I am questioning my choices. A little bit of suffering is good for building resilience. So they say. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did my first volunteer shift at a shelter. I donated about one hour of my time for a community walk. We feed the houseless, give them some supplies, and pick up trash along the way. I am aiming to do this every week, at least once. They do these walks every Tuesday and Thursday if they get enough volunteers.
It felt like I was walking through a warzone. On the front lines. To say the least. These are the streets and buildings I would never be on otherwise. These are areas everybody avoids. People recognize the vests. We are friendly faces and they are friendly back. They come to us about their specific needs so we can direct them to resources. These are the exact people we are all afraid of when we are downtown. I feel a little shell-shocked.
Then I went into the shelter to grab a form from the employee I was corresponding with about volunteering. I have been sheltered from these shelters my whole life. I have never been so far out of my comfort zone. I almost wanted somebody to walk me to my car which was literally right across the street. I was intimidated by the houseless people. These are your relatives. I have to remind myself.
This was the last place and the worst time for me to experience any level of car trouble so naturally I got exactly that. My fob stopped working. I made it out there and back to my office. I just need to change the battery, I guess.
I’m already feeling raw from something that was disclosed to me about one of my participants in my program on Saturday. I’ve been holding back tears all week. I couldn’t even bring myself to do a one-on-one with a participant on Tuesday. I barely got us through the boxing class we did yesterday evening. My coordinator has been home, sick, all week and I’ve been feeling the whole weight of this program. I talked to the youth director about what was going on with this participant. I can’t carry this alone. I am going to talk my coordinator into adding an extra one-on-one a week just for the participant who is going through real-time trauma. We are the only place he wants to go so I want us to be available for him right now.
I reached out to our knowledge keeper about wiping us down tomorrow. I need to make my energy less dense so I can keep lifting up others.
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