Just as I’ve gone over my dialectical development in things like politics, religion, and sexual orientation, I would also like to explore my ongoing struggle towards flourishing. At the heart of this struggle has been schooling, on the one hand, and how to generate a flexible and comfortable living, on the other. The latter is a more recent struggle, whereas the former has been going on since I was a little kid.
From a very young age, I was more of a homebody. I wasn’t one for extracurricular activities like sports, clubs, or church groups. I also tended to be much more mature than my peers, preferring adult interaction over peer interaction. To this day, I have a significant number of friends who qualify for AARP. I didn’t like people throwing their authority around and preferred being able to explore things at my own pace without the pressure of someone micromanaging me or watching my every move. Taking the homebody and the anti-authority tendencies together, you get someone who likes a laidback, leisurely, spontaneous, and autonomous existence. All of this will inform my struggle moving forward.
It’s safe to say that K-12 was a prison for me. That would have been the case even in a close replica “private” school form. I had teachers in 3rd grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade who abused their authority in an attempt to regulate my ability to use the restroom (I had issues with being able to control my bladder unfortunately and embarrassingly wet my pants in 3rd grade on a few occasions while at school). I HATED having everything taught for the purposes of passing a single test (thanks George W. Bush) each year, which greatly dumbed down/narrowed the material. I also hated being sedentary for so much of the school day/year. Furthermore, most of the schooling was based in mere memorization/regurgitation of material and obsession with grades and competing against others for “class rank” or perceived giftedness. I was blessed with a pretty good memory that helped me greatly within the confines of this horrible system. However, many others struggled who could have demonstrated their grasp of the content in another way. And if the issue on a given day wasn’t abusive teachers and administrators, it was being forced to be around abusive (often very homophobic) peers. 8th grade even involved my first serious bout with depression due to school (and no, my Catholic pastor’s suggestion that I was too young to be depressed didn’t help). I could go into a lot more detail, but the key takeaway is that school represented a static, creative-less, competitive prison that was, for me, soul-crushing. Graduating from high school felt like less of an accomplishment than it did a prison escape. It felt like one of the most freeing moments I’ve experienced.
Despite feeling imprisoned, I was able to “play the game” as they say. I got a 3.95/4.0 GPA in high school. My only non-A’s included Spanish I from 8th grade (which carried over and got factored into my high school GPA apparently) and my first semester of Spanish III in my sophomore year (Fall 2010). Safe to say, they were not great Spanish classes. The absolute worst was my Spanish II class in freshman year where my teacher (Mr. Gonzalez) never taught a single lesson and had us turn in BS assignments, liked offending Roman Catholics, and gave off predator vibes towards girls. That definitely set the stage for poorer performance in Spanish III (which wasn’t required, but seemed to be for attending University of Colorado-Boulder if I wanted to go there).
I avoided taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses because I didn’t want the added stress and didn’t want more standardized tests (getting college credit depended on passing a single test). I did take College Now English (a dual credit course linked to Wharton County Junior College) my senior year and enjoyed it a lot. I’m very glad I did too since the 6 credits I got counted towards my undergraduate English requirement and an elective credit. If there had been more dual credit courses, I would have taken them. The extra challenge comes with a guaranteed pay off as long as you put in the effort. I guess you could say that I was a high achieving “low achiever” when it came to my high school education. I didn’t want to create more stress for myself but strove to do my best in what I did take. I was signed up to attend Pope John XXIII High School in Katy, TX (now “St. John XXIII”) for my junior and senior years but backed out after meeting the snobby rich White students during the summer football training camp. I wanted out of the public school system but realized that things could be worse. I’ll take my multi-cultural public school ANY day over that nightmare! Just had to tough it out two more years….
As my dear friend Chris Sciabarra would say, “THAT SAID”, moving beyond K-12 would not prove a smooth task for me either. For one, I absolutely HATE standardized tests. Especially the ones that require a lot of time and energy to prepare for with few guarantees (such as SAT/ACT/GRE). The state’s yearly standardized tests (TAKS in my case) were easy, and I performed very well on them. I took the SAT in the beginning of the second semester of my junior year of high school (January 2012). I got a 500 on the Writing section, 530 on the Reading section, and 570 on the Math section (totaling to 1600). I put little to no preparation into it and felt like an anxious mess going in (which definitely negatively affected my performance). I took the ACT at the end of my first semester of my senior year (December 2012) with no preparation at all on a whim and got a 22 composite score, which was whatever (apparently that’s close to the equivalent value of my SAT according to one site I looked at recently). None of this mattered since I didn’t care to go to some Ivy League school or ritzy liberal arts school. My SAT/ACT scores got me into the four schools that I applied to (Colorado State University (Fort Collins), Regis University (Denver), University of Denver, and The King’s College (NY)). Funny enough, I only applied to The King’s College because Dinesh D’Souza had been the president at the time I was early applying, and I (yuck) liked him still at that point. It wasn’t a serious application. When all was said and done, it came down to CSU and DU. I decided on CSU because it was more affordable, in a college town, a bigger school with a lot of research funding, and had more regular, down-to-earth individuals. I got a small annual scholarship and two other scholarships that I won due to essay contests (one of them occurring later in my education).
The 2nd semester of my senior year of high school sucked. We lost my two family dogs a month apart (February and March 2013) and then my cousin Jack committed suicide on May 15th (the day before my birthday). During spring break that March, my dad’s friend Pete Hoyt (who we ran into while skiing at Winter Park in Colorado) told me (about his prediction of my college performance): “You seem like the kind of guy who freaks out and has a mental breakdown and drops out”. To say this had a negative impact on me would be an understatement. I was already anxious enough about starting college. To this day I have wanted to give him a piece of my mind and throw it in his face that I went through undergrad and graduate school with a 4.0 GPA. That or knock him out. But we’ll just leave things alone, I guess.
Starting at CSU was not an easy process for me. I wanted to give up on going in July 2013 when I traveled with my parents to their summer orientation. By August I was seeing a Catholic Clinical Psychologist (Dr. Ken Buckle) to help me with the transition. Nonetheless, I suffered with my mental health going into September. It looked like Pete Hoyt’s idiotic statement might have been coming true. The first therapist (a social work person) I saw at the university clinic was no help and essentially pushed me out (I later met someone on Facebook who had the same experience with the same therapist). Then I went to the Psychological Services Center (PSC) where care was provided by PhD students and I was enjoying the therapy process much more. I also went to the university hospital and saw a psychiatrist, getting prescribed SSRIs in the process.
The SSRIs may have led to a slight lift but they also caused irritability in me, sleep disturbances, and would give me headaches if I wasn’t exact with the time I took them. Safe to say I couldn’t wait to get off of them. The best “drug” was ultimately my first grade (an A). It showed me that I actually could do this whole college thing. I built up a friend network and things got better from there (stopping the SSRI in December 2013). College would provide me with the freedom to discover myself more. I would come out gay in Fall 2014 and have my first ever relationship lasting 2.5 years shortly thereafter. I also officially became a leftist the summer before that and have remained one ever since.
I went into Psychology due to thumbing through my sister’s Biological Psychology textbook when she was home during the summer 2011. I came across the “Clinical Psychology” section and was blown away by how much of a perfect glove fit it seemed. Previously, I had very superficial interests in things like police/military, computer engineering, and forensic science. Clinical Psychology had an intersection of research, understanding humans and the brain, and being a helping profession. All of that appealed to me. From that point on, I was on the path to becoming a Clinical Psychologist.
I graduated summa cum laude (4.0 GPA) from CSU in May 2017. It was an exciting moment. Certainly more of an accomplishment than graduating from high school, but also another freeing moment. Though undergrad was better than K-12, it still was based largely on the same model of memorize/regurgitate and take a bunch of tests. Thankfully, I had an internship experience in residential treatment work, interned at a probation department, was a part of a program supporting at-risk youth, and presented at a marijuana research conference at CSU. Everything was at least looking good for being able to apply for a PhD program in Clinical or Counseling Psychology. Only there was one problem…. I hadn’t taken or prepared for the GRE.
Due to my testing anxiety and previous experience with standardized tests of the sort, I avoided preparing for and taking the GRE. I had even signed up for a prep course at CSU and backed out of it due to how it was making me feel. This put a wrench in the way of being able to apply to PhD programs. Aside from ending things with my first boyfriend in May 2017, I had to figure out what I was doing. I did behavioral coaching from May to December 2017. It wasn’t financially stable, but I enjoyed working with clients one-on-one. I attempted to add a 2nd cold calling printer supplies job on in September but didn’t last more than a week. It was soul crushing and did nothing for my mental health. A full-time overnight job opened up within the nonprofit I was working at (and started at by interning) in December 2017, so I took it. Despite a rocky initial adjustment to the overnight hours, I enjoyed the stability a lot.
I had started preparing for the GRE through an online program called Magoosh by March 2018. I did not like it but I dedicated a decent amount of time to it. I also was continuing to date on the side (which had several traumatic occurrences in 2017). By April 2018 I had met a guy who was in the Air Force up in Cheyenne, WY. I was attracted to him and enjoyed his playful personality. I saw a lot of potential at the time. However, after having been beaten down so many times and tired out from the dating process, I had told my ex (who I remained friends with) that if this didn’t work out, I thought I was going to have a breakdown. Sure enough, after getting my hopes up, the guy told me “I have no feelings for you” while we were cuddling on my bed. He lied saying that it was due to PTSD/emotional blunting, but he went on dating other guys shortly after. To this day I don’t know what his problem was. He just didn’t seem to be able to admit he wasn’t into me. In any case, the breakdown happened in May 2018. I had my quarter life crisis. Nothing seemed to be going well in the career area and I was beaten down by yet another negative dating experience.
It was actually around this time that my friendship with Chris Matthew Sciabarra started to take off (a connection that would only grow stronger in the years to follow). “THAT SAID”, having met the military guy, I also gave the military another look. I considered trying to use the HPSP program (by becoming an officer) in the Air Force to get a PsyD (in a program that wouldn’t require the GRE) or just enlisting and eventually getting the education benefits to pursue a PsyD. I knew that I couldn’t afford a PsyD and wouldn’t want to take on the massive debt. I also liked the clinical focus of the PsyD over the heavy research focus of the PhD. And of course, there was the major perk of not needing to prepare for or take the stupid GRE.
That plan faced a major roadblock when I started having right-knee issues after a long hike in August 2018. Also, my friend Chris was aghast when he heard I was considering joining the military. Chris had me consult his sister on my options and wanted me to wait on making a decision until December 2018. Though I learned that there were no other avenues for what I was looking for, I ended up considering a Master’s in Clinical Counseling while visiting home Halloween weekend in October 2018. My parents were fine with me returning home to Texas, so that’s what I did in January 2019. By August 2019, I was beginning my M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Everything was going well, including starting a practicum at St. Joseph’s Behavioral Health Clinic in Houston, until the pandemic hit. I lost my practicum site and everything went virtual. I struggled to find another practicum and faced a crossroads at the end of July going into August 2020. Would I drop out of the program or continue at full force?
I realized neither sounded very good. If I dropped out, I would have half a degree, which is useless. But if I tried going forward at full capacity, I would not last. I just didn’t have the drive or the energy. I eventually decided on dropping the internship and internship class and just focusing on the three core courses for Fall 2020. This proved to be the best decision. It allowed me to move forward and allowed me to make several wonderful trips that semester. I eventually found another better internship and finished all of my hours by July 2021. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA, just like in undergrad. August 2021 involved a month long trip to the northeast, and I returned to Texas in September to knock out my LPC Associate license application and get things set to move to Austin. I moved in the first week of October and was also approved for my LPC-A. From November to December, I applied to Therapy Austin, got accepted after a multi-interview process, and got trained and started at their private practice. I subsequently applied for a second PRN job and settled on Pathlight Mood-Anxiety Unit (through the Eating Recovery Center). The training for that got started in February 2022.
Overall, I enjoyed working with clients. I HATED the Pathlight program though. I didn’t last long at all, quitting by the end of March. It was at this point that I decided I would put all of my energy towards increasing my caseload at the private practice. If I was going to get a pay increase and caseload increase (being able to take on more clients), I needed several consecutive weeks of having a certain number of clients showing up each week (which was frustrating and stressful since you can’t control if someone is going to show up or not). On April 25th, I reached my goal. I also plummeted mentally. I did the calculations and realized that the money wasn’t even going to come close to cutting it. If I charged a client $150, I would see $40 of that. Therapists don’t tend to see 30–40 clients per week (certainly not if they are keeping up quality and their own sanity). So it’s not easy to make enough money if you are getting paid that low per client hour. Yet, the work is involved and you can’t predict how many will show up each week (there are typically cancellations). The HR department told me I should consider getting a coffee shop job, if you can believe that. That was so demoralizing…. I had spent so much time, money, energy, and resources to barely get by and be told to work at a freaking coffee shop. What a FARCE!
I fell into an awful depressed period at this point that involved a lot of suicidal ideation. It lasted months and didn’t improve in any stable way until mid-November 2022. I put in my month-long resignation process request in mid-July and had my last day on August 29th. October was the month when I did a lot of exploring. I considered moving to NY, Colorado, Albuquerque, San Antonio, and Dallas. I maintained that I would NOT move back home to Sugar Land with my parents. I had a falling out with my first ex, and I cut ties with a long-time older friend who took advantage of me sexually on a trip I went on. So much was happening and it was hard to keep my bearings. I also felt very isolated in the Austin area. And I wanted to leave the field of Psychotherapy, considering Nursing in the process.
Though I enjoyed therapy work, I knew I wasn’t cut out for the salaried government and nonprofit agencies that overload therapists with clients and bureaucracy, and I of course learned that I didn’t like the anarchic nature of caseload work (solo private practice puts even more demands on you, such as having to market yourself). Even if I got the higher pay, that aspect would bother me. It’s a lot to onboard someone (hearing their story and getting to know them) only to have them drop off in the next week or two. It’s not like a medical doctor who sees someone for 10–15 minutes and gets a nice chunk of money. There’s a lot of investment for not a lot of financial pay off. So, clearly, financial stability is key to my flourishing. Furthermore, doing something that is helping others is key to my flourishing as well. I don’t feel driven by computer work or the business field (such as that cold calling job). Nursing, despite its own challenges, reaches that balance of achieving both good pay and providing an avenue for human connection and healing work. And lastly, work-life flexibility matters a lot to me. I love to ski and travel, so I need more than just the 1–2 weeks off that people get per year. I want to be able to take many short trips throughout the year rather than simply one long trip.
I eventually decided to do what I said I wasn’t going to do: I moved back home. Initially I had my sights set on Lone Star College’s Nursing Associate’s degree. However, due to needing prerequisites and the way they were doing admissions this year, I wouldn’t be able to start the actual program until August 2024! During the info session, they harped on how competitive the admissions process was and how easy it was to be turned down (essentially not getting an A in the prereqs was a sure way to be denied). So many people are trying to get in because it’s only two years and leads to a guaranteed stable good paying job. Most people in the room looked depressed by the end of it. And that’s how I felt afterwards. Eventually I discovered a better option: Galen College of Nursing’s 1-year long Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) program. I would be able to start sometime in 2023 and be done in 2024. It would get me into the field in a stable paying job and set me up to advance further to RN and beyond (such as Family Nurse Practitioner) if I should choose to do so.
Discovering the Galen option led to a major mood lift. I finally had a guaranteed route (no prereqs required) to flexible good paying work that is still in the helping professions. Presently I am doing CNA training and plan to work as a CNA in hospice/home health care before my program starts on October 2nd. I can’t tell you how massive a shift this all has felt. I feel like I have my vitality back larger than ever before. I’m even looking into “Logic-Based Consultation” training and personal coaching work so that I can still practice (on the side) the parts of therapy I was most attracted to (dealing with meaning, purpose, values, flexible thinking, etc.) without needing a therapy license. I have started doing more ice and roller skating, reading, writing (such as this piece), scholarly conversation, playing video games, and hanging out with friends and having phone calls. And yes, I’m also on the dating apps still. I feel hopeful and I feel alive!
Flourishing for me involves doing meaningful work, having stable income, low debt, having leisure time (time to travel, ski, and be in nature), spending time with family & friends, eating healthy, getting enjoyable physical activity, engaging in stimulating intellectual conversation, promoting the freedom & well-being of others through activism and other avenues, having time alone to contemplate and be still, and, eventually, settling down with a partner (*maybe* raising kids as well). Knowing all of this brings light to why I struggled in the various instances that I mentioned in this article. In all cases I lacked stability and autonomy or struggled to see how I could achieve my goals. And that greatly negatively impacted my mental health (probably more so than the average person due to my own neurochemistry). Part of the problem included my tendency to compare myself to others, which has been greatly impacted by social media. Seeing others younger than me or close to my age far more financially successful and advanced career-wise can really negatively affect me because I judge myself for not being in that position. I can feel like an absolute failure. Safe to say I will NOT be going to my 10-year high school reunion this year!
This was a long, meandering article, but I hope that it helps people to understand me and my history, and maybe even help them to feel comfortable discussing their own struggles more openly. This article certainly isn’t exhaustive, but I tried to capture my history and how I got to the point where I’m at now. I may write more articles on parts of this journey (such as religion, sexual orientation, psychotherapy, etc.) in the future. I do hope it inspires you to get in touch with what helps you flourish and to attempt to strive towards it.
