Emotions

It's sometimes weird to me how much my job has affected my everyday life. When I said goodbye to my brother, who I would not see again for nearly 4 months, I went to give him a high-five instead of a hug. I knock on bathroom doors before going in them. I keep my pens in my pocket instead of my hair, and I am ALWAYS aware of where they are. I can read a person and determine the most efficient way to deal with them. I always sit facing the rest of the room.

My brother likes to tell me I'm paranoid. He laughs at my reactions to tense situations, and thinks that I'm exaggerating. To the everyman, I am. But you learn VERY quickly that everyone is just one bad day away from being admitted.

"You shouldn't feel ashamed to be here," I tell the adults I occasionally work with. "You're sick; you're here to get better, and if you're willing to work on it, we can help you."

I don't know if they believe me or not, but they seem to appreciate it that I believe it. They tell me all the time that so many staff just ignore them or pander to them, but I listen. I just smile and tell them that everyone here has a lot going on, and sometimes, we forget that the patients are people too.

"It's okay to be scared," I say. "It's okay to be nervous or unsure or depressed. You don't need to feel guilty over how you feel."

I wonder sometimes if my life would have been any different if someone had told me that when I was young. At 14, there were a lot of life events that triggered me into a depressive state; I was trapped. It took 4 years (4 years) for me to admit it to my parents, who then made an appointment for a psychologist. Not long into our meeting together, he told me it was okay to feel the way I was feeling. Me being me, I tried to argue. There were people involved in the events that had triggered me that deserved to feel like that, and I, a bystander, shouldn't feel like this. He smiled and said:

"Says who?"

And I didn't have an answer. That night, I realized he was right, and in that realization, I found hope.

I don't know if I have any readers. I don't know if people care about my tiny corner of the world. But if you do, if you're reading this, please know that you do not need to justify your feelings to anyone. It's okay to feel depressed or stressed, even if, comparatively speaking, you have very little to feel depressed or stressed about. Don't ever compare your emotions to others', because what you feel and what they feel are both unique. It's like trying to compare colors. Take your emotions for what they are, be they red, blue, purple, green. Try to understand them; get help understanding them.

And know that there is at least one person who doesn't even know your name cheering you on.