Tomorrow is my last day at the BHC.  I’ve been a call center associate for 3 years now, and I’ve learned quite a bit about myself and about other mental patients.  So far, I’ve learned about working relationships and how to show up for work every day with no excuses.  I’ve learned how to redirect a borderline, when to tell someone to stop crying, and how to not get suckered by the Klonopin junkies in the greater Charlotte area.  

But I’ve also learned how to really care about someone I might never meet.  I learned how to work hard for the sake of working hard, nothing more.  I learned that sometimes my greatest assets are knowing when to shut my mouth, that happiness is more important than being right most of the time.  While I was taking down my pictures and such from my cube walls, I realized that I had used my copy of the St. Francis prayer so many times without even knowing it… especially the line “it is greater to understand, than to be understood.”  There’s no point in a power struggle, there’s no room for righteous indignation, there is just patience and the knowledge that everything is always changing, and to look at it otherwise is foolish.

I’ve seen my own compassion and I’ve seen every one of my limitations here.  I’ll miss the friendships that have grown here, the familiarity and the camraderie, but I know that I’ll find it in my new job.  I’m sad, but more excited than sad and I know that I’m not disappearing, just shifting, which is exactly what I am supposed to do.  I am here, doing what I am doing, and because of that it is what I am supposed to be doing.  I’m learning that, daily.

I aspire to be more like the goddess Tara, who vowed-

“There are many who wish to gain enlightenment
in a man’s form,
And there are few who wish to work
for the welfare of living beings
in a female form.  

Therefore may I, in a female body,
work for the welfare of all beings,
until such time as all humanity has found its fullness.”

And shoot, if I can do that makin bagels, I can do anything.  :)