Last night I got home from work at 4:00ish, I put on sweats, took out my contacts, put in a DVD and flopped on the couch. That is all. I. remember.
I woke up this morning, still on the couch and completely disoriented. I looked at my phone and discovered it was 8:30am. I was then hit with that "where I am? what day is it? what time was I supposed to wake up? what do I have to do today?" panic.
Then I realized...I have nothing to do today. I am working on my Christmas presents for the boys at work but that in and of itself is fairly easy. I'm making them all mix cd's. I'm so dang excited. They know about them, which kind of ruins the fun, but I wanted to make sure they would like them. I spent time over the last 3 days pulling each of them aside for half an hour and making up a list of 15 songs they would like. It was so much fun. We would listen to 30 second clips of the song online, and then I would look up the lyrics and by the time I was done with the first few boys they could tell just by the sound of the "hmm" I would make, whether or not I would approve it. I told them that just because something is radio edited doesn't mean that's it okay for them to have. For example, just because all the cuss words are gone doesn't mean all the lyrics have an appropriate meaning. For a fine example of this please examine the song Forever by Drake. I listen to that song all the time and my brain has never heard any cuss words so overall I feel like it's NBD to listen to it. However, I read the lyrics and oh my dear Lord...not appropriate.
It was so much fun spending one on one time with each of them though. I'm starting to really get to know them and it has really helped me. I feel like the people that get burnt out in this job are those that stand too far on the behavioral line vs clinical line. They're the people who look at kids misbehaving and think "they're just bad kids that need punished". I look at bad kids and think "what happened to that kid to make them act that way?" A coworker and I ran to the gas station yesterday and the lady behind the counter was sullen, grumpy and downright rude. Molly and I got back in the car and started to laugh a little, I asked Molly "If we can smile and be positive and laugh at our jobs, why can't she?? I doubt anyone spit on her today." Molly cracked up and we spent a few minutes talking about why we're here. Why we do what we do. What makes us come into work everyday?
A few days ago I was driving down the road listening to Christmas music and I almost had to pull over to cry. My car has some issues lately and I'm behind in bills so I can't really afford to drive home, let alone do it safely. I won't get to spend any Christmas time with my family. Then it hit me. I still have the option to go home. I could make it work. My family could come see me. My boys? They don't have that option. Granted some of them "deserve" to be where they are, but no child deserves a dead parent, a parent in prison, a parent addicted to drugs or an abusive parent. I just thought of my boys and I thought about how hard this time of year is for me, having lost my mom at 21, and then compared it to them. I lost my mom at 21, after an almost complete education, still having family, having adequate coping skills, resources and friends surrounding me. Some of these boys lost their parents and had none of that. They didn't know how to cope with loss, they didn't have anyone to turn to, they just became children of the streets, doing whatever mindless things they could to form some sort of family and purpose. It broke my heart. I spent some time talking to one of my supervisors about this yesterday and she praised me for seeing this all from the correct perspective. It was nice to feel validated and for someone else to feel the same way.
On Monday I worked an impromptu double, someone called off so I stayed til 10 and then went home and came back for my regular shift Tuesday at 7. In the 33 hours between 7 am Monday and 4:00pm Tuesday, I spent 24 of them with the boys. After realizing that, it kind of makes sense as to why I fell asleep at 4:30 yesterday and didn't wake up until today. I'm not going to say I wasn't exhausted. I'm not going to say that at 9:30 on Monday night I didn't have two boys say "Sarah, you're tired. I can tell. You haven't snorted in an hour, your voice is lower, and you're talking quietly". They know me. They know more about me than I've ever known about myself. They are masters of behavior and observation. It's crazy. They know how I act when I'm tired, they know how I act when I'm stressed, they have figured out that I only wear cute clothes on Mondays and Tuesdays because I see clients right after work and that I wear my hair curly on days when it's raining. They have quickly become my second family. I spend more time with them than my actual family. I can't wait to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them. I want to remind them that they are loved and I want to make sure they have a fantastic weekend.
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