This is the seventh blog I have ever started. Each one has had a minimum life span of a little over three months or more, trending towards shorter posts and longer periods between internet-broadcasted thoughts.
I'd like to believe that this is my way of starting over, admitting to myself that things in my life need to change. But acceptance of this daily fact is proving to be harder than I would like.
For instance, my boyfriend of nearly three years has decided that now is the time to put his foot down and banish from his life all things lactose. While it poses no problem in the summertime, with my father doing all of the cooking and my boyfriend fully capable of vanishing off to one or another family members house to seek safer fare, it does mean that come fall semester I will have to trash my entire weekly meal routine in favour of foods that cater to his sensitive disposition. It makes me grumpy, and not just because I dearly love cheese.
Another ongoing saga in my life is my propensity for chocolate. It is neverending, and with a lesser distance to travel on foot each day than I had back at University, I am starting to see the results of my poor snack of choice. This means changing my eating habits now, as opposed to simply waiting until I return to school. My sister is also feeling the pinch of bad eating habits: the upside? We've decided to try exercising together three times a week, something I haven't been able to commit to in ages because of my inability to be my only driving force.
The final change that is looming on the horizon is my third year of University. While this change is regimented, it feels very different from the first two years for one reason: there is no going back on my major now without severe financial reprocussions. How, exactly, does one go about telling their parents that despite having pleasantly slogged through two years of psychology, their interests are no more cemented than they were that fateful day in grade 12 when the applications were sent off? In the past two years the professors in my chosen major have been less than interesting (with only two exceptions out of eight, they presented a dry and unsavory view on my "chosen" field), while every elective I took presented a new and widely different take on the world that I have been aching to experience.
Over the last two years, my interests have guided me towards wanting to work with youth; more specifically, the youth in my hometown who are troubled and in need of guidance. Coming from a small Inuit community in Nunavut, I have seen the effects of a young man's suicide to the neverending dramas left behind by the residential school system, and the scars (both psychological and physical) these problems have inflicted on an otherwise strong population of people.
Unfortunately, if psychology is the way to helping them, I am not seeing it. At least, not for another six years (if I'm lucky). Working with Nunavut's mental health providers would require me to have a PhD, and I'm not even interested in perscribing pills. Another way would be through an Educational Psychology degree, which would equip me with the skills to become a school counsellor.
Except, the only school counsellors I ever saw in my worst years was a career counsellor, and she hadn't a clue how to handle the tears of a recently scorned girl. Here, a career counsellor should be secondary to one that is capable to handle emotions, but I haven't seen anyone even begin the work of hiring one. Perhaps it's because anyone they would find would be white, and nobody trusts a kablunat. Generations of doing what they thought was "the right thing to do", those people who came before me, has left many people unable to take me seriously as anything but yet another white person looking to do my two years, earn the big bucks, and get outta here. Going away for the winter months doesn't help me there, either, becoming educated or not.
Unfortunately, my race is not something on the agenda to experience change. The only thing I can do in this situation is continue to be open to the people I speak to, and try not to come across as anything less than respectful.
How I'm going to cope with the other issues in my life seems to be less trivial in comparison. In time, I will figure out how to cook for my boyfriend again, I will either conquer or succumb once more to my chocolate addiction, and I will learn what it is exactly I want to do with my life. But learning how to become an accepted member of my home community is something more complex. Tukisivunga? Do I understand? Will I ever?
Not likely, but I hope to have an adventure in trying.
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