Ponderings of an MSW

I [was] am currently a student, and have found a dearth of space to explore ethical issues and questions regarding social work and human interactions in a general sense. I suspect some of my musings will be offensive. Tell me.

[differentgirljuice]

#EricGarner #icantbreathe

[ponderingsofanmsw]

Fun with birth control.

I don't want children. I have a uterus. This seems incompatible to many folks in the world.

I want to be sterilized. I've wanted to be sterilized since my uterus started bleeding when I was a new teen. I wasn't allowed to. Too young, too foolish, too maternal-instincts-are-still-latent.

That was (literally) over half my life ago- and I'm trying again. Go number three, wheeee. So I get a referral from my PCP who acts like it's no big deal to GYN. I see GYN, who has me talk to the attending, sitting at genital level while I'm perched on the table to tell me that she's had people who "have regrets."

I have to make my case, explain why I don't want other, less permanent, forms of birth control. I have to demonstrate that I'm not suicidal. I have to make a case for myself without unleashing the fury I'm feeling.

I need to sign this waiver and then wait at least 30 days (but it lapses in 6 months... so... you know). They want me to get a psych eval to state I'm not depressed or suicidal or temporarily insane or whatever. I need to start pill birth control. I have to come back for an exam. If I can do all these things, in the right order, in the right time, then it's going to hurt.

I was seeing a psychiatrist, for something else (more awesome bullshit there, whoooo). He refused to write a letter on my behalf stating I'm capable of making decisions around my reproductive future. I told him I was frustrated, and without raising my voice I explained to him how furious it is that I have to beg and plead and present to have a decision I made 17 years ago real. That I don't want to have anymore conversations along the lines of someone lecturing me "you'll change your mind." That I'm pissed that I cannot control my reproductive organs without his help. Don't I have reproductive rights?

The emotional toll that terminating a pregnancy would have on me is so much heavier than being sterilized. Period.

I emailed my GYN and asked what next. Can't get the letter. I offered to get a notarized affidavit from my father, brother, grandmother stating I've been consistent that I don't want kids. She did some magic. Said we're on for a date early next year.

I'm thankful. I'm angry. I feel relief.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

the crispiness of burnout nipping at my heels, i half collapsed into my supervisor's office (after requesting help/meeting/supervision 4x over two weeks). she looked at me, listened, measured, found me  drooping. later that day told me to take a mental health day.

this morning found me sprawled on my yoga mat surrounded by books and sketch pads, markers and music, coffee and chocolate.

my coworkers were practically petting me yesterday, trying to alleviate the scowl on my face. "what's wrong?" "i hate my job today." i can't stand someone lying to me. i was pissed to be called up to talk to someone's case manager asking for free train rides [i get three tickets A YEAR and they're for patients, not family of patients] when i wanted to be in the other unit, talking to man who just found out his mother is dying of metastatic cancer.

i'm finding it hard to balance what i think my responsibilities are and what i'm drawn to. i'd rather work with the dying and their families than the sick enroute to recovery. i'd rather sit with her son for an hour than talk to two people just coming out of withdrawal about their alcohol use.

*sig*

twice now i've gotten the opportunity to talk to chaplains in training about the role of social workers. i really like it. one of the new chaplains and i worked together with a family who's person was on life support. we were debriefing later, and he told me "we [trainees] see you as the model of being effective and authentic." my heart soared. that's the point, isn't it?

granted i kept answering the phone during that conversation, getting pups to visit the person on life support. the buzz from such an important acknowledgement and the success of getting a service to someone did not last long.

i'm hoping a mental health day helps me refocus. no more 4 months without a vacation.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

The transition between indignant anger to grieving compassion is more than I feel able to handle.

My uncle died over the weekend. We were not particularly close. He wanted love and affection. Needed it. Craved it. Would shove greedy hands past my rib cage into the depths of my heart to get at it. Not just mine, but I only know my experience.

I kept my distance. It felt safer. [it was safer]

The first son died of heroin overdose in an apartment in Canada. Or was shot during a bank robbery. Either as the robber or security. It depends on who you ask and how old you are (I was).

The second son jumped into a train. He was my godfather. The smell of those candles you could buy at the super market... with Mary and or the baby Jesus on stickers poorly pressed to the surface of the glass... they smell like he did. The candles they sell now don't smell the same. Those candles, stale beer and slightly rotten cotton, faint cigarette smoke. Those are the scents of my godfather. Before he... I was six.

And my uncle of last week. My dad is the only son left. His parents have buried three children. How horrific.

The social worker in me sees a family tree of addiction and remorse, martyrdom over honesty. My grandmother once told me "every family on the block, in every building, lost a child to drugs or HIV," talking about the projects the family grew up in. I see the systematic gaps in place for addiction and poverty. The lineage, passed from father to son, brother to brother. Dysfunction and blame and hate. Self and familial.

My uncle asked me to dinner. I was traveling. I didn't text back. I didn't want to. Go to dinner. Or respond. I feel like an ass that I didn't respond. I feel justified. But I don't feel ok about it.

He gave me a ride across town a while back. He was asking my professional opinion about how to make my grandfather "submit." My skin was crawling at the word.

[Look into my mind. I'm young, 10 or 12, all limbs like sticks, in a sticky, droopy spider's web. Untangling myself and stealthily going the other way. The is where my mind goes when I speak with people who talk like addicts and are in my life. I need to untangle from your mind games of power and control. and the web sticks.]

He found someone who had the love he needed and enjoyed the love he had to give. It wasn't perfect. And it was far too short. I wish he had more joy in his life. I wish that our interactions had been more light filled. I'm glad he build relationships. I'm glad he found his wife.

Services start tomorrow. I got the day off of work. I didn't want it. But, honestly, I'm kind of a mess. I reached my sad-quota of the week on Sunday morning at 10 am. I feel like my aura has a hole in it and everything I have is pouring through it.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

I want to go south. What southern cities are queer friendly?

[gingercatsneeze]

When Sherlock brings a cat back to 221B

[ponderingsofanmsw]

so happy!

[ponderingsofanmsw]

I lost a piece of faith today. I think this happens to most social workers. 

Maybe this isn't really what happened. Maybe I'm too emotional to see the logic. Maybe I'm too disappointed to appreciate the subtle actions.

The conversation started with the phrase "we don't want to expose ourselves." Forgive me the look on my face. Fuck you. You're right. We should stop repeating that action. We should stop doing business with that organization. 

I don't really care why this wasn't reported before. I am a mandated reported. I AM A MOTHER FUCKING MANDATED REPORTER. It is not my responsibility to address the ramifications of my report of abuse and neglect. My license and my career and my ability to do my job effectively are in the balance. I have to report. 

But it's so much easier not to. Isn't it? It's so much easier to keep working with that organization. They provide a solution when there isn't really one.

We wouldn't want to upset them. 

We don't want a reputation.

We can't make accusations.

Well. Accusations were made. How about instead of discussing how embarrassing it would be if we made a mistake... you looked into it? You filed a report and made it official and let people know- we don't tolerate that. It may have gone under the radar... but it will be noticed and actions will be taken.

I am so frustrated. And have no faith. When the administration acts like whew, we dodged that bullet... I just. I can't. It will come up again. So do something about it now. Prevention is the name of the game, right? Especially from the top.

I used to think.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

"I need you to write me a letter saying that because I'm his health care proxy, I'm in charge of his finances."

My response was loud, direct, and aimed at his entire family, "I cannot do that because as the health care proxy, you make medical decisions. It has no bearing on his finances or legal assets." 

Then I called my patient advocate so I could vomit my dislike of humanity in words. Gross.

[socialworkmemes]

::eyebrow waggle::

[ponderingsofanmsw]

Best.fucking.proposal.ever

[gaywrites]

You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You’re the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft. You kill people while driving drunk? That guy’s welcome. Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes? We know they’re welcome. Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away? You lie to police, trying to cover up a murder? We’re comfortable with that. You love another man? Well, now you’ve gone too far!

Sports anchor Dale Hansen for ABC local affiliate WFAA in Dallas. Whoa.  (via gaywrites)

[ponderingsofanmsw]

Don't shit where you eat.

I feel like I should be able to remember that. After fucking my boss for a year. After being very clear I wouldn't work within a close jaunt to home. Or to a boo. Keep those boundaries clear, mah dear.

But it was just too good. Free [or $5 co-pay] therapy two buildings away from where I work. I didn't even have to dial a full phone number to get ahold of my therapist. Just an extension.

Monday morning I'm scrolling through one of my patient's admission notes. I always [always] read the psych notes. Psych and social work. We overlap a bit in the hospital. If psych is seeing someone, I probably ought to be also. And he's the author. My therapist wrote the note. Is seeing my patient. My admitted patient.

Yeah. Not ok. So I broke up with my therapist. When I asked him what he was thinking, he leaned on this avoidance-escape-defense theory. Like I'm running scared. 

Can I see a show of hands, please, who thinks it's a terrible idea to be your therapist's co-worker? Added to that- what social worker gets on with psych in the hospital? We all tear our hair out at each other. We're like rival siblings with OCD. Constantly trying to one-up each other. Ugh.

Sure, I'll admit I'm not heart broken about discontinuing with him. We don't have report. I don't trust him. I don't feel much of a conneciton. I feel like a waste of his time, and like I'm not getting a ton out of it either. 

He suggests that I might be fleeing so I don't have to go deeper. And it pisses me off. It might be true. There is probably in incongruency between what I want [to be fully self aware and stop blocking out a decade of my life] and what I'm ready for [not that]. And yes, I'm fucking tired of it, and yes I don't know how to erradicate that difference. That's why I initiated therapy. Duh.

Could I be running away? Sure. AND it's totally inappropriate to work alongside my therapist to provide care for patients. Am I wrong? And isn't my therapist supposed to help me along?

I described how I see this to him: For an hour a week, I can drop all the pretenses and politeness and societal necessities and really try to take a look at myself. To see the shit and the rivers and the space. And my therapist is the person who accompanies me on this journey. My co-worker, my friend, my significant other, my children, my neighbor I fight with over the bins... they don't have an invitation. I don't want my therapist to be my co-worker.

And I sure as fuck don't like feeling there's a sense of victim blaming. 

[boyswithbeardswithcats]

My Kitty & I 

[ponderingsofanmsw]

Kitteh in a shirt! EEEK!

[ponderingsofanmsw]

There are days. More days now than before. When I don't understand the point of my job. I don't understand if there's any importance to how I see my job; essentially I am a witness to people. To their sorrows and joys and anxiety. Mostly. Then I see an attending with more compassion in her hands than my entire being is able to dream of having. I see a nurse who holds a weeping child/mother/beloved of someone battling for every breath. And it seems pointless to merely stand there and watch.

I've seen a man pray and weep and stagger with the weight of impotence while his wife died in front of him. He was later admitted to my ICU and had no idea I was there. He was mad that I wasn't. I've seen families implode under the weight of our neurologist explaining the permanent effects of their person's stroke. I've pressed a man's fingertips into clay as he died so his fiancé would be able to hold his print close. And sometimes [frequently] I wonder what the purpose is. If my conviction that it's important [it feels so important to me] that these moments have a witness, that the people I work with have someone who was there, someone who saw what they heard and felt and experience... I wonder if it's important in the world, or just to me. If I take my sense of the role being crucial to make myself feel important.

I'm spending a lazy sunday at home. I'm trying to ignore the pain of my healing bone. Picking up after myself, and I find my tampon pouch in the back pocket of the pants I wore to work on Friday. And it makes me catch my breath. One of my patient's daughter needed a tampon. And I was able to give her one (two). A slight lessening of embarrassment, of attending to the human needs of the situation. 

I felt so inadequate. When she and her family recognized that their person was dying. That their person knew death was close at hand. Their sorrow was so intense, I left that meeting nauseous with the intensity of it. [and he's not my person.]

But I was able to bear witness to her later. I was able to hear about her appreciation of the person in the bed, struggling to wake up and breathe. I heard the love and the sorrow and the hope for an existence without pain. And so simple to be able to reach into my ever present stash of survival items [coz I'm nothing if not at least minimally prepared for anything], and share.

I don't know if it matters. It feels like it does. To me. And sometimes it does matter. Sometimes I know it does. Most of the time, I don't. But I thought I understood that when I signed up for this journey.

[devlinboof-deactivated20200731]

[leo-withani]

Shut you up real fast.

[deshommesetdeschatons]

[ponderingsofanmsw]

cat super hero! [i wanted to make capes with my co-workers for halloween... but you know- try getting a bunch of social workers to meet up for a social event...]

[thecottonproject]

Final for my Time Arts class. Nothing gets you in touch with your own anger quite like listening to this and thinking about all the times you’ve been objectified and belittled.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

phenominal. I want it as a poster.

[ponderingsofanmsw]

i am so utterly frustrated. [i broke my elbow 2.5 weeks ago] i am over the pain, over gauging if the pain is "bad" or "tolerable", over not being able to  do a bunch of things, over not getting paid. i know i'm super duper fucking lucky (i could have died), and i generally feel lucky and grateful. and today... i just want to be better.