Sometimes I Just Eat Chocolate Chips

Today, was not a good day at work. Some of you may think that in a job where I work with literally a dozen teenage boys with behavioral problems that a good day at work is a rarity. In all honesty, that's not the case, most days I absolutely 100% love my job. I still love my job today, I'm just mentally exhausted. As a result. I am eating a bag of chocolate chips. 

As a woman, I can also say that there are more things contributing to the consuming of the chocolate chips than a simple bad day. 

You may be wondering what constitutes a "bad day" at the academy. Well, in the first 45 minutes of my shift one of the boys walked out the back door, setting off the alarm. He then stood at the top of the stairwell holding a 2x4 in his hand for 20 minutes while I stood four feet away trying to negotiate the weapon out of his hand and trying to convince him to come back onto the program (back inside the door).

That was awesome. Later on in the evening another boy, upset at receiving a consequence, proceeded to beat the crap out of his wall in his room. His hands were scraped up and had to be bandaged and as a result, there's a huge chunk of drywall missing and the resulting hole is covered in blood. It literally looks like we shot someone against the wall in his room. 

About four hours later another boy was upset at a decision that was made so he decided to start tearing up the program. He was throwing dominoes, flipping chairs and at one point he punted a bottle of dish soap across the kitchenette. This same boy further antagonized a peer by stealing his shoe (yes, seriously) and then I got to hold back that boy from attacking the other boy. Have you ever braced your body against a kid's door so he couldn't get out of the room and strangle a peer? Well, now I can say I have. 

When I left at 10:30 (half an hour late), the soap punter was still sitting in the common area, refusing to go to his room and had only just recently set down the piece of broken drawer he'd ripped off the desk. There were 11 responding staff from other programs sitting in our ball room making sure everything was legit. 

Today was definitely one of those days where when I got to my car I wanted to scream. Instead, I almost feel like crying. It's nuts to me. After just a month there, I really love these boys. I know their backgrounds, I understand their behaviors and I just love them. Even when they're threatening to kill me (yeah, that happened tonight too), I still love them. They are struggling. They are the epitome of fighters. They don't know any other way. They've spent their entire lives fighting and now they don't even know how to stop fighting the people that want to help them, how to stop fighting their treatment, how to stop fighting their emotions. 

The boy I held back today? He breaks my heart. As one staff put it brilliantly "out of all the boys, I 'don't like' him the least". Which basically means, she likes him the most. It's really easy not to like these boys. They yell at you, throw things at you, tell you they hate you and they just generally ignore everything you say. Literally EVERYTHING with them is a battle. However, with him, you just get drawn to him. He is straight up goofy. Today he told me he doesn't like Owl City because it's "white people music"....he's definitely white. Hilarious. When he wanted to go all crazy and beat up his peer I literally had spent 15 minutes calming him down and he ended up walking away. I was blocking him from going anywhere reminding him "you're better than this, make the right decision, staff is here for you, you don't have to fight, we'll take care of you". He finally backed down.

What was his breaking point? Someone showing care and concern. I didn't yell at him and tell him to stop. I didn't grab his arms and drag him away. I just had my hand on his shoulder, reminding him that I care about him and want him to make good choices. I checked on him before I left for the night and he apologized for disappointing me. I told him that I wasn't disappointed, I was extremely proud that he backed down and made the right decision and gave him a bandaid for his hand. 

I'm not going to say these boys don't deserve consequences. I'm not going to say that I can always break up a fight by showing love. Tonight, however, it worked.

I'm exhausted. I'm wore out. My nerves are shot. My finger hurts from where it got jammed. I didn't really enjoy my shift today, but I can't wait to go back tomorrow.