aftermath

it’s 230 in the fucking morning and i can’t sleep. my head is throbbing. there’s a huge knot on the side of my head, and i found the blood spot earlier. i finally, just now, succumbed to the pain and took a couple hydrocodone. i was actually prescribed vicodin, but didn’t fill the script. i hate these meds. knew that we had a couple scripts from previous surgeries that i could take if it came to it. i’ve been in and out of bed four times now. every time i think I'm ready for sleep - my body is tired enough, my mind has shut down - and i get in to bed, my mind keeps replaying the scenario, and i start crying and shaking. so i keep getting up and coming in here. looked at stuff on tivo for a bit. sought out random stuff to record. went back to bed. i played a trivia game for a while earlier. went to bed. got up bcs i couldn’t remember where my ipod was. so kept going back and forth between my office and the living room looking for it. finally found it. downloaded a bunch of pod-casts and videos from itunes. went back to bed. lasted all of about two minutes. started crying and shaking again. ransacked the bathroom pantry for the pain/sleep meds. took two hydrocodone. they don’t always work for me, and the side effects suck, but I'm desperate. and here i am. keep thinking about the violence. keep thinking about how i will handle the questions come monday. the head-tilted-well-meaning-but-often-patronizing “how are you?” the clients who want to know why I'm driving a rental car instead of my brand new element. the clients who want to know why i wasn’t answering my phone on friday, and why my supervisor was calling them to cancel my appointment with them. i have to figure out how i will handle going in to the office this week. i have to figure out how i will handle being out in the community this week. and i have to figure out how to tell the client whose home i was jacked in front of that i can’t pick him up from his residence any longer. that i will have to meet him in the community from here on out. that, no, we’re not going to switch him to another social worker bcs it’s not safe for any of us to be in his neighborhood. that it’s not safe for him to be in his neighborhood. that he’s going to have to take medicaid transportation to his doctor’s appointments, and find another way to get to walmart to shop for holiday presents for his grandsons. i am not looking forward to that conversation.

part of me wants to look for another job. one where I'm in an office all day. but i love the agency I'm with. there are no desk jobs at this time. and i love the work that I'm doing. and i know i would be bored in three seconds if i took a desk job. any where. and i know that running away from my fear is not going to change anything. the fear is always going to be there. the question of safety will always be there. I'm still trying to figure out why i felt the need to lock my car doors while in the drive thru at mcdonald’s right before going to that client’s home. it just seemed like a good idea. that may have been part of what saved me. bcs the asshole was trying to get in my car. the windows were up and the doors were locked. if ever a time to get religion.....

i don’t want to leave my job. I'm getting quiet pressure from my family. but in the year and a half that i’ve been with the agency, i’ve never felt unsafe going in to the neighborhoods that i go in to. and lucky me, i’ve set a new precedent at the agency. no one has ever had a gun to their head before. it’s amazing, really, when you think about the kind of places we all go in to every day. but i wouldn’t wish this on anyone. the supervisors are all saying that only they know at this point, and haven’t said anything to my co-workers. but i think they should. we should all know what to do in these situations, what to look out for. i know that there was nothing that i could’ve done differently. nothing. i got out with my life. that’s the important part. i know. hell if i know how i did it though.

if i could stop replaying it... it’s like a little horror movies. what sucks is that it’s the best horror movie i’ve seen in a long time! but we were watching this show last night, “drawn together.” this ep was a satire of the old fat albert cartoons. and they kept interspersing the cartoons with a real person acting all crazy like. at one point the guy takes out a gun and holds it to a woman’s head. lovely. wasn’t exactly the best thing for me to watch.

think I'm going to go try the couch. put on a movie. was trying to decide between labyrinth and empire records. think I'm gonna go with empire records. will hopefully fall asleep on the couch. it’s now 3am. great - now i’ve got that old KLF song in my head. points if you can sing the chorus...