I want to work with families but I run from any suggestion of intimacy here
There's a woman at work that drivers me a bit insane. She's always hurrying to do what she's told but has a series of slights of hand, things like handing keys back to someone, slamming doors, calling someone honey or using affectionate nicknames. There are moments when they seam appealing - there are moments when it seems like she's getting what she wants or making her life easier. But then I hand the keys back to her and she struggles to unlock something, or when people look at her after she's slammed a laundry basket on the floor, and I think to myself: I know her, I've met her before.
She lives with a man that hates her, with children who barely see her, without many friends, least of all someone who sees and hear her. If she's lucky she's found something inside her - a few interests - that keep her alive, but usually not.
She's the same person I truly believed would strangle me with a charging cable if she could, if she thought no one saw. She wouldn't be able to stop herself, she couldn't tell when I was saying no, the sound of her own no echoing constantly behind and before and all around her. She's a man in that regard, unable to express only explode.
She's slightly different here in South Dakota, to the other versions of her I've met in other places. She so completely lacks softness here, but is somehow fluffier. The softness she presents isn't actually soft, it's a sort of disguise. Sometimes, before I can reel her back in, my mind goes after who this person married, and I wonder what her closest relationships are like.
She tries to hug me when I'm being vulnerable with other people, but I find my voice trailing off when she's around... I feel the low part of my belly, my gut click into place, setting my back and my shoulders back and my eyes up. I will see you as you do this, I say to myself. You can do what you're about to do, but I'll see it and I'll hold it, and if you want to blame me for seeing this in the future, if you want to say I caused the harm by seeing the action, I'll find the line of your words and your reasoning and hold it away from me, apart from me. No. I've met you before.
She searches out patients in low times, waiting to be useful. She hugs them and offers comfort, inserting herself into situations and conversations she's not wanted. It's hard because some of our patients are lower functioning, young children brains in adult bodies. We tell them they need to be accepting of one another, include instead of exclude, but that seems to give license for higher functioning individuals (ie workers) to exploit this kindness. Maybe her functioning is actually lower ?
Yesterday, she told a male patient that she wanted to get a couples massage with him. The slight of hand in that situation was that it was a questions - "Should we get a couples massage ?", I think is what she said. Immediately afterwards, she asked if that was appropriate, and the two or three other people around remained silent... "Yes, that's inappropriate" no one wanted to say.
It just seems so close to the fighting over being his boyfriend bit that they all do... and if one is inappropriate then maybe what they are all doing is inappropriate too. (Spoiler, it's all inappropriate - just like it's weird when people ask children if they have boyfriends.) These are people, by the way, that change his briefs, touch his penis, apply topical medications. I go out of my way to find other things to talk about... to keep things brief and professional and to apologize for an impropriety. Any other way just feels so mean - his life is incredibly limited, and no, none of us are - should be, can be - a romantic relationship, or even appear to offer that to someone who would fall for that suggestion. Because doing that is unkind, morally corrupt, abusive and inhumane.
[Have I seen this directly? No, but do I prefer to work alone so I ensure don't? Yes - the words are enough of a red flag for me.]
I want to work with families so badly. I love working with parents or caregivers and their children, of all ages. I love being in their house, being invited into private settings. I carry that trust and safety with me deeply. I protect it against all the things that feel like threats, even - sometimes - when it feels like it's the only way to keep it safe, as if it isn't there. But I can't work with families here. I can't stand the children or the adults. I can't handle how they talk to one another. There is nothing for me to hold onto - it's old furniture that needs to be burned, it has bed bugs or black mold.
It has to go. I need to go.