Some days clients get to you.
Most days it’s fine. You do your stuff, they do theirs, you close the file, you move on.
Not some days. Some days you answer the phone on your way out the door and end up listening to a story that wrings your heart out through your soul for fifteen minutes straight. And all you can say as you hang up the phone is “I’m sorry, I’m not sure we’re the right people to help…”
Most of the time it’s as simple as listening, taking their number, getting them a caseworker, or putting them in touch with another organisation that can help. But some days that organisation doesn’t exist. Some days there really is no help you can give but listen. Some days you get sucked into the world of the client.
When just listening really is all you can do it is never, ever, enough.
I want there to be less of those days. I want those days to affect me less.
I don’t want to see so clearly into peoples heads and lives. I don’t want to be hard and bitter; I love helping people. I just wish some days I could retreat behind a barrier to save myself a little pain. I just… I just want there to be fewer conversations like the one I had at 5 o’clock today.
Just seen this… BIG HUG! It’s really hard when you know there isn’t really anything you can do that would make any difference, and you just wish you could wave a wand and POOF! everything is fixed.
The world sadly isn’t like that, but people like you make it better by trying to help where you can. I’m guessing that is one part of the job you won’t miss when you’re gone…
Yeah, I’m really not going to miss that part of the job. There have been a couple like that lately and they’re the proverbial straw. Gonna miss the people I work with, but not that feeling at the end of the day which has been far too familiar lately.
Sometimes there are days…
Days when you can’t give any more, days when you can’t help someone else, days when you’ve given all you can and are sucked dry. I know those days.
As hard as it is I have begun to realise that just perhaps we hear / help / see these things for a reason. How much do you believe in fate? Perhaps what you are dealing with today will prepare you for tomorrow.
Doesn’t help today of course, it won’t help at all until… well you may not even realise it’s helped you then.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of seeing too much as much as seeing what you needed to see.
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