagined having this hallow body that just filled up with food until it needed to be emptied. Then I imagined my hallow body being opened like a book, and of course I realized that if i swallowed my gum it would be stuck to the inside walls of my body like it is stuck to the bottom of tables in restaurants. When I finally discovered the human digestive system I was thrilled. It made soooo much more sense than my four year old revelations!

My father always talked about serious issues in front of me. I had this terribly unnecessary drive to please him (NO ONE could please him, except maybe the ultimate white supremest because daddy was a racist, sexist douche bag too) Anyhow, I would soak in his every word, and learned what I could with my available resources... this was back when I thought the world wide wed resembled a spiderweb.. It was this unnecessary drive to prove to my father that I was intelligent that helped me learn so much about the world at a young age. I needed to broaden my horizons, so when my psychology major cousin mentioned Sigmund Freud to me. I decided to look into psychology. It was most definitely love at first sight.

My brother was always the person who could build me back up, the only person who could make sense of any situation for me. I have typically always been advice giver rather than a taker. Him being gone hasn't helped me much. There's sometimes when I can't make sense of putting my family into debt with student loans, and spending all this time in school when I could be saving for retirement. I typically can talk myself out of it, but sometimes I just get worried about making bad choices for my family. Yesterday, my brother would have turned 27, I guess the driving force keeping me going on with school is knowing that one day, when I am a psychiatrist, I may encounter a boy like my brother, and I will have the opportunity to change his life. To help him achieve everything he deserves in life, and then maybe there will be one less girl who has to spend everyday missing her big brother. That won't be all I will accomplish as a psychiatrist, but if it was all it would be enough for me. I have always loved the field of psychiatry, but my big brother is my driving force.