I have to write about practicum. Have to, have to, have to. I guess this is the writer in me, unable to not use words to process an experience.

All the angst, all the anxiety, all the stress, all the uncertainty–and in the moment, when talking to the client, it all fell away and I knew that I could happily spend the next two decades in the room, head tilted to one side, trying to see how the pieces of the puzzle of a life fit together and what twist we could give to the kaleidoscope to make them really sparkle.

And then, watching on camera, while co-worker X worked with client Y (who was supposed to be mine) and supervisor Z said, “Oh, no, this is not good,” and calmly leaned into the microphone, saying “Ask her if she’s hearing the voices now,” and everyone knew at the same time that this was not a client that we were going to be able to help, not now, not ever. X just got sweeter and gentler and milder while she followed Z’s instructions and that…I don’t want to have that experience. I think I could do it. I could stay calm. But X is not going to sleep tonight while she worries about Y. She sat two feet away from Y knowing that these problems were way beyond our scope, way beyond anything an hour of conversation once a week could help with, and she had to know in the minutes when Y told her that X was a lovely name and that she was a nice girl that she was probably not going to ever be allowed to see Y again, both a good and a bad. But ugh. I had the jitters afterwards and I wasn’t even in the room.

At the end of the day, simultaneously jazzed and terrified. Pretty much how I’ve felt about it all along. But a little more tilted to the jazzed side. We’ll see how the next weeks go. But today I got so reminded of why I wanted to do this job. End of the day, I feel good.