They have many names

At the end of any give day I work in a mental ward.

The grind there of is a quiet kind of exhaustion.

One made of long days heavy doors, and conversations that sit with you long after your shift ends.

From crisis to calm and back again, learning to steady your voice even when the world around you iis tilted af.

Some days are triumphs measured in inches: a patient eating, ....speaking...

Others leave you carrying stories too raw for daylight.

Yet beneath the way too bright lights and the constant alarms, there’s a fragile humanity that keeps me coming back.

The belief that showing up, even weirded out , can still make a small corner of someone’s darkness a little less lonely.

🩷