I have the position of Mental Health ICM. I do a lot of supportive counseling with referral to outside services.

I was born and raised in the Bronx. My parents were … they had their own history of homelessness after my father lost his job as a boiler repairman. He went from being a blue collar worker to ending up being in the system, receiving public assistance. Eventually, my parents ended up getting into the shelter system also, but that was temporarily. They ended up going from one apartment to the next, but they weren’t able to pay the rent. So a lot of the stuff we went from downgrading from being in an apartment to living in a furnished room. After a time, my mother had her own psychiatric problems, my dad had his problems with substance abuse, alcoholism. My brother and I ended up going into foster care. My brother was 14, I was 15, when we ended up going into foster care. We went through ACS and then ACS found us a placement, a house in Brooklyn. It was the only house that I ended up being in because I spent the remainder of my foster care placement there at the house in Brooklyn, with my foster parents.

At first [living with my biological parents] was nice. I remember at first we had a lot of happy moments. After 5:00 on a Friday my mother would go to meet my father because it was payday on Fridays. We would go and pick him up and… I remember my brother and I receiving an allowance of $10. And my mom would get the money to pay the rent and we would go out for pizza or we would go out to a Spanish restaurant to eat. Those were the good times that I remember.

The bad times were after my father lost his job as a boiler repairman. His alcoholism became worse and he started drinking more heavily. My mother at the time, she was in and out of the hospital, always having problems with schizophrenia, depression, and was actively suicidal as well. So it was very chaotic at times, where my father abused alcohol and he would just argue with my mother, so there was always arguments. Most of the time, my mother would be the one abusing my dad. He would tell her that she was cheating on him and my mother would get really angry and my mother would grab a frying pan and hit him over the head with it. At times it was with metal spoons that she would go and hit him over the head. Other times it was due to her mental illness too, because she was unable to hear a lot of noise. Noise would make her very anxious, so it made her react to her first instinct, which was her aggression, to react aggressively toward my dad.

My brother and I, we would just try our best to ignore it. My brother and I used to always get into fights with each other, physically, in the house. I remember we always have problems, him and I, with each other. A lot of times I think it was to get the attention of my mother and my father, but my brother and I always had behavioral problems. We would always fight; there were always fights in the house. Either my brother and I fighting, or my mom and my dad fighting with each other, so there was always a fight.

Once we got into foster care placement, my experience of foster care was one that was good for me. In the beginning, yes, there was some difficulty in terms of the foster brothers I had at the time. Sometimes we didn’t get along – I was the only light-skinned guy there a lot of the time. And nobody spoke Spanish: I was the only Latino being raised among African-Americans, which was good, because I was able to learn from their customs. My foster parents were from Trinidad and Tobago, so there was a West Indian upbringing as well, but I was always struggling with the difficulty of finding out where I should belong. Growing up, I never knew where I belonged. It was very difficult for me to … I was always struggling with… my mother and my father, do they love me? I was struggling with those emotions, where it got me to the point were I was going to the Bronx to see my biological parents over the weekend and then staying with my foster parents Monday through Thursday. It became routine after a while. I remember going through high school, I remember Monday through Thursday staying in my foster parents house because they were very supportive in the educational sense. My foster father always taught me how to write, how to read. He always… if I didn’t finish my homework, I was unable to leave the house, so I had to finish my homework. So living with my foster parents, yes, I had to finish my homework before I did anything else. So that was the good sense about it, that they kind of reinstated that over time. During the weekends, I would do my chores, and on Friday night I would go over and stay the night at my biological parents. So it was definitely routine for me all through high school.

I graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, but before that I was in John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx. I spent a semester there, but the semester I spent there was really bad. I ended up failing four out of the possible five classes, except for gym. After about one year of being transferred to James Madison High School, I was confronted by a professor that was the head of the Law Institute Program. I always wanted to be a lawyer in some sense, when I was in high school, so I was interested in the Law Institute Program. So the teacher said, “If you get an 85 by next semester, we will let me into the Law Institute Program.” Lo and behold, I got into the honor roll junior year, and the last two years of high school I was able to be in the Law Institute Program. I was able to run mock trials, I was part of the mock trial team. So I got an opportunity. So I’m happy that even though high school I was able to get an opportunity, which is in return something that motivates me even today. I’m able to provide that same opportunity to people who are less fortunate than I am.

My brother, his foster care experience was one that was very difficult for him, emotionally. He ended up running away. It was the same family. My brother and I were placed in the same foster home. It only thing is that he had this attitude that if it’s not his biological parents, then it’s no parents at all. So that was his attitude, like, “Nobody can tell me what to do.” His attitude was, “It’s my destiny. My dad never told me anything, so why should this guy who is not even blood related tell me what to do.” So he ran away. He ended up living on the streets a lot of the time. My sister was able to have him there maybe for a couple of days, but he ended up stealing from her.

My sister is ten years older. She a half sister really, she a sister from mother, not from father. We have different fathers, her and I. She always was to herself. Part of her life she grew up with my mom. The other half she grew up with her dad. So she had her own apartment and she had her own issues, with men, and she always had problems like that. So she has two children now, with one to follow. She’s pregnant as I speak. Also in the shelter system, as I speak right now. The children are from three different fathers.

My brother is incarcerated. Robbery and assault, due to substance abuse. He got heavy into heroin, and in order to get a fix he actually hit somebody over the head and causing him to bleed with a blunt object, and they were looking for him anyway. He’s been in and out, so like, he was released on parole, and then he violated parole. A lot of the times he runs away from parole. He’s supposed to be in one particular state and then he ends up going and coming back to New York City.

I’m supportive to some degree. I mean, my siblings expect me to take care of them, so I have to be the firmer of the flock, so to speak. I feel that if you’re soft and you get soft-hearted, then people will step all over you. That’s not what I play. I’m there to support you, emotionally. If I have some money I’ll give you a couple of dollars, but when it comes down to you doing your own thing – being independent and making your own decisions – you have to do that. Just because I have an apartment, it doesn’t mean that now you can move in with me when you have a substance abuse problem, when you have kids, but with two or three different men that I’m not even … I’m not too fond of that. I respect their life decisions, but it’s not my life decision and it’s not where I’m going. I see myself going in a different direction academically, and stuff like that, and career-wise. I don’t even want to get involved in that.

My father passed away about three years ago. My mother is currently in a nursing home. She has an array of issues: diabetes, Parkinsons, schizophrenia, depression. So I usually go see her every other weekend, bring her food and sit down and talk to her, have a nice conversation.

After high school, I ended up going upstate to Buffalo, going to a four-year private college called Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. It’s a Jesuit institution. I ended up majoring in psychology and criminal justice. Eventually, becoming a psychology major, and graduated in ’03 with my BA in psychology. A year before that, I was particularly interested in looking at law schools and social work schools, to combine both degrees. Unfortunately, I didn’t do that well on my LSATs, so I wasn’t too fond of law school. I had gotten into law so much, that I was just tired of doing law. So I also applied for graduate schools in MSWs, so I ended up getting my MSW from Fordham University. So I ended up going there two years until I graduated in ’05. Law school was something that I applied for. I just lost my interest because for one, I’m not a good public speaker. I am able to advocate for you to a certain degree, but I have a lot of anxiety myself, so I’m not really fond of public speaking. Besides that, I’m kind of person who likes to analyze certain things, not just quick on my toes. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and I wasn’t an area of strength that I saw myself doing. [Fordham] was another Jesuit school, so the Jesuits kind of follow me around. The foster care agency where I was currently still in, because I was 19 when I ended up going to college, they paid for about three years of my college, of my undergraduate school, so I got a scholarship from the foster care agency, which paid for the majority. Because my parents don’t make a lot of money, I was always eligible for the High Education Opportunity Program.

I am currently working on my licensure. I took my exam one time and I failed by two or three points, so I’m studying now to retake it again. Hopefully become an MSW by the end of this year, so I would have my licensure in social work. That would be my first license; the second one is usually the LCSW. Right now I’m looking into maybe gaining more experience with psychiatric patients, maybe in the hospital setting, maybe working as a psychotherapist there, maybe doing therapy work with patients that are more low functioning and gaining some more experience there.

For now, I enjoy the work that I do, sort of like a giving back approach. I notice that I’m revisiting certain areas of my life, that I went through through other people. So the families that I see, a lot of the time I’m confronted with this transference, or counter-transference, which is a term used when you see a client or family, and that client or family reminds you of a particular family member in your own life. And being aware of the emotions that come from that, whether that’s anger, happiness, or stuff like that. So it’s been really an exciting feeling for me, to go through the foster care system and now seeing clients who either have their boyfriends in foster care and they individually that been part of the foster care system. It’s just exciting.

[My foster parents] still see me as part of their family. I usually go see them every other weekend. Sometimes we talk over the phone. I’m just really busy now, so sometimes I’m so focused on my own life, but we do speak on the phone and sometimes I go to their house for special events. So we still keep in contact. They only have one son. The son is a corporate lawyer himself, but he doesn’t live in the household. He’s probably in his forties now, so he has his own family. I get along with him very well.

The downside of my foster care family… [Pause.] They were supportive in what they had to accomplish. I really don’t see a downside with my foster parents. They were very strong, and by strong I mean when I comes down to their parenting style, they were more into making sure that … they really implement the rules. They have a very strong parenting style versus the parenting style that my parents had. My parents had more of the liberal style. I had a lot of structure, I had chores, which I didn’t have with my biological parents. I had to come to the house at a particular time. If I didn’t come at a particular time, I would… well, I wouldn’t get beat or anything, I would just be sit down downstairs and they would talk to me for hours about why I didn’t come and there would be certain privileges that would be taken away from me if I broke the rules. But a lot of the rules I didn’t break: before 9:00 I would always come home, I was always call before. I always really followed the rules. My other foster brothers who lived there, they never really followed the rules. They always used to say, “Oh, Benny’s just a white boy, he’s following the rules.” They always had jokes about that, but I really took it with a grain of salt and I looked at it as a compliment.

At a given time, there were always four or five [brothers] max. Some of them either left, because my foster dad wasn’t easy: you disrespected him and you were out of the house. And by disrespect, it’s not like answering back, it’s more like picking up for hands and trying to do something to him. Then you were out of the house. There were cops called many times because they got aggressive with him. He was very strict, more like military, in a way. He had a humor to him too; he had a soft side. You get to learn that he’s human just like everybody else. But he had to build that wall, not only to protect himself, but just to show the kids that were there that he was a stronger father than the father they had. The fathers that we had also had their own issues. They were weak, not in the sense of character, but were weak in the sense that they also had their substance abuse problems. He was an art director, but he retired. He was an art director for many years for a publishing company. Then everything became technological, and he turned to his fifties, and nowadays everything is just computers. So he’s actually in school right now learning computers so he can get a little more advanced in that.

I liked the food [in the foster home]. I mean, at first it was strange, because I was used to my Spanish food. But I got used to it. When you’re hungry you just eat, you don’t focus on what it is. Some kids do. There was some stuff that I questioned, and I would smell. I was very curious. But as I got used to it, it was just the norm. They would cook rice and beans, it wasn’t the way my parents cooked it, but they tried. That’s what I always looked at, that they made the effort to make us comfortable. My brother was unable to see that because my brother stuck with, “They’re not our parents! Our parents are the ones in the Bronx, so I’m not going to listen to them.”

I never really got into drugs. I used to cut classes sometimes, but it was always to be with girls that I had in high school. A lot of the times I used to cut classes to hang around the stairs and do with girls and stuff like that. But that’s something not troublesome.

I do want to have kids. I’m not ready to have kids yet. But there are periods when I get into these emotional father-like moments, where I see a kid in the shelter and it brings a smile to my face, or I see a kid in the train station, he smiles at me, I smile at him back… That’s something that down the line I see having, starting a family and things like that.

I think I see my life being a bright one. I still continue to learn, and life, that’s just how it is. It’s a learning process. I think that I know everything, but then I look back and say, “You know, I don’t know everything.” You just continue to learn, the same way I learn from my nephew. My older nephew, he’s 17, he’s actually in a group home upstate. His mother can’t take care of him. My nephew usually stays over the weekends at my house, once a month. I do that so at least he has a good role model, and someone he can look up to, because he didn’t get along with his father very well. He responds to me and he listens to me. When we sit down, he tells me about stuff that goes on at his high school, and I say, “Wow. This is a whole different generation.” I mean, the stuff that these kids do, and what he tells me, I never used to do that stuff in high school, so I still continue to learn. One thing I always value is the relationship that I have with older friends. By that I mean, a lot of the people I grew up with are in their forties and fifties. I never really had friends that were in their twenties; I did to a certain degree, but I don’t really keep in touch with them. I still keep in touch with some college friends, but a lot of my friends are between forties and fifties and that’s a lot of my father’s friends. People that talk to me always say, “Benny, you’re twenty-something, but you sound like you’re forty or fifty.” And I say wisdom usually is gathered by the flock that you hang around with, not the flock that is in the same category as you are, in terms of wisdom and understanding. So I always appreciate people who are in their forties and fifties, because I like to learn about what they went through and get some lead in my life.