SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN ON MY MIND
And I need to tell this story again , to get it out of my head...maybe once and for all. Back in the day when I was on that crisis intervention team , there was an incident that changed me . It was in November , and it was a typical dank foggyish November night when we got called to the latency unit...meaning boys on the verge of puberty.
There was this kid that we all loved , but he was feral when he lost it , and he had lost it this night. His dorm was at the far south end of the campus , we had no room at our center  , and where the space was available was available was at the far north end of the campus , 100 yards at least give or take. He fought us the entire way , and in the course of that 100 yards we had to take him down repeatedly , on the grass , on the pavement . He was like one of those little acrobat monkey toys that you push the button in the base and it flips around like crazy.
 He hit the ground a little harder every time we had to take him down , and by the time we got to the unit my "unconditional regard" was non existent...I was as feral as he was. I practically threw him into the security room and locked the door , then I saw the necklace he was wearing . I gave him one opportunity to give it up and he was screaming at me that his mother had given it to him . So I re entered the room and it was on . We rolled around on the floor , him all claws and spit and I finally gold hold of the chain , wrapped it around my hand once and ripped it off his neck , shoved him hard across the floor into the corner and bailed , locking him again. I threw the chain at the unit staff and just said " leave him locked" and stormed out of the unit ... no paper work , no information , they just had a hysterical kid locked in a room with no background , and the guy that put him there stormed off the unit in a rage.
Inexcusable...but I have to say that this level of violence from patients at that time was occurring everyday several times a day for months by the time this happened.
So I get back to our center and my coworker has a clue that I have lost my mind ( I'm screaming at her) She tells me to calm down or leave and I said fine , threw my keys across the desk at her and walked out, I abandoned  a team member... also inexcusable , but there was no other option.
In previous dealings with this kid , we would have him locked at our center and he would scratch his gums until they bled and spit bloody sputum on the observation window until we could not see...so we would have to re enter the room and fight some more...
But the reality was , he was a very damaged 11 year old boy , and it was my job to protect him and keep him safe , and I failed that night , and would fail again with many others ... this was one incident in 100's , shit , maybe 1000's where the "therapeutic intervention" went a bit feral.
And in the end , we fixed it...he knew he was fucked up and he knew I really did care , I always managed to fix it ,even the botched ones ya know ? We all have our limits...even crazy people get that.