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No One is Going to Die
Self-care isn’t easy, but it’s necessary
“No one is going to die.” He said it with enough confidence for me to listen and the head of grey made me believe him.
“Listen, no one’s going to die,” he continued. “This job is easy.”
It was just four weeks into my career as a social worker; a few months removed from getting my master’s degree and going through the painstaking process of figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. I thought that finishing college would solve that problem, but graduate school only made it worse. Wondering if I made the right choice was a constant theme, both in my mind and in conversations with my peers. I was twenty-five, green, and in need of advice, solicited or otherwise.
I looked up from my desk and nodded. “It’s that easy, huh?”
He leaned back and braced himself, the way that your elders do when preparing to tell you a joke — the kind that has just enough truth to make you get your shit together.
“This job? Yeah — you know, in my old job, that was the concern. Every day, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was alive. As a psychologist in a clinic or hospital, if everyone’s still alive at the end of the day, that’s a good day. Here, what’s the worst that could happen? You don’t answer an email on time?”
