Penny Post #35: My Modest Resume
I'm CPR certified.
Babysitting was my first ever job. As soon as I received my YMCA CPR certification and turned thirteen [which seems like a bizarre pre-determined age to be responsible for other’s needs] I shopped myself around with the help of my mom’s network of local mothers. I marketed myself everywhere: my mother’s email, the New Canaan mom’s facebook page, even on a few telephone poles across town, stapled below Stanley the missing cat. A flood of text messages followed.
“Was I available on Friday night to babysit two boys?” “Was I available to help supervise a five-year-old's birthday?” “Could I make myself available every Wednesday night for the next three months?”
I figured it had made it. At the age of thirteen, I was completely set. A non-taxed income, adorable kids, and beautiful Connecticut mansions to spend my time in.
After the first day on the job, a sneaking feeling invaded: a mix of anxiety, fear, and dread. Oh, I was responsible for your young child whose needs I was not at all familiar with and you will have your phone turned off for the rest of the night? Gulp.
There was one job where the house smelled like compost and the kids didn’t look up from their screens. There was one job where the kids served as perfect bait to send snapchats to my highschool crush. There was one job where I nearly set the house on fire after putting tinfoil in the microwave.
I know what you’re thinking: I should never be trusted with children again. You might be right. But I was also asked back several times on all of the above occasions, so joke’s on you. Or them? Ha.
Either way, there was seldom a time that I enjoyed babysitting. I remember the drives home late at night where I disassociated completely. Apparently brake lights effectively numb all sensation.
Often, I dreaded having to babysit at all and would count down the minutes until I could be relieved of the responsibility and return to neglecting my own needs. I was wholly unfit to manage the needs of young beings, most especially because I barely managed my own. I hated having to answer the dreaded question, “how’d it go?” as everything out of my mouth after that moment were lies. To tell them the truth - that their children were miserable little brats - didn’t seem like the way to secure that subtle hand tuck of a 50 dollar bill.
“You’re kids are magical, patient, and sound asleep”. Lies, lies, lies. I pocketed the $50 as fast as I could before speeding away, lulled into a welcome semi-consciousness.
Almost a decade and several in-between jobs later, I wonder if anything has changed. For the past 5 months, I’ve been working at an Intensive Outpatient Program. It has been - in a word - intense. No, I’m not changing diapers or singing lullabies or flipping through a picture book, yet the needs I’m responsible for day-to-day extend farther than I thought myself capable.
I spent one whole Saturday with a family whose au pair was sick in the basement and whose parent’s both worked. I cared for three young girls - 5, 3, and 1 - for six whole hours. When it came time for bed [infamously the hardest part of the job], I couldn’t calm the three-year old. She was sobbing, asking when her mom would be home to tuck her in. I promised her soon, while trying to field angry texts and calls from my father who sat in the driveway and had a football game to watch. I wasn’t old enough to drive myself, so my dad was on babysitting duty for the babysitter. I was torn between the three-year-old's trauma and my own. I succumbed to my own, rationalizing it more important. I was never asked back to that house.
I’ve been asked to make that choice again at the IOP.
The choice becomes harder when you are made to choose between yourself and a patient who is currently being assessed for SI.
Honoring my needs no longer is the “right” choice working at an IOP. My work is clouding my instinct which has guided me until now. I can no longer separate right from wrong, as the “right” choice leads to wrong anyway. The paths have grown dense in confusion, no longer well-trekked in self-attunement. Clarity: a thing unseen. What happens when you never feel like you're making the right decision? What happens when you feel like you always make the wrong decision?
I handed in my resignation letter just last week. And yet something still feels wrong. I’m attempting to leave the house that the three-year-old is sobbing in, yet the door is locked. I’m caged inside, forced to remember who I’ve abandoned in the choice to return to myself.
And the return to self is further clouded by the responsibilities of adulthood. Choices are no longer fulfilling your needs and calling it a day. Choices are suddenly signing a year-long lease that you can’t break. Choices are suddenly choosing what health insurance you need despite not knowing the difference between PPO and HMO. Choices are suddenly deciding to quit a job after 5 lowly months because you no longer can tell what’s right and what’s wrong.
The misery of choices. I don’t want to make a choice to follow my inner truth yet ignore the world’s: which is that I’ll have to figure out how the fuck to pay my rent and figure out where the fuck to live after my lease ends in two months or figure out how to not feel so lazy and defeated when I have nothing to do all day besides think about how lazy and defeated I am.
Dead ends. Each choice made feels like a dead end, negating any freedom at all.
Babysitting was my first ever job, yet I’m not sure I’ve ever left. Once again, I take my modest resume and my YMCA CPR certificate to the telephone poles in town and staple it below Stanley the missing cat. I wonder if Stanley was ever found. I wonder if I will be.
Until next time,
Kiera