Sharing Space - the starfish principle

My Amy wanted to share a bit of my space again.  More about My Amy here. 

     

             I don’t get to be selfish at work. I don’t get to think about how I feel, about I react, about how it churns my stomach and stings the back of my eyes.

          So here, I’m going to be selfish. Forgive me.

          It has been many years doing this work in one capacity or another. I think often that it has been too many years. There are days when I think—when I know—that I won’t ever be the same.

          That I have passed some sort of breaking point.

          That there was some unnamed threshold, some invisible line in the sand, that once broken, once crossed, cannot be repaired.

          That there is no going back

          Some days I would give anything to go back.

                                                                                                   

          I have lost many things in the past two weeks. One is a measure of separation when I looked in a client’s eyes and saw a bit of myself, a bit of my own struggles.

          When I am not them, when there is no obvious similarity, it is easy to stay removed.

It makes me better at my job. I am able to be more forthright, more open, and I hear them more clearly.

But when I can see some of myself in them, I am shaken. We are all steps away from losing our touchstones, our talismans, the people and things that keep us grounded.

          Another loss comes in a measure of confidence in the fairness of the legal system. It hadn’t failed me before this week.

I can’t look at it in the same light. I knew that it wasn’t just all the time. But knowing and believing are two different things, and now I believe.

          It is isolating. It brings an added weight down on my shoulders to viscerally understand that the things that should be fair are not always so.

If we can only depend on some of what we should be able to depend on, the world beneath our feet rumbles and fractures and those fissures do not close.

          Worst of all is the loss of faith in the unwavering safety of the children around me, the ones that I know outside of work, the ones in the neighborhood, the ones I know through my niece.

          You see, no matter what, through it all, I have somehow maintained an unwavering belief that the kids I encounter outside of work, even the ones who are one or two degrees of separation away, are without a doubt safe.

          Heartbreakingly so, that is not the case.

          So I wonder tonight what else I have to lose.

          Sleep, appetite, friends, social life, exercise.

          Innocence.

Even though it was only a tiny iota left, I maintained a little innocence.

I think some would call it naivete. Survival mode. Forced blindness.

I choose to see it as a shred of faith: there are kids out there who are safe. Maybe it’s not even the kids who are ‘out there’. It’s the kids who are here, who are close to home.

I have come to believe in the past two weeks that the only kid whose safety and wellbeing I will ever be able to guarantee is Ramona’s.

When I stop to remind myself, I have several parents in my life that I trust innately to keep their children safe. Like Ramona’s parents, they will do anything for their kids.

They will circle the wagons, fight like dogs, and willingly bleed to ensure that their kids will wake up happy and protected.

I am grateful beyond measure for these families.

I hope they know how very much I appreciate them.

But those kids are a step removed these days. They are far away. And for the most part they are much older than the kids I encounter in my job.

Maybe it’s that they aren’t Portland kids.

In my head, in my heart, they are easy to separate. My Eugene kids are not equivalent to my Portland kids—they are and have always been safe.

I am able to depend that those kids will be safe. It’s not the same as with kids here.

I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps because it is inexplicable.

The kids that are breaking my heart, are the babies up here. The ones that she knows. The ones who are her friends.

I guess I thought we had a little more time. 

A little more time before the insidious and shadowy parts of my world bled into the true blue, sunshine soaked parts of hers.

                                                                                                        

So now I am left wondering where I go from here.

This isn’t a new question for me. It’s not a new question for most of the people I work with; the difference is that most of them are much better at answering it.

The way I see it, there are two choices.

I can wallow. I can ask why, wring my hands, cry. I can sit here and let my brain take over.

I can believe without a doubt the evidence in front of me that says there is no possible way to actually make a difference.

That would be so easy.

And the part of me that is exhausted is so ready to take that out.

The other choice is so much harder.

That is the one where I get up and go to work every day. I can stand up, put one foot in front of the other, do what needs to be done.

I can obey my heart.

I can choose the starfish principle, that logic-defying belief that making a difference to even one person is worthy.

What would you do?

If I am being brutally honest: tonight I simply don’t know.

 ~Amy.