late night ramblings, as usual.

late night, everyone asleep but me. 

wanted to jot down a few thoughts i've had the past little bit.

so about five years ago when i graduated with my bachelor's i got a job as a line staff at a residential treatment center for adolescent boys and girls. this was the hardest job i'd ever done, emotionally wrenching and draining. it's where i found my love of teenagers and my thirst to help others. 

i didn't like being a line staff. i didn't like being at the bottom of the food chain during staff meetings. the doctors, psychologists, and therapists all knew things, all had things to say that were important. i remember watching the therapists come in and meet with the kids. they'd disappear off to a therapy room for an hour and then come back out. i wondered what kind of magic had happened in there. one therapist would often shake her head and mutter, "that's one sad little girl." before walking out. i wanted so badly to know what happened in those rooms, what kinds of things they did to help those kids whose lives had been warped with abuse and abandonment. i wanted so badly to be a person who had the skills and knowledge to help those survivors of pain, whose lives were so torn apart that they had to live in a treatment center. 

i only worked there for three months. i was miserable the entire time. i couldn't leave work at work, couldn't stop worrying about the kids. maybe i wasn't cut out to work with such pain and loss. 

then i got pregnant and had a baby and left my church and almost my marriage and dealt with my own sexual trauma. turns out i could handle pain and loss. 

five years later i got an internship at the same campus where i'd worked as a line staff. not the same treatment center, as that one had shut down, but it was a day treatment called by the same name as the residential, and was just a few hundred feet from the building where i'd worked before. i walked in to the building as an intern therapist. now i meet with the teenagers who have survived pain, loss, abandonment, abuse, betrayal, and all kind of pain i've never had to feel. turns out i'm not doing magic, it's a lot simpler than that in some ways. i guess it kind of is magic, in a way. having the ability to feel such love, or in carl rogers-speak, unconditional positive regard, for someone else does feel pretty magical most days. turns out i can hold a space for someone else's pain, and that's a pretty neat thing. watching ah ha moments happen, that's pretty magical. 

that's it, really. 

i'm in a great place, i'm really thankful to have been able to follow this dream over the past couple of years in school. only three more months of being an intern. my placement has offered me a job, so we'll see what happens. sex therapy is in the works, getting those requirements finished will be next year's goal. 

here's to dreamin'.