today...

...was one of the hardest days I've ever had.

I was at New Haven today from 8am-9:45pm. I was heartbroken I had to miss Conference!

But, I had to go on a little mini-retreat with some of the girls. We got back from that around 5 and came home to chaos in the house.

One of our girls is having a SUPER hard time the last week.

Her name starts with a "K" so that's what I'll call her.

K is barely 14, has Asbergers, and is very into self-harm. i.e. cutting.

She's always been quiet since I've started, but has her moments where she freaks out and has to get put in a hold.

Normally her bad spells last anywhere between a day-2 hours.

However, this bad spell is b.a.d. and she will not snap out of it.

It started on Tues morning. She's been put in who knows how many holds, at least 6 every day. She's threatened to kill herself so that puts her on suicide watch. She grabbed bleach from a girl when she was doing her laundry and tried to drink it...thankfully staff is so close by she didn't. Yesterday she grabbed a knife from the cook while she was prepping food and put it to her stomach...again a staff nearby. She's bit THREE staff members and today she broke the skin on all of them and they had to go get shots at the doctor's office. Like seriously...K has gone crazy. The scary part is, is that she laughs about it in a weird way. You ever seen Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight? Not quite as creepy...but close.

I've never seen her like this and it's the scariest thing. She is now stuck in a room with 2 staff members with everything stripped from the room.

If she doesn't get better in the next few days I bet she'll be relocated because New Haven does not accept violent girls and we do not have the resources to deal with this much of suicide behavior.

Yes, I'm worried about K cause I do care about her. I'm not super close with her, but I've still worked with her and we've had some talks and I do care for her well being and am sad she's acting the way she is.

BUT, the hardest part of my day was seeing the other 15 girls in the house.

They are all having a super hard time with it.

Some of them feel betrayed. Some of them feel hurt. Some of them feel neglected since staff is always having to worry about K. Some of them feel angry that K is physically hurting staff. Some of them feel unsafe.

When I was gone most of the day on the retreat K had a pretty bad freakout so when I came back the house was very down trodden. Multiple girls coming up to me and melting in my arms and saying they can't handle it. Most of these girls are so sensitive or trigger very easily to stressful situations. Our house is a community and this has totally disrupted the "family."

So I spent the night talking individually with some of the girls and letting them express their feelings. All of these girls are in the recovery process and it is so hard for them to focus on why they're here when things in the house are so crazy. I love these girls so much. I seriously feel like they're my little sisters. Do they drive me up the wall sometimes? Oooohh yes...but wow. I feel such immense love for them! They're my babies.

When my supervisor came up to me to see how I was doing I kinda broke down. This week has been so draining, especially today. I do not like seeing my girls hurting. Well, some of them hurt all the time as it is because that's what they're working on, but I hate to see them hurt more than what they need to be. I do love that the girls are so defensive of the staff and get upset the K is hurting us. So to help them we took them out to get ColdStone to let them get out of the house, dance in the car, have some fun, and try to stop thinking about everything for a bit.

I know this post is kinda depressing, but I just have so much energy pent up inside I had to write it out...

I hurt for K. I really do. I wish I understood what she was going through.

But mostly I hurt for the girls that are left with her aftermath. They have so much strength, they don't even know. That's where I come in. I help them realize that inner strength. I love my job! I really do.

Tomorrow my supervisor asked me to come in from 3-5 to help out with K watch. I'm going to wear long sleeves, long pants, and possibly some football pads...:)