Therapy happened today, and it came down to that I’m never really happy unless I’m neck deep in the utter horror of the awful things happening around me. I don’t know how to make anyone other than another mental health worker understand. Well, cops and medical workers seem to get it also. So my therapist helped me find a way to apply for a job in crisis response.
It involved talking to a company that….. I have a lot of doubts about. I feel like an addict in need of a fix. Because this company can connect me with local cops, I can be on the scene, and I can see things. I want to see those things so badly.
Of course, it’s another application. Odds are the same as any other, what did I figure out? less than 3% of even hearing a single thing, let alone an interview, let alone a job coming out of it.
Drawing that willingness out of myself though, to interact with an organization that up to today I had negative feelings towards….. turning that tide within myself is hard work. I do it only for my desire to fight trauma and engage in crisis response. If I’m not moving forward I feel like I’m suffocating.
In the darkest of times, strange bedfellows are made out of a desire to have some meaningful work to be done.
Those demons, I want to fight a specific kind of demon, and no one else will give me a damn shot. I know they are there to be fought, and no one else will let me within fighting distance. I need money, resources and time.
2 comments
What you described sounds like my own demon. Born out of trauma, it pulls me back into the same hell I thought I had escaped. Life doesn’t seem complete without it.
Firefighters suffer from this a lot, and occasionally veterans (I’m neither a firefighter nor veteran). I wish more studies were focused on this because it’s very specific type of PTSD that can’t be lumped with the other kinds. This is an addiction to trauma, but like you said it’s a need to be part of a group or organization that deals with crisis. When you’re in that world, doing your job, everything in the universe falls into place. Without it you rot and die. Suicide rates are astronomically high among those who find themselves ‘retired’ due to injury, age, or ironically getting out to save your own ass.
I hope you find your way back into the group, even in some peripheral way, maybe not at the front lines but just interacting with others there. Even if you don’t get an actual position, is there some type of volunteer status you can get?
Heh, if I knew something as easy as volunteer work….. I wish it could be that easy. There’s an element of the hunt to this thing, where I want to get into the files that they only let some people into. It was happening to me last year too; I’d be watching the news and they’d do that censored thing where they cover just enough to wet the appetite.
Anyone who works on the inside knows what those files are going to say, or at least know where they could dig. People in crisis will tell you anything and everything. Well, they’ll tell me anything, that’s my talent. I think other people are afraid to ask the questions.
When people open up like that, it satisfies me on a level I can’t explain, and then they thank me for it…. it’s a win win.
The thing that shocked me about it was that I’m willing to work odd hours to chase it. Up until now I wanted to work day shift, because of my age and health. Yet, if it means getting what I need, I’ll work the hours necessary.
I’ve met alot of strange older folk in my field and I wondered why they were like that, I guess now I know why they were like that. The things the mental health field shows are more potent than drugs. The application mentioned that I couldn’t have THC, and my inner junkie thought was instantly “Pffft, THC is nothing on what I’ll see on the job, if it is what you claim” Seriously, trauma will make you dissociate harder than THC any day of the week. Take it with being awake at 4 AM and you’ll go to places you never thought you’d be.
You probably can’t have THC because if you added that you’d fly so far off the handle you couldn’t find the ground again if you tried.