My face never falters whenever I'm sitting next to some one dealing with depression, or PTSD. My face is calm, soothing and reassuring. My voice doesn't break whenever I tell them that I'll see them next week, same time, same place. My hand doesn't shake when I write down their prescription for anxiety medicine or antidepressants. My arms don't tense whenever I embrace my patients while they pour their heart out to me. I am a perfectly normal man, in his thirties; married to a beautiful girl. I'm sane; normal. I drive out to Patient's houses whenever a worried spouse, wary friend or terrified parent calls me because their loved one is talking out of their head. How many suicides have I stopped? Too many to count. There's success stories on the walls in my office, my desk covered in children's books, a Bible and sample bottles of Xanax. Day after day, I talk people back into a reality that saves them. Help them see the color in a world that doesn't do anything but hurt them. In the end they either thank me, or I get a call from a colleague at 2 o' clock in the morning, the drained and tired voice telling me that one of my patients was rushed to the hospital with a suicide note clutched in her hand.
People ask me how I don't get attached or emotional with my job. I shrug it off saying I don't have feelings, just training. In other words, I'm lying. They see my job as a heroic act. When they tell me that I just shake my head. "No." I tell them," I just do it." I save people. It's what I do. They applaud me for it. They think it's so great. What they don't see though is the late nights at a bar where I waste away the hours of work I had spent in constant agony of not knowing if I'd see that patient again. I drown it with a drink or two, then I'm on the way home to a bed where I still feel lonely. What my wife doesn't see is the fake love I get from women that are not her, in hopes to learn how to be human again. What my colleagues and boss don't see is that I numb the fear and pain with out of date prescription pills. What my mother doesn't see are the scars on my arms in hopes of being able to feel again. What my college professors didn't see is the desire to help others so I could feel like I'm at least more than a grade on a test or the degree that hangs askew against the white wall in that small office. What my father doesn't see is that I'm standing between the devil and danger of falling completely over the edge. What they never heard is the cry for help that I screamed throughout college and highschool. I gave everything I had, just to make the world a better place. I tried... so, so hard. But I guess it's all for nothing.
My job is to take away pain, but what to do with that pain? I put it on myself. So much that so that now, I go home to a dark house, divorce papers strewn over the wood floors of the living room. What they won't see are the tears that I shed on the couch after downing alcohol and pills. I give all myself away so I can see one person give a weak smile to a pair of relieved parents who kiss his scars. My job is to save people from themselves. To save them from what they were, to help them become the person they were meant to be. Help them get past the sexual abuse of a relationship or a divorce, or a child forget the fact that their parents were murdered in a shooting. What my patients don't see is that I'm just like them, I just have the white coat on. I sit there with them, just to save myself.
Points: 296
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