I don't mean any offense by this...but if your inmate ever disappears after a year of work, after a year of sharing vulnerabilities, then I'll accept it as empathy.
You'd rather have people pity your position than even try to empathize with it? I can't say that's something I can understand. Pity is pretty shitty to receive. Maybe it's just me, but I hate it when they look at me and think, poor defenseless thing.
I'm not offended if only because you don't know me. I'm sorry if you felt it was cheap or shallow of me to say.
I've worked and lost twelve years of myself in another person. If that makes you feel better.
I don't want pity, actually, and if I were defenseless, I would have tucked my tail between my legs and ran away long ago.
Look, let me give it to you straight. I've lost a lot of people. Family, friends, a spouse--and not one of them is the same as the nature of this loss. It evokes very different feelings for me, as a psychologist and as a Warden, and I'm not saying that one type of loss is any more painful than the others. The deaths or disappearances of my loved ones prior to this place were completely out of my hands--I wasn't forewarned or tasked with redeeming them, with saving them, with repairing their psyches. I was supposed to do that with Dru, and apparently, I failed in it.
I'm not going to compare apples to oranges at all right now, not even within the scope of my own life experience. Hopefully, you can understand why.
If she was redeemed, I would know about it. She would have left a clearer message, because at that point she would have had the ability to leave clear messages.
Dru is...a little complicated. I don't see how I could have gotten a former homicidal near-immortal with superhuman abilities and a scrambled sense of self to graduation and not know for certain.
I'm a psychologist; things like this are what I do. Still, it's been a year, and I haven't been able to help her enough for her to graduate. And now, she's just...gone, and I'm not even sure if she'll be coming back.
Not that I pretend to know anything at all about your chosen profession, as I can barely even spell the word, but surely everyone if different. They are all here for different reasons, and all have different paths to take to graduate.
Just because your inmate has not graduated does not mean you did not make a difference. I am sure your influence has done some good.
Psychologists delve into the mind and see how it ticks...and then, if we can, we try to help those who need work done there.
She was one of the vampiric inmates. I got her to trust me, and to stop killing. She protected me often--I trusted her with my life more than once, and she never betrayed that trust. She cared for me, but she refrained from doing bad to others only because she knew how I'd react.
I know I did something, but I couldn't fix what was wrong with her, at her core, and I feel like I failed her.
I suppose, Libby, that one can only understand and accept what one has done, instead of what one could have done. You do yourself a disservice to say that you failed her entirely, I am sure of it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:11 am (UTC)I'm not offended if only because you don't know me. I'm sorry if you felt it was cheap or shallow of me to say.
I've worked and lost twelve years of myself in another person. If that makes you feel better.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:29 am (UTC)Look, let me give it to you straight. I've lost a lot of people. Family, friends, a spouse--and not one of them is the same as the nature of this loss. It evokes very different feelings for me, as a psychologist and as a Warden, and I'm not saying that one type of loss is any more painful than the others. The deaths or disappearances of my loved ones prior to this place were completely out of my hands--I wasn't forewarned or tasked with redeeming them, with saving them, with repairing their psyches. I was supposed to do that with Dru, and apparently, I failed in it.
I'm not going to compare apples to oranges at all right now, not even within the scope of my own life experience. Hopefully, you can understand why.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:42 am (UTC)Dru is...a little complicated. I don't see how I could have gotten a former homicidal near-immortal with superhuman abilities and a scrambled sense of self to graduation and not know for certain.
Private
Date: 2009-12-08 01:39 am (UTC)Private
Date: 2009-12-08 01:41 am (UTC)Private
Date: 2009-12-08 01:52 am (UTC)Private
Date: 2009-12-08 02:00 am (UTC)Who was your first Warden?
Private
Date: 2009-12-08 02:05 am (UTC)Private
Date: 2009-12-08 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 02:37 am (UTC)Just because your inmate has not graduated does not mean you did not make a difference. I am sure your influence has done some good.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 04:43 am (UTC)She was one of the vampiric inmates. I got her to trust me, and to stop killing. She protected me often--I trusted her with my life more than once, and she never betrayed that trust. She cared for me, but she refrained from doing bad to others only because she knew how I'd react.
I know I did something, but I couldn't fix what was wrong with her, at her core, and I feel like I failed her.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:40 pm (UTC)And one never knows...she may yet return.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:31 am (UTC)West is totally happy, so he won't comment
Date: 2009-12-13 04:24 am (UTC)And Libby thanks you for your lack of jackassery this time, West xD
Date: 2009-12-13 04:25 am (UTC)