With it's insistence on celibacy, the Catholic church that the Franciscan monk belonged to, and that had found his vocation in, was clearly the driver of the behaviours that had pushed him into that catch-22 place where firstly he was to make deny his masochism to himself, then secondly make him develop unrealistic behavioural strategies to accommodate his sexual tastes, tastes that he was officially not meant to have, so as to make faith and celibacy seem consistent and attractive. I was caught in a similar but different catch-22 because of my cottaging. 6
But where the monk had started to be open with me about his tastes for sexualised violence and a knowingly poor perception of what mutual consent meant with sex, I did not have the language or the courage to say to him 'You do not have to believe that sex always has to linked to violence begotten by the state and church, who you know will use it to falsely make people feel guilty.'. Just as I did not have the courage for him so I lacked courage for myself. Equally I knew nobody well enough who when I might have told them I had recently cottaged then they would be unembarrassed enough at what I admitted to that we could explore with me how such behaviour could be described by the mechanics of it, which if outlined would reveal a consistent secondary logic, and justification, of it's own which needed to be understood to be resisted. Maybe such person would have some inclusive jokes about the latent absurdities of cottaging that would bring about the most inclusive release possible. Jokes are sometimes good as enlightened short cuts through complex explanations. 18
But alas no such person existed for me, and if I'd had such a person then the first thing that they would expect of me was that I somehow got my work situation in the care factory on a more sustainable setting than it was turning out to be. Several months into the job, and long past my trial period the was sustainable for the management-they set the terms on which I worked for them. But the work was proving less than sustainable with me. 23
My surface understanding when I started as a care assistant was that in so far as anyone could work, then technically nearly anyone could be a care assistant if the employee had a consistent enough sense of vocation for the patients coupled with them being mentally and physically fit enough to withstand constant shift work. There was nothing high status or precious about the work, silently valued by patients as it was. The management had two key ways of measuring the work for either maximum profit or for optimum sustainability for the employees doing the work. They could vary the staff patient ratio or vary the patterns of shift work. If they set the staff patient ratio at one staff member per six patients then they made the work as intense as was possible to be whilst it remained sustainable. The ideal shift patterns for the such intensity of work I estimated to be a thirty hour week. The management calculated the best shift pattern to be a thirty six hour week, which wold have been okay for the staff had the staff/patient ratio been lower. But the management insisted on the full 35 hours of shifts with the maximum staff patient ratio, as if they could push that and nothing would 'give', the system was sustainable. They did not see the staff turnover, people leaving the job, as proof that they should ease back on the work to maintain the team work that there was, going better. 38
With my doing one shift per week too many for the balance of my mental and physical health over the winter/spring quarter and beyond I continued to do the the job well enough but accumulated a certain depleted sense of self. This tiredness showed itself in a way that seemed unexpected when it came. I'd never imagined until it happened how a job could eat into person's life the way this job had eaten into mine. Matron wanted all the staff to book their two weeks annual paid holiday. Everyone else, who could compensate better than I could for doing a shift a week too many with the support they drew from their partner or friends, booked their two weeks of holiday time, to have a have time out with their friends etc. I had nobody I wanted to spend any length of time with. With a sense of blankness that was creeping up on me slowly I did see the point of a week off. I was the last to complete my choice of holiday weeks, even now I am unsure I actually booked any. What I remember more clearly is the open row I had with matron where my indifference to having a week off stretched to saying to matron that I wanted it in the form a a shift less every week. I did not get my shift less every week. Nor in my recollection did matron say anything to me about burnout in work, as being the reason we got our weeks off. For management to admit that they knew about the potential for burnout among staff would have been to close to them admitting that the way they ran the home could push staff towards burnout. Management was much more about creating plausible deniability for the consequences of some of their actions than they could let on they knew about. 57
When Autumn came there was the nearest that matron would ever admit was a crisis in the home. Too many of the elderly residents whom they had accepted for continuing intensive physical care for were dying sooner than expected. Too few relatives had applied for their tired and elderly to live in the home to replace the residents who had died. Some of the deaths were both a shock and a relief when they happened. One particularly memorable slow death came about when one patient, Elisabeth, not only retained her dignity, but retained it by refusing to eat and only occasionally drinking. She starved herself to death in the most dignified way we could imagine. When she finally breathed her last as skeleton tightly covered by skin, the dignity she had maintained was at least as shocking as the means of her death. Another patient who never really settled from her arrival onward died of an infection incurred by the bed sores she sustained because she lost interest in moving. She died of the consequences of the shock of moving into the home. In spite of these times I tried instil some humanity into my work heaving patients to and from in the process of feeding them, washing them, toileting them, changing their clothes and bedding, all in one perpetual motion cycle of daily activity in the home. My best memory of trying to humanise the place came when Radio Four reported the death of dance band leader Victor Sylvester, and I told one of the more sentient patients of his death as I was helping her to bed, and I saw her cry at being reminded of his life. 76
If I had hoped that with the staff/patient ratio lowering with the empty beds, and the lower staff patient ratios that, however unfortunate it was for those gone, I would restore my work life balance a little I was disappointed. When the home unwillingly let go of one member of staff in a no fault departure from the job I was second in line and only one person was allowed to leave with no penalty being incurred, or black mark being registered on their work record. I forget the name of the member of staff but she was due to be imminently married which was a more creditable reason for leaving than simply being knackered.84
It must have been about that time I started having what with hindsight I will call short blackouts. Moments in work where I'd be in the midst of completing three or four different tasks, all of which interlocked with each other, and my mind would go blank. It would say 'what are you doing here?' to me as if I should not be where I was. I told my doctor about the blackouts and how much my work was structured to wear me out to the point where I could not think clearly about changing jobs. I felt sort-of-better for telling him about it all. He did not give me medication to take. 90
He set me up for what indirectly would become the turning point in my life. He put me on a list for one to one therapy on the NHS. Meanwhile through unlikely circumstances I became the prayer partner with somebody in church in a one hour a week one to one prayer time. Who knows how much in her simplicity and honesty Celia spiritually propped me up in my work through the week, whilst I was waiting for the therapy to start? I don't know.95
After the unresolvable and secretive encounter with the elderly monk, I was enjoying a more wholesome and balanced reciprocity with one elderly person in my church and house group. 97
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