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Benigno ‘Benny’ Rodriguez,
MSW, CFH Mental Health Intensive Case Manager
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.
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