Things finally seem to be set in their right place and now would be a great time to stop and think about what had happened in this short period of my life.
Moving onwards.
A confusing transition that could NOT be avoided like the plague. At times frightening yet exhilarating.
Started my first official job after college yesterday. Greatest responsibilities has rested upon me than ever before. I have to remind myself that I am not only there for the money, and I am not sure if everything I've learned in schools has ever prepared for this position. From talking to a small group of elderly residents today in the rehab I get a feeling that I will have to give out so much in the rest of my time here.There are more than 400 elderly residents who have various degrees of mental illness needs to be loved and taken care of. While I won't be giving them medical treatment as this is the jobs of the doctors and nurses, I will have to interact with them on a daily basics to make them heal better mentally during their treatment.
Art therapy will be a major part of my job to help them to recover, but for the most part it is the interactions I have with them that counts. Before the world of psychologists and art therapists, we get by just fine if each of us would just spend more time to try to understand and listen to each other.
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I don't think I will ever be a good social worker material. I have always been emotional, awkward and detached. I am not good at meeting new people either.
However, I know I've done more than good when two men started to break down and shed a tears in front of me today.
Here I am a strangers who can speak the same language approached and talked to them. In a rehab that is built more like a prison than a hospital, suddenly I am a bridge for them to their past, to the outside world, and suddenly they find themselves an emotion outlets could stop and listen to their desires and pain. Maybe I'm pushing myself a little, but who am I anyways to have the power to be here to help them heal from the wounds. I could have been anyone. I am no more different than any other person from outside the buildings. I could have been their only friends or the only people on earth who still talk to them in this depressing rehab with tight security.
Human interactions exists on different levels, and all the while a plain old conversation could become the most valuable thing at that moment.
God knows how much of their emotions are bottled up.
This is no more a workplace for me than a 24 hour home for the residents. I have to remind myself that the rehab would as well be their final resting place in the last part of the life, and I have to treat each of them as individuals. Something a girl who was born half century late would have trouble getting used to..... | 
