You know, there are many other people who do the same job I do. They come from all different walks of life and that's ok. They hear the same shit day after day after day as I do, and that's to be expected because we can't pick and choose who we deal with when the phone rings. Some of them have had some of the same types of issues to deal with as I have...some worse, some not. However, some people deal with different situations in different ways. I, for one, make a mistake all too often and get too empathetic with the people I deal with on a daily basis and I have a VERY difficult time hearing the things they have to say. I don't handle those types of things as well as other people do and it shows, more often on the inside of my head than the outside. I try to hold it together as best as I can, but some days it gets the best of me and it DOES become evident to others around me and yes, I feel bad that my emotional weakness does not allow me to control my emotions as well as others. It's who I am. If you don't like it, go fuck yourself. Yeah, I cursed. I curse a lot and anyone who knows me would agree with that.
I don't troubleshoot cell phones for Sprint, I don't deal with crabby customers who get the wrong size shoes from the JCPenney catalog and want me to bend over backwards to accommodate their oftentimes unreasonable demands. I am a contractor for the Department of Defense and I deal exclusively with soldiers who have recently returned from the theater of war. Some of them have seen combat up close and personal, and some haven't. It doesn't matter. They do what I am unable to. Sometimes their stories are not at all pleasant, to put it mildly. They live in conditions I would not let my dog live in if I had one and they're there VOLUNTARILY. They enlist knowing full well they will likely be shipped off to war and very well may not return. I can't and won't get into some of the things I hear because I put myself at risk for doing so. Suffice to say that the things I hear...while not bad to others, are bad to ME.
I have a lot of difficulty hearing some of the things I hear on a regular basis. I empathize with each and every soldier I talk to because they deserve to be listened to. They deserve to be heard and goddammit, if that person is me, I fucking listen. I hear each and every word they say because they fucking earned it. Some days I don't want to...some days I can't stand to hear another goddamn story about what happens overseas and I want to run from my desk as fast as I can and never look back. But those are the days that I dig deeper than I ever have before and I find the strength to do it one more time. It's always one more time...there is never a last time and there never will be and I force myself to be ok with that because I have to. The people I work with hear the same things that I do...maybe they deal with it better, and maybe they don't. How they deal with their shit is their own thing.
Maybe I have a difficult time with it because my father was a soldier until he passed away...as are many other members of my family whom I love and respect very much. Maybe it's because I'm too empathetic to a fault. Maybe it's something entirely different. I don't know and I don't fucking care. It's my job and I do it because I help people. I have personally saved lives because of my empathy and compassion and that fucking means something to me. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then you have more problems than I do, and that's saying a lot lately.
What I do...how I do it...it's not trained. It's born in you, and it's either a gift or a curse...sometimes both.
