Being a Social Worker Saved my Life
Hi, you can call me JW!
By 18, I made a commitment that if nothing changed, I would not choose to live past 30. I never told anyone about my dark thoughts, not my psychiatrist of 6 years or the 4 to 5 therapists. As September the 11th approached, knowing I was one year closer to 30 would get me through. Everyone wanted me to celebrate because I was so strong, but all I wanted to do was exit stage left. By 24, I actually stopped trying to celebrate because I felt I was only celebrating my pending death. I began to avoid attempts to celebrate or wait until the last minute to plan any event; this leads me to believe I must have hoped for change.
The one person that wanted me to celebrate, was the one person who made me feel like a broken child inside. This person made me conceal my story, one worthy of being told. Where others wanted to show up for me, one person turned me against myself. I turned to someone who made me hate having attention on the one year that mattered. Even when I invited this person to my graduations, birthdays, or any events, people would congratulate me while they would be sure to put me back “in my place.” So yes, maybe I wanted to fight. Regardless, I did nothing about the situation at hand. There was someone injecting poison into my body. The first moment we met, I knew and felt, that I did not want to be around that energy. Instead of one day, it became 12 years.
Speaking into existence is real because, at 29, I was celebrating my birthday in a hospital. After almost two weeks, I received birthday messages from texts. Honestly, dying was not the scary part at all when you faced death before you reached puberty. I had called three friends over the week because transplant or death was worth telling someone. What was scary was seeing the fear and tears on their faces.
For the first time in 12 years, I felt my body in pain, I felt the pain in my gut that had been screaming at me, and I never listened. As life would turn out, that “friend” was the only person I never told the entire time what was happening. After it all happened, I never told them why I was there even when the question was asked. Setting boundaries was short-lived no matter how much I tried. By my 30th birthday, I looked into the mirror and saw all that I feared because I was angry and bitter. I absorbed qualities that were so foreign to me.
Now I stand confident and clear from pain. I am a born social worker, a healer, and a fighter. At the age of 4, I proclaimed I wanted to be a social worker and it came true. I almost gave up being there for others because I had to be a social worker for myself. Every day since then, I realized how being a social worker actually saved my own life. More importantly, here is how being a social worker actually allowed my clients to save my life. The irony isn’t it?
Here is a true story that demonstrates the “Parallel Process.”
James D. Williams
