The last ten days have been hard.
I am tired and drained.
As part of a class, I completed a burnout inventory. It indicated that I am burnt out. No surprise. There is no end to the list of daunting tasks that must be
completed in the next few months. More than the list, there is a
constant, ongoing, heartwrenching awareness of the brokenness in our
world. I won't pass on you the stories that I heard this week, but in general, life has been painful.
My clinical work has felt very heavy. Futures destroyed, families ruined... Broken bodies and broken minds. I am struggling to find hope. I don't see any in the MRI, or the neuropsych tests. I don't want to sit in the therapy room, I want to cry in a corner. So much has been lost that will never be regained.
Learning about China- a nation with a traumatic history. Famines, revolutions, wars. Tremendous death and suffering. Feeling very young, not very wise.
Thinking about Africa. A summer focused on trauma work. Murder, rape, civil war, beatings, car jackings, loneliness, broken relationships, sick children, poverty. Walking through pain with people. Feeling fearful and incompetent.
A weekend in Las Vegas. Gross excess, greed, selfishness, hyper-sexuality, hyper-consumption. The pinnacle of the ugly parts of American culture. Feeling disgusted.
I sit up straight and appeal to an invisible authority, "This should not be". My voice sounds like a child's; wide-eyed, confused, indignant. This should not be. Statement of truth, absolutes, pleading.
It should not be, but it is. Now what do I do?
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