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Seriously. Seriously. Seriously.
I don't even know where to begin.
Today was by far my worst day ever at work and my brain is literally soup right now. tomato. basil. soup.

I never intended for this blog to be solely about my job, but hey, that's what takes up 40+ hours of every week and it happens to be having a profound affect on me (positively).
I went to work today with a very specific plan. I'm working the day shift, 7-3:30, the boys are back in school from Christmas break. I'll have at least 5 free hours that I can spend doing my paperwork and catching up on what I'm behind on. First rule of residential: never make a plan for your day. It's a surefire way to guarantee that absolutely none of it will work out.

By 9:30 am I should have been an hour into paperwork...instead I was just getting out of a restraint where I had been bit and spit on. Amazing.

By 11:30 am, three of my boys were refusing to go back to school.

By 1:30 pm, one of those boys was throwing chairs at staff.

By 2:00 pm, we had removed anything that could be thrown from the common area and were in a literal standoff with the three boys, waiting for them to riot.

By 2:10 pm, the gentleman visiting from corporate, along with 3/4 of the administrative team and most of the clinical staff, were standing in our common area making sure everything was okay.

By 3:00, myself and another staff had the remaining 9 boys off the program and in the swimming pool.

By 4:00, I was filling out my second police report of the day and the decision was made for me to stay on second shift to ensure the safety of staff. My coworkers stayed too.

By 4:15 pm I was calming down a client who decided to punch the wall repeatedly.

By 4:30 pm I had passed out ibuprofen and bandaids to two separate boys for wall punching episodes.

Then....there was the brief period of peace. We all watched a movie in the conference room and everything was a-okay.

Then...by 9:30, one of the boys on my co-case, who just had an individual with his case manager, and an individual with me two days ago, completely forgot everything we said and flipped out and punched a staff member.

By 9:45 we were in our second restraint of the day.

By 10:00 I was fighting back the tears of a very disappointed staff member who was stretched to her emotional capacity.

By 11:00 I was recovering with my staff buddy/co-case  who had just spent the last hour debriefing our client and trying to understand what the heck had happened with him.

By 11:15 a second client told night staff to send me to his door, upon opening his door he showed me the pencil he had broken into tiny bits and the words "F U Bitch" that he had carved into the door. He simply nodded his head when I asked "is that for me?"

By 11:30 I was clocking out and heading to my car.

I cried on the way home. I cried because today I felt like I did nothing right. I felt like I was running up the down escalator. I cried because a client I'm very invested in told me something in his individual that ripped my heart to shreds. He told me his biggest struggle is earning something, because his entire life he's been trying to get his mom's attention and earn her love and it just doesn't work. I cried because no child deserves that feeling. I cried because I have 12 broken boys that I absolutely love and today they tried to test that.

Here's the best part of all. I'm going back tomorrow. I'm going back with a smile on my face, a song in my heart and a lot of prayer. Why? Because it's my job. It's my job to love those boys and I love that I do. They may be cray-cray to the max, but they're still just little boys.