One job may change my life

“The thing about pain . . . it demands to be felt.”

As I look around, I see it:

Others wounded by pain somehow,

A life in a blanket of nails.

My dream is to help those like you:

With suffering so plain to me,

Emotionally, mentally, and psychologically,

You wear your heart for all to see.

My dream job can change you and me.

It’s 2 a.m. and she can’t sleep

Heart, hands, eyes clenched, trying to forget.

She thought her pain would fly away with the hands of time,

But she is followed by the dark cloud of regret.

She wants to cry out

“I’m in pain,

Someone please notice me!”

That little girl is me.

Fourth grade:

New to school, town, state, and country.

Only black girl, beads in my hair,

I look, act and talk differently; I can’t fit in.

“It hurts,” I say.

“Why don’t they like me?

Why am I different?

I want to be like them. I want to have friends.

“Why won’t anyone listen to me?”

That little girl cried out for help,

Screams like chimes in the winds of life,

Ignored, forgotten, when

All she wanted was a friend,

A person who dared to care.

That’s why my dream job is psychiatry

So that I can help that little girl

Understand it gets better,

And learn a little bit more about me.

This job could change my life,

Because it can give me the power to help.

And while helping others, I just might help myself

Understand what I never have before:

That its okay I was lonely, because it’s what motivated me

To go into child psychiatry.

Graduation, College, Medical School, Residency.

My dream job is a cocoon, it changes me.

The certificate on the wall will say, “Javia Headley, M.D”

And now I can help that little girl,

But this time, the little girl won’t be me.