A Good Day

Good day, note it. I have been losing faith quickly in my job. I will admit that that I arrived to skid row with the 'I'm going to help make a difference' and as of late that feeling has been nothing short of decomposing. With all but two of my clients severe addicts it is hard to follow them and even harder still to note their successes. We take one step forward than roll down the hill twenty steps back. I push, they pull. I worry, they don't seem to care. I have been talking about this with my friends and family however today something happened.

I was talking to one of my clients. This client, I'll call him JR has been struggling with his sobriety. He is diagnosed with major depression, previous suicide attempts, and at 36 years old he has been into rehab over twenty times for cocaine dependence. He has periods of sobriety, some up to a year. However, those periods at some point have resulted in a slip, more so a relapse. I have been trying to remind myself, this is his recovery as he tries and fails.

In December, before the holiday, I drove him to a secluded rehab in the Antelope Valley. He lasted for two months, one month shy of graduating their 90 day program. He returned to skid row where he called me to let me know he just couldn't do it anymore. He relapsed. He relapsed again. Recently he left me a telephone message at work, on a Saturday afternoon, telling me he felt so bad about relapsing he was going to overdose on pills. He told me his body would be found at the LA Morgue and to please let his family know he was sorry. (inhale)

That Monday, as I heard the frantic message I phoned all local hospitals and he was no where to be found. I called the morgue- not there. Checked the jails and not there either. Well today he came into the clinic and we sat in the setting afternoon sun talking about his life and his struggle with sobriety. I listened like I always do with little faith that I nothing I did matter. I listened to his story about checking himself into the hospital on Saturday and than how he got out Monday and used again because it makes him feel 'normal'. Then he said...

'Rebecca, why do you always listen to me. I have never worked with anyone like you before. You know when I relapsed last week you were the first person I thought of calling. Right before I scored of thought of you and what you would say. I thought about you in rehab and how I would make you sad if I quit. When I wanted to kill myself on Saturday I thought of you and what you might say to me and I couldn't do it because I didn't want to let you down. (I held back crying) You always support me and never judge me and always make me feel like I am important. No one has eve done that before.'

We finished a two hour conversation sitting curbside on skid row watching all the drug dealers and users walk past. I watched three people pee on the wall right in front of us and heard a woman and a man fighting in the room above us and the rats that roam the streets at night surfaced from underground for dinner. For the first time since I have been at this job I felt like I belonged, like I had come to the right place. I needed this and more so I need to remember this.

Good day.