Witness.

This is now my last full week of work at the Foyer. Next Wednesday is my last day. It's going to be a bittersweet goodbye. I'm going to really miss the staff and the residents there. I really have loved my work this year.

I've formed such unique relationships with the residents at the Foyer. One resident I see regularly at my workshops and she always provides wise-beyond-her-years insight. With a Maya Angelou-esque voice and gravity. Another resident and I are always talking about working out and making good social decisions. He has been trying to get me to go for a run with him during the fitness workshop, so that might finally happen for the first and last time this Wednesday, if he is able to attend. Another resident and I attended a youth rally planning meeting to protest Mayor Bloomberg's budget cuts toward city youth funding. We planned and then we attended the rally/protest together.

I honestly love each and every one of the residents here because they are so full of character. I definitely have stronger bonds with some, but in being at the Foyer 40 hours a week, I have gotten to see everyone's individual personalities.

For this entry, I wanted to include the "placement story" that I had to write up for GSV's end of year paperwork. The instructions were to write a short story about a relationship that we built with a client, coworker, or community member. We were told to make it personal and discuss something that we learned, how the other person learned or grew, or what we discovered together. I chose to write about one of the residents on my caseload, Alex (name changed for privacy purposes). Here's the story, which provides a little glimpse into my relationships with the Foyer residents.

When I first met Alex, the second resident assigned to my caseload, I felt positive that together we would find a job for him and he would start quickly adding to his savings account. His polite manner and articulate way of speaking seemed to indicate his ambitious, self-starting skills. Despite his intelligent conversation, however, I discovered that Alex struggled with motivational issues and anxiety, tied into his ADHD and bipolar disorder. And because he was not treating the disorders, Alex really struggled with the independent living environment at the Foyer. He regularly blazed through his SSI check and food stamps at the beginning of the month of junk food and online games. He rarely got himself out the door to look for jobs because he had a fear of traveling alone. He regularly lied about his budget and job searches.

After several months of being at the Foyer, Alex still hadn't found a job and still hadn't stabilized his budget. And I had to learn that even though I established a good relationship with Alex, I couldn't make him do anything, nor was I responsible for what he didn't do. All I could do was continue to motivate him and listen to him and be a resource for him.

I discovered that Alex liked to write. One day, a creative writing workshop I helped facilitate led Alex to show me some of his old notebooks. I encouraged him to start writing again to express his feelings, his hopes, his frustrations. He seemed thoughful about the idea but said "maybe" and put the notebooks away.

A couple months later, now about 8 months since Alex had arrived at the Foyer and was placed on my caseload, Alex and I got into a conversation about his anxiety. I asked him about his family history and his life experiences and he opened up to me. He told me he had been physically abused by his mother and had gone through boarding and group homes for most of his life. At the end of the conversation, Alex said, almost childishly, "We just bonded!"

A couple weeks later I received an email from Alex with a short piece of writing he had done, which indirectly reflected his hunger for acceptance and love. He told me that he had remembered my advice and took it.

At the end of my volunteer year at the Foyer, after working with Alex for 11 months, he still does not have a job. But he has grown. He budgets his money better. He goes out into the neighborhood to job search and has even traveled into other boroughs.

As for me, my working relationship with Alex illustrates my biggest role as a volunteer Independent Living Counselor at the Foyer this year: I am a support for my residents, in ways I cannot predict or control. And I am grateful to be a witness to their lives.