Sometimes it takes losing to Win

Like so many other social workers I know, I feel like I have been sprinting in a decade long marathon, always thinking that if I just get to the next hill rise I can take a break and rest. But nearly every time I get to that rise I see the valley below on fire and my insanely self destructive hero complex takes over and I go sprinting down the next hill towards danger forgetting all about that promised rest. I can't resent when I see others suffering! It's just not in me. In that way I have turned my love for alcohol (in remission now nearly 11 years) into a love for work, so passionate and so addictive, that I have put it before my relationship with family, friends, and even myself. So it is no wonder to me, that after years of working 60+ hours a week getting bitten, beat up, yelled at, and having every bodily excretions imaginable dumped on me, after having witnessed violence pain, hatred, unimaginable loss, and suffering, I might be a little tired.

When I sat on the other end of the phone as a client tried to die by cop earlier this year, I thought I might just not come back from that. I knew that if I had to listen to my client die, I didn't think I could be a social worker anymore, I also knew that as much as I wanted to I couldn't stop listening to the call, I couldn't stop trying to intervene to keep this person alive. The police did an excellent job of deescalating the situation and managed to get my client to the hospital (big thanks to MPD and the efforts over the last decade to increase police training on mental health crisis). My career didn't end, but that was the beginning of my fall.

I started seeing a therapist again. Not just a therapist, probably one of the top 10 therapists in the Pacific Northwest. I know, because I've seen a lot of them over the years. My average number of session with a clinician is 1.1. That is to say only one in ten gets a second session. I hear it's hard to be a therapist to a therapist, and I can believe it. I know what game they're playing, and it's not going to work. Plus I'm a pretty self aware person, If my therapist is going to be helpful they have to be good to see my blind spots. The therapy opened up a whole can of emotional baggage that has been festering in the background while I work in service to others as a dodge to avoid looking at my own baggage (another common theme among social workers). I knew I needed to make a change and I was trying to get just a little bit further in the race so I could make that change into a better position and...bam! I fell flat on my face. In between moving apartments and changing jobs I managed to get fired from the new job, and told I'm not wanted back at the other. What a way to wake up. Flat faced in the mud, at what I imagined was 100 meters from the finish line.

At first Pride makes me angry and a curse and mumble about the tough break, and yell that someone must have tripped me, or maybe my shoelace was untied. This isn't fair. How could it end like this. But then I settle. Like the sand and mud in the bottom of a pond after you've waded through the water. It's all mucky and cloudy at first and I didn't know which way to look or what I was doing. But as time has progressed and I have settled more, and more, the water is beginning to clear, and I'm begging to see all the amazing life that has been here all along, that I've just been missing because I've been bogged down trying to do good for others. This is not to say that I am done being a social worker. I don't think I could ever be done. I is who I am, to the bone. But I have tripped and fallen into what I thought was muck, but the longer I'm in it, the more I realize this is the good shit. This is where creativity comes from. This is where I get inspired to finish my website, and create my business proposal, and work on my non-profit plan, and all my homes, dreams, and aspirations. That I need time to dig into the dirt in my own life, because this is were I find the hope I can then share with the world. When I was so out of balance before, I had lost hope. I only saw the world burning, and I couldn't see the world living and loving and just being, because I was not do that. I am so grateful tonight, for those people who had to play the role of rejector in my life. So that I could have the opportunity to find this moment. What a blessing!