There was even a time when I said everything that has happened to me, all of my past will help me in that.

Because there are some pains you just can't understand unless you have been there.

But today I got my first taste of that, and I don't know.

I had to sit back and take a good hard look at what I was about to do.

and take a good hard think about getting some help, and actually dealing with some of my past rather than ignoring the pain, and pretending it doesn't exist.

Because my reaction today was not in the best interest of the client.

While, had she seen it, she might have felt less alone, at that moment, had she been my client, she would have needed me to be there, with her, not where I was. Not feeling what I was feeling.

It's eight thirty a.m. and already I'm elbow deep in work.

Files to my left, charts to my right, and a phone tucked under my ear as I try to find a resource for another client.

And the receptionist comes back to tell me that there is an elderly lady in the waiting room, just discharged from the ER, that needs help with Transportation.

Since the ER social worker wasn't there yet, and I was familiar with ER, and working on the Geriatric team, I was the natural choice.

Thank GOD, I did not take that patient.

I will forever be greatful to the other social worker for taking that patient, because things may not have ended well for either of us.

Still seated at my desk, I am half listening while I work, and swivel aroudn for half a second to allow the client, past me to the chair by the social workers desk.

She is dressed in several hospital gowns and booties.

I wondered where her clothes were.

She was an older woman, late sixties, with silver blond hair, she walked gingerly as if in pain, and had her arm in a cast.

She sat down nearby and I went back to my work, trying not to interfere.

I heard the other social worker give her usual introduction, "blah, blah, blah, how did you get to Parkland?"

She said, the police brought me...I was attacked, and raped, and he beat me so badly I can hardly walk. I need to get home.....

and she broke down sobbing.

At that moment the work in front of me was a million miles away. I looked over to see a woman bent over in pain, tears rolling down her bruised and swollen face.

I felt them coming...swelling in my throat as she went on to recount the details to a shocked social worker.

I got up, and went to find some Kleenex. I had to do something for her....something.

As I returned, handing her the box, she was telling the other social worker, about how she got away, about how she thought that he would kill her, but she got away....

and the other social worker shakes her head and says, "well, at least you survived, at least he didn't kill you. You are a strong person for surviving that."

and at that moment, as she took those tissues from me, I saw it in her eyes, the same painful thought that I have had many many times....

I almost wish he had killed me

Unspoken desire.

and I broke.

I slipped off to the copy room and hid behind the donated diapers, and sobbed for that poor woman, who experienced the most brutal crime imagionable.

For that poor woman who wished she didn't have to endure it, never asked to endure it.

That woman, who was brought to a county hospital and lay alone there for almost 36 hours, no family, no friends, no one to console her.

Nothing but her broken bones and bruises, and her shattered sense of self to keep her company.

How well I remember those days, immediately afterward.

I had no physical wounds, but the emotional pain was unbearable, yet I bore it, alone.

I wanted so desperately to help that woman, but was so overwhelmed with my own painful memories, that I could do nothing.

nothing

I wanted to take the woman in my own car to her home, to sit with her and talk with her, and dry her tears and tend her wounds, then, when she slept

I wanted to hunt down that sick bastard that did this to her and tear him apart with my bare hands...

I wanted to make him feel one portion of the pain she felt....

one portion of the pain I felt...

There is no way he or anybody else, could begin to concieve of the damage he had caused, or could ever make up for it.

There are some things you don't get over, you just learn to live with them.

Apparently, rape is one of those things.

I went into Geriatrics, because I knew that I couldn't handle CPS, and I knew that I couldn't handle women and children, because I knew I would encounter this, and on some level, I knew it would bring me to my knees with the pain of my own ordeal every time.

SO I picked Geriatrics....and to me, anyone who raped an elderly person is right up there with someone who would rape a child.

INHUMAN

So now I don't know what to do. Part of me thinks I need to seek counseling, that I owe it to my clients to be there for them in their crisis....and not still stuck inside mine...

then there is another part of me that thinks, two and a half years after the fact, that this is a crisis I may never overcome....

am I truly too broken to help heal others?

Thats how I feel right now, broken.

Damaged.

Used and tossed aside and forgotten.

By my dad, by Blake.

They don't feel it, they don't hurt inside, they don't think less of themselves or doubt there abilities.

They will never ever ever, no matter how many times over they die of cancer, or how many hernia's they get...

they will never understand the enormity of this pain, that they have inflicted on me...

the pain this sixty some year old lady now endures.

Already lived her life, raised her kids, done whats right, loved and lost...

and now, someone came and took away the only thing she had left.

Her dignity.

Her sense of self.

Her will to live.

God it just hurts me, just to think of it.

Becuase I was there, I AM there....and I don't ever want anyone else to feel this way, and I don't know how to stop it

don't know if I can stop it.

I dont' think there are words enogh to heal these wounds,

and you can't understand that unless you've been there.

So, dear lady, whereever you are tonight.

I'm sorry that I couldn't help you.

I'm gonna try, though, somehow, to drag myself out of it, then turn around and give you my hand.