Midlife Musings and my Second Career

I'm exhausted. Every day I go to work and get beat up. I try my best to put on some type of protective armor/screen/ bullet proof vest in order to take on a lighthearted Muhammad Ali persona and "Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee" and keep out of the vicarious trauma hole. But the aches and pains of battle are becoming more than I can peaceably handle. I don't really like who I'm becoming. There is no light air around me. I live surrounded by fog and smoke and cold and damp. I live in an atmosphere of deciept. The forces outside my agency wield so much power and control that at times I feel my voice is meaningless. What I have to say about a particular patient is unimportant. And god forbid the patient's words might be taken as truth. Addicts are liars, they don't know how to tell the truth. They wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face. 'Getting over' is all they are about. They are manipulative, thieving, exploitive individuals thinking only of themselves. So think about it. I'm only the social worker/therapist/case manager and I feel there's not much point in my getting up off the floor to fight the good fight one more time. Imagine what the individuals for whom these labels are supposed to fit, must feel. I try to shield them from the remarks my so called colleagues make. Everyday I go in remembering to be client centered and strength based only to be foiled by rumors and suspicions presented as facts by vengeful individuals tring to make themselves feel superior to someone else. I can only hope "this too shall pass," without losing lives in the battle. The War on Drugs has morphed into the war on addicts played out by former addicts who think nothing of acting out on even less defenseless individuals than they were in the early stages of recovery. If only prayer were a viable intervention.

"Off with their heads," she thought she heard him shout. Indeed he did in the secret language of directors who've lost their way. "We have to get them out of here. " These are the absent ones, the late ones, the tired ones, the ones without direction themselves when their own Queen was beheaded some weeks before and the pawns left to fend for themselves.

She did not fear beheading. It would be a relief. But how could she leave behind all the mad hatters. The bottle marked "Drink Me" would not serve her well either. She'd been down that rabbit hole before!

If she were to speak she was not sure she'd be understood as she herself understood little of the madness. But she was determined to try. She owed it to the hatters. She owed it to herself.