do i need one of these?

a long long time ago…like 2010, I worked 2nd shift (2pm-10pm) in a homeless shelter. I worked on a floor specifically for men with addiction and mental health problems. For most of the shift, I was the only staff working. Most of the time, the job was chill to the point of being boring. My job was to do the little things that needed doing, and be always ready to respond if shit went down. Most of the time, nothing much happened.

So one day I’m sitting at my little desk, trying to get up the motivation to organize the food pantry a little bit, and I head SCREAMING.

By the time I’m on my feet, one of the residents was in view. Dude was 6ft 4, with a shaved head, and a SOLID build. He was screaming down the hall, and in his raised fist he had, I shit you not, a blood-covered meat cleaver. He was spattered in blood all over. I knew the man- I knew all the residents. He mostly kept to himself. Sometimes he’d talk to me about his hallucinations and paranoid delusions. (no question these ones were delusions, kids. Man eating pythons can not fit in a half inch radiator pipe.) He had a history of getting pretty worked up.

Switch the camera around 180 degrees. I was 120 lbs and 5ft 4 on a good day, and all by my self. Totally unarmed.

Ask yourself- what would an armed cop do in that situation- alone, with a huge man running at them with a huge bloody knife?

I’m not gonna pretend for one second that my fight and flight instincts didn’t kick in. The ancient parts of my brain that exist to protect me from danger by fleeing or killing something saw this and screamed a great big NOPE.

But by this point I had like 8 years of other training, to. De-escalation training. Training on keeping a cool head in a scary situation. Training that reminded me that I was responsible for the safety of the other 17 men who called this floor their home.

Training that told me that this man was my responsibility, not my enemy.

In short, the opposite of what many police departments train their officers in. They are trained to view people as hostile, to treat their beat like a war zone. To act immediately. I wont say none of them have de-escalation training, but I will say it’s a bit of a useless add-on when they’re taught to go with their gut feeling of whether or not a situation is dangerous.

Because my gut sure as hell perceived a danger.

Anyways, I didn’t run, and I didn’t attack. I rooted my feet and I asked him what was going on.

That was when I saw that he was weeping. He was terrified.

He had bought a new cooking knife off the tv- he liked cooking, and had been looking at it. But one of the side effects of his meds made him clumsy, and he’d dropped it. He’d sliced open the back of his knee, where there’s a huge vein or artery or something- and was bleeding a LOT. 

He was understandably alarmed at the river-like quantity of blood gushing out of him, and had run to the nearest help- me.

In his rush and his fear, he’d just forgotten to put the damn knife down.

The other residents had, thankfully, all stayed in their rooms, because a month before I’d got on several people’s cases for coming out to defend me- with the very best of intentions- during a previous incident. Their motives were good, but de-escalating a situation when other people are ready to throw hands is WAY harder. I’d told them to keep their buts in their rooms unless I actually called for help, and God bless them, every single one of them had done it.

This is the point when I called for help. One of the residents got the first aid kit. One called an ambulance. One gave me the literal shirt off his back because our damn first aid kit didn’t have a tourniquet so we ripped the shirt up to make one.

We helped calm the poor injured guy down, and he got a few stitches, and everybody was proud of how we’d come together to help each other out.

Nobody was hurt beyond that one initial injury. Nobody was traumatized. If anything, the guy who’d been hurt was happier, more engaged with the rest of us, having seen that everyone here would take care of him when he was in need. He hadn’t had much care given to him in his life.

So when you see meme’s of “lol what are those social workers gonna do NOW huh?” please remember that 1) we’ve been out here doing this work ANYWAYS and 2) We’ve been doing it unarmed and level headed, which is better than the cops.

Now, does social work ALSO need reform? Does social work ALSO contain racism and ableism and every other social evil? You bet! Just look at…like anything to do with CPS to look at how these systems break down.

But do not use social workers de-escalation training as some kind of “gotcha” to prove we need armed and militant enforcers on every damn corner. And please don’t let others do it, either.

And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.

We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.

As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.

I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.

… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.

Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.

This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.

No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.

Long overdue reward of Kyza Nunh and W'eryn Vhex (who’s totally cheating at cards) for the lovely @Vhexing and @kyzacakes

Give me pyromancy that burns the skin off your hand until your bones are showing. Give me arcane that cooks you inside-out from manaburn. Give me cryomancy that cracks your skin and chips it away. Give me necromancy that causes your teeth to turn necrotic and your eyes to glass over white.

I don’t want cute magic. I want magic to be a raw and dangerous force. I want those who harness it to feel the full effects of what a great and terrible thing it is. I want mages who wear the effects of their magic on their skin and in their bones.

Why on earth should it all be sparkles and giggles? Healing shouldn’t be instantaneous, nor should it be painless.

Have you ever seen a violinist going APESHIT?!

Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.