the path of deepest passion

Sometimes I wonder if I’m following the path of my deepest passion.

Since the age of seven or eight years old, I’ve never doubted my desire to enter the field of psychology. Even as such a young and fragile child, my perceptions were honed. Intuition is an innate blessing. So as I sat before various therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists, I could feel the intensity (or lack thereof) of their sincerity, their sensitivity, their true understanding. Unfortunately, what I often sensed in those early years was a complete lack of authenticity. So many times, I would be asked, “so how does that make you feel?” I have no recollection of my specific answers to those generic questions. But I can vividly recall what I wanted to say in response. I wanted to scream, to yell, to shout loud enough for everyone to actually hear me, “how do you think I feel? I’m here aren’t I? I obviously feel like shit or I wouldn’t be here.” As the years have passed and my own education in psychology has grown, I have come to understand that perhaps those therapists were doing what they had been taught. Perhaps they were truly trying to understand me. But my intellectual understanding of this does not negate the emotional repercussions of never truly feeling understood or accepted. However, I do not regret those early years of therapy or lack of growth and comfort I found in myself or in my relationships with those supposed healers. Through their inexperience or ignorance or lack of empathy, they harvested the beginnings of my most prominent lifelong dream. Because I did not perceive a sense of understanding or acceptance or authenticity, I vowed at a very early age to become a psychologist. I promised myself that I would use my own experience and my own intuition to guide me down the path towards helping others caught in the very cages of darkness and fear in which I myself had been imprisoned for so long. And so it is no surprise to me, or those that know me, that I have continued this journey, with determination and perseverance. These days, I continue my journey, working day after day, to learn how to help and heal those suffering from mental illness. I continue to inch forward, whatever the pace may be, in order that I may fulfill this dream. And this is my dream.

But what if this is not the most important dream for me? What about my other dreams, my other passions? How do I find the time and energy and balance to pursue them all?

I began writing poetry at the age of eleven. Mostly, my poems were comprised of rhyming lines, depicting my naïve and innocent perception of love. As the years passed, I continued to write, but my writing changed. From words of pure innocence to words of confusion and resentment, my poetry metamorphosed into the rambling monologues of a depressed and self-loathing adolescent. From lighthearted depictions of love’s simplicity to the darkness of black holes and dreams of death, the words I expressed on paper mirrored the evolution of my youth. Still, I never considered myself a writer. I wrote for release, nothing more. During college, my writing stopped for several years. I gave little thought to the power of words on paper as I doggedly pursued my degree in psychology and enveloped my remaining time in the social comfort and freedom of adulthood’s birth. Gradually, I came back to writing but I still viewed it as a mere release of emotions. I’ve always loved to write and somewhere inside me, I’ve long harbored the dream of publishing my work one day. But with my dream of becoming a psychologist taking center stage, my dream of becoming a successful writer got lost in the background. It has only been in these past couple of years that I have come to recognize the power of the passion I feel for writing. Now, in my free time, I immerse myself in books and journals and paper. I read printed words with a hunger I have not felt for many years, desperate to ingest all the beauty and emotions of each word I read. I find myself reluctant to study or sleep, fearing that the passion will dissolve if I leave it alone for one more moment. And so I find myself wondering, is this a lesser dream than the one I have actively pursued for the past decade? Or am I merely fooling myself, believing that this dream could ever possibly reach fruition?

I honestly do not know which dream is more important to me. I do not know which passion is greater. All I do know is that my passion for being a psychologist and my passion for writing are both very real and very deep. As best I can, I shall pursue them both.