"Excuse me, you're standing on my cape."

I have come to the realization that I just don’t give a $#!%….

I remember being 19 and looking at the world like it was my playground; as if I was going to run and be free and save everyone. I focused on this hard in college. My objective was to pursue a career in Psychology and in school I focused on children and minored in juvenile delinquency.
Finally after years of working 3 jobs and struggling with my coursework, I graduated with my Bachelors in Psychology and a minor in Juvenile Delinquency. I was finally on a track to where I could begin saving the world.

Except, I wasn’t actually on that track. Instead, I sat, depressed in my house for months. The family I had nannied for moved away, I could no longer work in the SIU Child Development Lab, as I was no longer a student, and the families I babysat for didn’t need me that semester. I was unemployed, bills were stacking up, and my future was crumbling. I went from working 3 jobs 7 days a week and taking 6 classes, to sitting on my couch, crying over all the applications I submitted and all the phone calls I didn’t get. By the 3^rd month of barely eating and avoiding my friends and family, I was about done with life. I was emotionally done with everything. I had spent years avoiding dating, not partying, working nonstop to get to this point and nothing was coming together.

Finally, after 4 long months of being unemployed and freaking out daily over the prospect of being homeless and continuing to starve, I had 3 job offers, all of which were entirely different career paths. I was offered a position in a mental health facility as a case-manager dealing with adults with schizophrenia and developmental disability, a position as a daycare teacher, and last a case-aid position at Social Services Agency. For whatever reason, I felt called to take the job that paid the least….
Then after working as a case-aid for less than a month, I was promoted to a caseworker position and thus began this journey…

I worked for a Specialized agency as a Behavior Specialist Caseworker for foster children. Specialized agencies deal with children with severe medical needs or behavioral and psychiatric issues. A couple months in, I realized that I preferred not to work with the medical children. It seems like an odd thing to reject, but it just wasn’t something I was passionate about. Well then came the true journey…

What I've come to realize about social work is that when you're young and first getting into it, you want to be a super-hero. You want to swoop in and save them all. But at the end of the day you realize that all the people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape.

At first, nearly my entire caseload was full of juvenile delinquents. So here I was, 22 years old with a bunch of teenage boys who were out of control. I was 5’4’’ and soft spoken and I was standing here with 17 year old boys in handcuffs, admonishing them for their behavior. It was laughable. They didn’t care, and I wasn’t sure I did either. After months of fighting with these kids, I realized that they don’t want you to sweet talk them and they don’t care about how much you “care” about them. They want you to shoot straight with them. They want honest answers. They don’t care about all the bullshit you’re feeding them about their future and what you hope for them. They don’t want all that. They need real world, harsh realities. Eventually I got to a point where I really loved the work that I was doing. Despite the emotional toll it took on me and the amount of children with severe psychiatric issues and the number of physical injuries I actually endured from these out of control minors, it was the best work I’d ever done.

Over the years, I’ve built up the mentality that what everyone else thinks doesn’t matter. Because honestly, it doesn’t. I am a feminist and I’m currently knee deep in Graduate school, studying racism and women’s rights and I keep coming back to these kids. I pick research projects that involve gender identity and self-esteem during adolescence and I look at the statistics of the number of juvenile delinquents in foster care and I’ve realized that this is the fight that everyone is missing. 

I’m hardened to a lot of things and I’m often a pretty difficult person because I don’t care enough about the things I should. I’m a commitment-phobe and I’ve pretty much hated dating and the normalcies of life. I don’t focus on the things everyone else my age focuses on. In fact, I think I’ve kind of missed the mark. I pull away from traditional roles and let my feminism and independence take over. I don’t give a crap about marriage or kids or buying a house. I don’t spend my life waiting on perfect relationships or the happy ending. It’s just not me. My coworkers scold me on a regular basis for being “too involved”. They tell me that I need to step back and take a breather. They tell me that I focus too hard on certain cases and that I’m going to ruin my personal life. But here I am nearly 3 years later and none of that has really changed. And the truth is, I don’t really want it to.

Being a feminist is probably one of the biggest things in my life right now. I met with my professor the other day and discussed my career path and where I hoped to be in 5 years and the ideas had my head spinning. I don’t have a clue where I want to be. I don’t know what life has planned for me and I really don’t care. I’d like to say that I am selfless and I care about these kids more than anything, but I know that’s not true. I do care about them, but more importantly I care about what the next generation is going to transform our world into. That’s what strikes me the most. I sit in my classes and learn about today’s racism and the statistics of shootings and violence and I look at the wage gap and sexual assaults against women and THAT is what I care about. I care about who becomes president and what that means for equality. I care about sexual education in school and what that does to gender identity and sexuality in kids. I care about transgender rules in schools and public restroom use. I care about my rights as a women and the things I choose to do or not do with my body.

So when it comes to committing to a career path and an exact goal, I don’t have one. When it comes to marriage and kids and where I want to be, I don’t really have an answer for that either. I just know that at the end of the day, I want to make a difference.

I get up at 5am to nanny 3 kids for 2 hours. I get them up and ready for school and daycare and I drop them off. And then I go to my office and I deal with one crisis after another with foster kids and their parents. And then after work I go to school and I read journal articles on racism and sexism and equality, and then I go home and I take care of my dog and I might sleep for a minute or two. And then I get up and I do it all over again the next day. And the cycle repeats… And at the end of it all I just want to know that there is hope for our next generation. That me working two jobs to live paycheck to paycheck, with the student loans stacking up, that THIS will all be worth something in the end. Because change starts with awareness and the only thing I truly care about is making that awareness happen.