Roundtrip Ticket

Client Mary has had, what SHE called, a 'relapse'. She had sex with one of her partners that she decided she was going to have no contact with at all: no texting, no talking, no emails, no meeting up, no snail mail, no smoke signals--nothing. And yet, she's done it again. I really wouldn't care one way or the other if it weren't for the fact that she seems to be deeply in love with this antagonist 'Bryan'. But, to him, she is quite obviously just someone to have sex with, nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, he is someone who lies, manipulates, and steals heavily. The last time he was at her house (before the 'relapse') he stole about $500 worth of electronics (a Wii complete with about six games and two nanchaku controllers); he consistently uses the proverbial "this is more than sex" spiel to get into her pants; and she has no idea how many sexual partners he actually has, but the women that he is romantically involved with manifest themselves in text messages and angry voice mails. There's only been one physical confrontation in which Mary was found out to be the 'other woman', luckily that merely ended in Mary's phone being chucked from a second story window and broken.

On my end, of course, I cannot fathom why anyone would stay in a "relationship" that causes so much trouble. Sure, she has her sexual escapades on the side, but Bryan is a pretty invariable force in her life, so everything always comes back to him. That's kind of where my 'love' diagnosis comes from. Then again, it could be desperation. Bryan knows all of her sexual likes and dislikes, so she doesn't have to tell him every time she has sex with him what she wants him to do. She is a relatively lazy person, and having sex with new people all the time means she has to start all over with her communication of her desires.

So, here we are at another standstill. I'm just waiting to see how this all unfolds. I'll still be there for her to talk it out with. But every solution she has come up with to help her meet her goal of not being a slut anymore, hasn't worked. There doesn't seem to be any scaring her either. She's already gotten one disease that could've been something else, something much worse; she's not afraid of becoming pregnant, though she can barely take care of herself; and these women that mysteriously pop up that Bryan has lied about being involved with (for some reason unbeknownst to me) don't make her worry for her physical safety. It seems like a no-brainer when I weigh these possible outcomes against MAYBE 20 minutes of sexual intercourse.

Boomerangs

I was at work and ran into a client that had been there before, when I first started. She and I always had a good relationship, but that didn't mean I wanted her to come back.

I told her as much and she said she just 'fucked up' again. I told her it was alright. At least she was here and not in prison, still using, or dead. I understand that, working in this field, there will be plenty of recidivism. You should get a grasp on that too if you're serious about being a social worker. Whether you want to work for domestic violence victims, foster child services, or many of the other fields that social workers grace, you will have to deal with people that don't 'get it' on the first try, and even people that never 'get it'.

Unfortunately, I also saw a girl I used to go to school with be admitted. This was rather shocking. She's a little younger than me, probably about nineteen, so I was on my way to college when she was entering high school, but I remember seeing her around quite a bit because she used to hang out with my younger cousin, who also went to the same school as I did.

I don't know her well enough to gauge whether or not she fell off a high horse, or finally admitted she had a long-standing problem and crawled up from the gutter, but, again, at least she's somewhere that can give her some sort of aid with her addiction.