After such a great week with the girls, there was bound to be a difficult day sprinkled in somewhere. Unfortunately, that happened to be today. After a 15-minute restraint with one unsafe child, I went back inside to deal with more chaos. One of our teenagers had raided the fridge and had several eggs cradled in her t-shirt. In the craziness of attempting to escort her outside, I got an egg violently thrown at my face.
It sounds funny and thinking back to it, I laugh. But the egg had been thrown from two feet away and hit me directly on my left cheekbone. It splattered immediately and I got egg in my hair, down my shirt, all over my face and even in my eye. I don't know the consequences of raw egg in the eye, but I wasn't about to find out. I rushed to the sink and started flushing out my eye as another staff was calling the police. I kept flushing my eye with water and I don't think any damage was done. I do have a slightly swollen and sore left cheekbone, though.
In staff training today, we briefly talked about our expectations of this job when we were first hired. One person said that he saw the good of this program and expected to unconditionally love and care for these kids without ever doubting why he was here. Ha. I remember that feeling and I also remember that expectation getting brutally crushed. People tell me I'm making a difference, that I'm changing lives. I pray that I'm doing something good because it is hard to keep discouragement from settling in and digging me a pity pool.
Ok, I can't think of a good, conclusive ending to this blog so I'll leave it be. I'm tired. Goodnight April 29th.
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