Working in social services because you love to help people is like working at MacDonalds because you love to cook: it is torturously frustrating.

I'm sure there are wonderful, trauma-informed, client-centered social service agencies out there. I've just never had the privilege of working for one of them.

Now, I must admit, a HUGE part of my failure in this field has specifically to do with me. I suck at maintaining professional boundaries.

I was once suspended for a week without pay because I refused to disenroll a suicidal, developmentally delayed, recovering meth addict who had missed her medicaid appointment. I thought it would be cruel to disrupt her substance abuse treatment and anti-depressant medication, just because she had missed one jump through a beaurocratic hoop.

My supervisor disagreed.

I was once fired from a job for giving money to a client.

I know - it was a terrible thing to do - totally unprofessional. But it was right before Christmas, and I ran into her at the grocery store.

She was twenty-three years old, and enormously pregnant with her third child. She had her two fat bouncy chattery toddlers in tow. She looked sweet and resigned. I knew she had been raised in foster care. I knew she was a recent escapee from a violent marriage. I knew she had fought desperately to create a safe place for herself and her children. I knew she ached to give her children some semblance of a Christmas (the kind she never had). So - I slipped her a hundred dollars. 

What I did not do was ask her to keep this a secret. So, she gleefully shared news of this gift with her psychiatrist (he and I both worked at the same mental health clinic), who then reported it to my supervisor, who then fired me. 

What my supervisor did not know is that this client was not the first to whom  I'd given money.

I had given money to schizophrenic clients to  keep them from being evicted from their apartments. I'd given money to single moms to help get them and their children a better place to live than a tent or a car. I'd given money to...

It just became too unbearably painful to have a little money to spare, and to look into the faces of human beings who had nothing - nothing. I was too damn familiar with that feeling, and I could not sit there and lie and say "I cannot help you." 

The agencies I worked for seemed to exist mainly for the purpose of providing  jobs for people with liberal arts degrees.  So little of their resources seemed to go to the benefit of the clients. It was maddening.

I know, I know. I'm sick. I'm codependent. Our culture has done a bang-up job of pathologizing compassion, and look where it's gotten us. 

Still, I have regrets: I regret not giving that sweet young mother even more money for her children's Christmas.