I’ve always been a person who thrives on creativity. I find my creative energies, that whimsicality I’ve always known, to be waining in the tide of khaki and pink, with sensible shoes and no-nonsense attitude. My daily worklife charges me with crushing the realities of others, in supporting the involuntary medication and paradigm shifting charge of a state psychiatric system. We’ve all heard tale of seers and gifted ones that if transported from the pre-industrialized world to our world would be automatically labeled schizophrenic, judged and left to struggle. Even in the much-beloved Christianity of America, the visions of John or Daniel are venerated when deep in my little, Thomas heart I can only believe that they were madmen, very imaginative, or at least professionals in hyperbolic metaphor.
There must be a rational explaination for everything.
I can’t help but see the irony in my love of images of fairies (in fact, I’m wearing a fairy t-shirt right now) and living a daily reality that would so soon put Tinkerbelle to death. (Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!!)
My job requires me to submerge the fantastic, odd and ecstatic parts of myself in the interest of curbing those chaotic energies in others. While that was never truly my interest or aim in getting my job, it’s a necessary hazard being that what tools I have now are the best I got in a system that is so unredeemably broken. All that’s left to make an iota of difference is to get them while they’re young in the hopes of pulling them towards pro-social and healthy outcomes. It seems that once a person with severe and persistent mental illness is left to themselves, alone to find their way — and given a good amount of time to fight it on their own — it’s too late for any of the piddily public services to take hold and have a lasting, redeeming effect. It just seems that by the time these guys come to my ward, even just after their first arrest, years after their first psychotic break, I just wonder what could have happened that would have given them a better chance for the years to come. After eight months, I know most of the men that come through my ward will be back, and likely just as bad as when they first came in, if not worse.
Perhaps I should just put it simply: I hate my job.
It’s not because of the patients, or even the staff. Mostly, it’s because of the system that is so broken that where I work is the last dumping ground for society’s problem children. Many of the people coming through lack the community support (public mental health centers, community programs, healthy friends and family, jobs) to keep them healthy and out of the correctional and mental institiutions. We’re putting tiny bandaids on gaping, festering bullet wounds and shoving them back out into the night. These people are coming into the hospital at a rate so fast that by the time I sift through their demands and incoherant babble to find their basic needs, they’re catapulted right back to the jails for another court appearance. The basic paperwork I have to fill out for their admissions are barely completed by the time they move to another ward or their time at the hospital is up.
And the saddest thing to me is that one of the most common trends among these men is the complete lack of meaningful, healthy, stable human interaction in their lives.
By the nature of my work, I’m a destabilizing influence that only by luck transforms their lives to the better.
Or at least, that’s how I’m feeling lately.
I think I know more clearly why I would prefer to work with youth. It seems that if only I could convince some of these young people that stable, healthy, supportive human interaction is possible, than maybe they would continue to seek that out in preference of less healthy coping strategies.
Part of this is burn-out, and I’m long overdue for a vacation.
Truthfully, though, I really desire to make my current rate of pay, at an organization closer to home, where I work with LGBT youth, do counseling and social work, and make a positive impact.
The grass is always greener on the other side — but I truly believe that a different job would enable me to be a bit less banal.
