Boundaries

This is a post about work. It's also a post about boundaries, mental and emotional ones for the most part. It's also a post about mental health.

I work in a pretty unique environment--a residential facility for youths suffering mental illnesses who need 24hr care. The first time that I came to my work campus I got a bit freaked out because the day was foggy, overcast, and out of the fog loomed this fenced in area with smaller gated, fenced in buildings scattered around it. All of the fences were at least 10 ft high; some of the fences went all the way up and connected at the top. 

(As a testament to the human ability to adapt however, arriving at work, opening the gate with my key and locking it behind me no longer even makes me bat an eye.)

We had to sign a veritable booklet of papers to work here so I don't want to identify it or say too much about it but suffice to say that inside, it's such a different world. Sometimes driving home I look around me and marvel at the people who are walking on the street without concern of them running into traffic, or talking on the corner but freely, without my needing to monitor their conversation so it doesn't stray too far into dangerous territory. That people can work with knives on their own at home, have plastic bags, use a straightener, clip their nails without supervision. That doors open freely and you don't need a walkie-talkie at your ear to hear what's going on. 

Boundaries become critical in a job like mine. Boundaries that prevent you from taking work home and prevent you from becoming friends with the kids you work with. Sometimes that's hard, at least for me, because I'm better at making friends than I am at being an authority figure. But you have to be an authority where I work--you have to round up people who won't listen to you and don't want to listen to you. That requires convincing yourself of having authority. 

There's such a fine line between being nurturing, kind, but also firm in limit-setting. In establishing good rapport but also establishing good boundaries. Honestly, I'm not quite there yet. Man though is this a place to get there. 

I try not to talk about work too much once I get home. Sometimes I can't help it; sometimes it all comes exploding out like a whale that has beached itself in a small town. I feel bad at those times for my patient boyfriend who listens to all of it without saying a word, though that experience must be somewhat akin to being sprayed directly in the face with freezing seawater after you've been enjoying the balmy weather of Miami all day. Sometimes I dream about the kids at my work. That's stressful. Most of the time though, I try to park my work somewhere along the road that takes me back into town. Maybe there, by the stoplight or at least here, once we've passed this hotel. I play music and sing along. It's all to slip out of the hat I wear at work, slip myself thoroughly out of it and stow it carefully (not forgotten or buried) in its proper place until I need to put it on again. I think that's how all of us who work there manage. 

Mental health divides; it divides the healthy and the unhealthy but it also divides those who give it a measure of merit and those who believe illness there to be an inferior illness. The latter is understandable! It's not very productive but the line between brain and biology, between self and body is blurry and has been blurry for a very long time. We're getting better at sharpening this boundary but people's perception tends to change slowly. It takes a lot of momentum to turn a big thing, whether that thing is society or the ideas and behaviors and beliefs instilled across a lifetime. Regardless, I think it all comes down to whether it's productive, whether what you believe and the actions you take actually make a difference. Isn't that the ultimate goal? 

In the end, I go there and do my best in situations that are scary, stressful, but slowly shaping me into being someone that I want to be. Then I come home and I let that all go. You can't carry the burden of other people if you don't take time to rest. I'm inspired by how brave a lot of the kids I work with are and by the very words of faith that I will say to them--it makes sense to feel that way, you are doing so well at holding back your anger, expressing your needs in a gentle manner, letting yourself be sad and vulnerable, giving great peer support, remaining positive throughout peer negativity, I am proud of you I am proud of you I am proud of you. 

Wednesday

Hoo I'm sleepy. But I also ate a lot after coming back from McMenamins because my body has developed a habit of becoming hungry around 10:30-11pm as a consequence of getting off work late. I've noticed that there are definite food phrases that I go through: not too long ago it was celery/carrots with ranch dressing, then string cheese (phase that is slowly being left behind), and I think that the next phase is cinnamon-sugar toast.

NOT artisan cinnamon-sugar toast. SCREW artisan toast. 

It was nice getting a beer with Aroa and Libby. Walking back in the dark across the quad near our apartment, I looked around and actually felt that Corvallis was familiar and homey for the first time. Not to say that the apartment doesn't feel like home--it does, partly because I'm a huge homebody and need to establish some place that is both physically and mentally home base, and partly because we do inhabit this apartment after all. But I think that I haven't yet adopted Corvallis itself, through the landmarks and roads may be recognizable. Granted, there really isn't very much to learn, in terms of the city's layout, since Corvallis is so small. 

So it was pretty cool to get a little jolt of Corvallis-the-city-as-home, while walking back. I think that it may have been due to meeting up with friends while Scott's gone on his research cruise. Like I'm making the city more "mine." 

I picked up a shift at work today so I was there from 8-4:30 (due to a meeting after my shift). There was an abnormally high number of staff on unit today which made it a loooot smoother and easier. I wish that we could maintain such high client:staff ratios all the damn time so it's not just five frazzled staff dealing with 15 even more chronically frazzled and high needs kids. But! No work until Sunday! Which I'm tempted to ask off of, just so that I can have a full day weekend day with Scott since he gets back late on Saturday I believe. Also because this job is such high stress sometimes.

It was one of those rare gloriously sunny days in the Pacific Northwest* so after work, I went on a run. It felt like I was running through molasses, but now feel much more relaxed than I have in a long time. I saw some interesting purple flowers near the side of the road which I have since tried to google "purple flower like a bell hanging down with criss-cross pattern" and "small bell-like flower that hangs down" and other iterations, one of which somehow led me to a google image result of nothing but purple dresses (?). Maybe they were clematis, I have no idea. 

I'm a bad person. I picked some daffodils from the street. They grow everywhere here! They're like weeds, near the side of the highway! Just like tiger lilies used to be in Wisconsin.  

Okay I'm going to stop writing now. 

* Sophisticated Asterisk Usage Time. I have a theory that people in the Pacific Northwest are so rabidly in love with the Pacific Northwest partly because of these rare sunny days. It's like being in a relationship with someone who is usually distant, rather overcast, doesn't really respond to your feelings or emotions and likes to rain on your parade but who also SUDDENLY will shower you with warmth, and light, and affection, and sweetness. Everybody gonna get addicted! Classic emotionally manipulative relationship right there. 

musing 1

I haven't written anything here in a long time. 

It's something I'm not even sure is that helpful, or even that meaningful, but it was something that I mainly enjoyed. So I'd like to do it again, even if it's just short and brief and every now and then. 

Today I'm wondering about black and white photos. Namely, how we connect with them. I always find it particularly interesting to see manually colored versions of b&w or sepia pictures.

for instance: http://petapixel.com/2012/01/17/famous-black-and-white-photos-with-color-breathed-into-them/

How transformative! The b&w pics are so obviously of another time and I think just having that knowledge gives them an air of history--a significance, a weight. Obviously those are pictures of famous people who are plenty weighty historically already but even if he subjects were ordinary people, the subconscious association with "Past" subtly flavors how we perceive the photo, I think. 

Once they're colored, they become a lot more mundane. B&w is a pretty forgiving photo medium. It smoothes out imperfections of color but at the same time it gently blurs away life. Aside from the knowledge that b&w photos are old and thus weighty, that distancing from color and life also makes them weightier. Meaningful. Like statues of ideals of people rather than real people.

Color makes the people ordinary, makes them beings who breathed and ate and pooped and got back pains and lost things and drooled in their sleep.

Sometimes that's hard enough to remember about living people today. 

The End