Hi. Left 2 messages so far for Number3. No response, but that's kinda normal because I call when he's not home and say I'll call back. I'm scared, and I'm trying to
Which of those things I'm doing depends on how clear my awareness is at a given moment. If I'm remembering to breathe, and I know I am OK (aka 'not panicking'), and I'm not trying to escape (which I do sometimes just out of habit) AND (isn't this recipe done yet?) I'm not eshausted emotionally or otherwise unable to be self-caring, then (phew, finally!) I am facing everything.
Yesterday was the annual 'workshop' that our boss at work puts on for us every year. I can say honestly that if tomorrow Joanne were no longer the boss, I would leave instantly. (It is a running joke that everyday is two weeks before my last day.) She is possibly the only reason anybody stays there, and at the very least she makes an impossible job, possible. I have often been furious with her; when there's no schedule posted for tomorrow, when she is unreachable and immediate decisions need to be made, and when there is no one else to be mad at. But all things considered (isn't that 'awareness'?) no other job could come close. Dan, the night-shift man, said yesterday during the workshop that this was the worst job and the best job he's ever had.
It was an exhausting day. And though we are the admissions department for a substance-abuse hospital, we are not terribly scrupulous about our own health. Most of my co-workers smoke, everybody drinks too much coffee (with which they wash-down excessive amounts of chocolate). Most of us live on variations of deep-fried food, chinese food, or pizza; whatever we can have delivered. But we love each other.
Most families are dysfuntional to some degree, and most jobs are not. Most workplaces are hectic--if at all--only occasionally. For the most part, employees do--and are encouraged to--keep each other at arms length, emotionally, and a warm work relationship often results only when people have time to communicate at length.
My workplace is dysfunctional. It is hectic constantly, and we have very little time to talk or relax with our co-workers. Even using the term 'co-worker' here feels inappropriate; we are friends. Or maybe something more. Often the stress and tension are text-book examples of what you would learn to avoid in family therapy sessions. And the quality of the pressure creates a battlefield miasma; desperate, emotionally cloying addicts crying on the phones, and two, three, sometimes four referral sources (don't ever piss-off a referral source!) calling simultaneously, each one demanding, rude, and unreasonable with a case that even you believe requires at least twenty minutes of your uninterrupted time to adequately serve, and thirty seconds is all you have, not to mention calls from inside the hospital from nursing, case management, community resources... You have three calls on hold, twelve things on your mind, eight of which are not getting done right, and you are trying to salvage what you can when you grab yet another ringing phone. It's someone sick and suffering who needs empathy. Now.
This kind of environment creates a bond between people who endure it together. That bond is neither friendship nor family, yet includes some elements of each, both greater in intensity and narrower in scope. And I am just too tired to create an appropriate ending for this.
Good night.
