4/11/25

Work was hard today. They had me float to acute, which I hate because I feel so lost and incompetent over there. Everything is different over there. The treatments, the notes… I hate feeling so lost all day and like I’m not really contributing. It’s also hard to work with people I don’t know as well. And I don’t know if they know about P, but I suspect they do. (One clue, another OT greeting me, “Hi, sweetie. Good to see you again”, a little more friendly than normal). When I’m with people I know well, I feel sad but loved and cared for. When I’m with people I know less well, I feel embarrassed. Or at least that’s how I felt today. Maybe it was just the effect of being on a unit where I’m not as comfortable. But I just felt like, god, what must people think of me, that I failed my daughter like that. I couldn’t help my own kid, how can I help these patients? That’s where my mind went. I know it’s not rational but that’s what happened.

I also kept thinking about the day I got The Phone Call. And how later, after the police left with her body, I texted my manager to tell her what happened and that I wouldn’t be in for a while. I had to come up with a professional way to say my kid killed herself: “My daughter did not survive the event”. Working in the building where I learned P was dead will probably always be triggering, to a degree. I came home, ate ice cream, and curled up in my La-Z-Boy. I watched a bad rom com on Netflix and cried. The tears are back, consistently. I want them to be. I’m a little obsessed with crying.