Catharsis

One of the boys at work is can get to near raving lunacy with the slightest provocation. In the midst of his worst outbursts, he flings objects without thought, climbs on furniture, and even hurts himself, though this has cut down a lot recently. A lot of the time, its easy to understand why he would be so upset. Sometimes he's upset about a perceived injustice. Sometimes he's just mad that he was not included in a desired activity. But for a while, I never understood why an outburst was almost a guarantee when someone asked him to shower. Each night, the same routine would occur. First he would make deals and postpone the shower, but eventually it would be time to act on the promise and the issue would occur. Even when the specific activity he asked for was dangled in front of him, as long as he completed his shower, he still couldn't get into that bathroom and clean himself.

One night, it was actually settled enough and I asked him why he was so averse. He just replied "I miss my parents". My initial instinct was to ask him why that had anything to do with showering or not. I was about to go into the natural staff response of "well I'm sorry about that but just cause you're away doesn't mean that they still wouldn't want you to shower," but I bit my tongue. And then it all made sense. In the shower, there is nothing to distract you from your mind. And there is where this young one's emotions reached fever pitch. Of course he would avoid it.

I only realized it cause I've been having the same problem for the past two months. What should be a five minute ritual turns into a quarter hour experience, which inherently slows down the rest of my day. In addition to swimming through the minefield of all the failings of my life I am currently upset about, I regularly find marks on my body I am sure did not exist before that particular trip to the shower. In the end, I emerge with pruny fingers and the need to forget everything I just pondered in the cascade.

But I never can. And it interrupts at the most inopportune times. I commonly find myself doing absolutely nothing and not knowing what it was I had intended to do before I spaced out. Whereas before I used to at least come up with blog ideas, write a draft and come back to it later, I haven't even had the desire to conjure blog postings out of nothing. I haven't been motivated to write them out of the actual somethings. It's taken me an hour just to get to this point just because I keep having pauses over nothing. It's taken me four extra weeks to even open the document to write

And what is causing the issues? Well life. I started feeling down around my birthday and getting older and realizing that the plan I had worked out to move on still hadn't been followed. And looking around and realizing that I was better than where I was. Then a series of seemingly never ending financial misfortune. Oh yeah my dad had congestive heart failure and was actually truly mortal to me. And my job, even as I have been at my most sharp and insightful due to my advantageous state of having very similar emotions to the boys, is less and less fulfilling. And the exacerbating factor is that I have known better. I know better. Yet still I find myself unable to make the moves I know are necessary to alleviate this state of torment.

It's very frustrating knowing you want to breakthrough, but you don't have a hammer. Actually even worse, you know exactly where to find the hammer, yet you can't even motivate yourself to get it. What do you do then? I'm still searching for the answer. I can't shut down again. I can't imagine myself more sad which is the only thing that can happen. But all I can do is look up at this point and hope the storm ends soon, or at least holds up for a bit. I need to get that damn hammer.