the worst of pleasures makes it all feel better

[threeplusfire]

Work has kicked my ass today. All I want to do is go home, cry a little, take a long bath and read my copy of Smoke & Mirrors. It seemed like everything I got was an emergency. I had the mentally ill young man in a halfway house who is terrified he will end up in prison again. A worker at the house doesn't like him and refuse to give him his meds, saying "Go hang yourself, I don't care." The guy sliced his arm open and needed 15 stitches. Then we had the mother who was cracked out on meth and attacked her 3 year old. Another prize specimen of humanity. I nearly had to shout at someone to call EMS for their elderly relative who was dying and wanted me to send a caseworker to verify how bad she was.

The prize for most disgusting human being goes to the mother who thinks the father needs to keep seeing the kids after raping both of them. The little girl cries all the time, and the little boy is wetting the bed, setting the house on fire and killing kittens. Can you imagine a two year old boy breaking the necks of kittens? It blows my mind. I want to drive out to that town and smack that woman over and over with a baseball bat. It just hurts so much and it's a horrible reaction. It wouldn't do any good. But there are some kinds of stupid that nothing helps.

I keep thinking about the boy who called me last week. He was so afraid. He was hiding in the bath, with the water running and speaking in a whisper. His mother hit him the night before and he wanted to know what would happen if he made a report with CPS. He told me about the bruises, about the times before, about the time she hit him with a drill and how it left a scar... This abused, scared boy was worried his mother would lose her job because she works with children. He wouldn't tell me his name, and I made him promise to call us back and I couldn't do a damned thing because he wouldn't tell me where he was. He's out there somewhere, and I wish I could find him and make him safe.

This work, it is hard. But we're doing something, and that's better than nothing. I love my job, aside from the headaches and the irritations and the cranky rude callers. I love it, because I feel like I'm doing something valuable, that the 40 hours a week mean something more than just paying my bills.

Comments

[melanie.livejournal.com]

oh, jesus. thank god there are people like you. people like me wouldn't exist without you. my children would have been entirely impossible without people like you out there to give people like me something to hope for, something to aim for.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

You are doing incredibly work, and it's a shame that you probably don't get thanked for in more than the people who are reading here. But bless you for doing it.

[charmed-art.livejournal.com]

You SHOULD be proud of what you do, YES! I mean, honestly, it's folks like you that give the world SOME bits of decency after the innocent are brutalized. It's people like you that should be treated like heros, and given the money that that warrants. Fuck sports stars, movie stars, rock stars, you are doing shit that fucking MATTERS! Don't EVER think anything different.

[laxiola.livejournal.com]

you're doing a very good thing. i'm going to school to get into social work, and all i hear from people is, "oh, so you don't want to make any money, do you?", or, "why? it's so depressing." you're correct, the time you put in at work *does* mean more than paying your bills, and that's what makes it worth it.