Before I start, I just want to say, that I'm not actually seeking advice in this thread, I just need somewhere to write where people can respond and just generally read what I want to say. I can't talk about this to any of my close friends, because it's strictly confidential, but I really need to write it some where that other people can read it. I don't know why.
Right, so this girl that I work with, she has learning difficulties. I can't remember the name of either, of the conditions that she actually has, but one of them is a bit like Epilepsy; she doesn't literally have fits, but she has this thing, where her brain produces too much electricity. So she can be talking to someone, listening to them, and suddenly it'll happen, and she'll just blank out, she'll be able to hear you, but not word for word, just a general sound, and she won't be able to see you, she'll just see a bright light where you're sitting. It lasts about 30 seconds, and no one knows it's happening except for her. Obviously, that must be extremely frustrating for her, and it's also frustrating for the person talking to her, because after every sentence you say, you have to ask her whether she understood what you have just said.
Another thing she has, is where her brain goes blank. I.e. she's trying to complete a sentence, but she's lost a word. She can describe the word to you (e.g. if it's a table, she can say "it's got four legs and a flat surface and you eat off it"), but she won't remember that it's called a table. Again, that's very frustrating for her and with that, you can tell when it's happening because she repeats herself over and over again.
Apart from those things, she's got a very short attention span, so you have to keep her motivated and when she has to do something she doesn't want to, and you have to edge her on, she gets very frustrated. Her mental age is probably at about 12/13 when she's actually 27. Though sometimes, she does act more her age.
Anyway, she's a wonderful person. Over the last few weeks that I've been working with her, we've become incredibly close, and I've started caring about her a lot.
On Wednesday night (last week), my dad was on the phone for about an hour, which I have never ever seen before, and when he came off the phone, he said he needed to talk to me. (I obviously thought I was in trouble straight away, and started denying everything before my dad had even said a word), he then sat me down, and started talking to me about this girl. He said her mom (who's a good friend of the family's), just called him, and had asked him to tell me about this girl's childhood because she was obviously becoming closer to me, and had already started opening up to me. She spoke to me about her foster homes (she's adopted now and has been for the last 17 years).
So yeah, then my dad told me that when she was about 3 years old, she witnessed her biological father, who was a prison guard who had been fired for being too violent towards the prisoner, beat up his 2 year old daughter. Her sister while her mother was out shopping.
I started screaming and crying straight away, and I cried for about 2 hours straight.
Anyway, I know that I've kind of dived into a job that most people study for years, and go into gradually. Most people don't even start studying it at my age, and I've really just gone in head first.
I love it. When I'm with her, and I can she's happy, it's like nothing else matters. She's really funny, and she makes me smile from ear to ear.
The day that I started working with her, I went to the library on my way home and I got out a book by a man called Dave Peltzer. It's an auto biography about his childhood as a victim of severe child abuse and neglect. His case is actually the third worst recorded case in US history. He was abused by his alcoholic mother, who has other children, who she treated well and turned them against him. I got it by complete coincidence but I've been reading it in parallel to working with her.
Up until recently, I've been so naive to child abuse. I did know it happened, but I never really acknowledged it. Now it's slapped me right in the face, I find myself trying to analyze it. I can't really explain it - I just find myself thinking about it for hours, and trying to work out why anyone would want to bring harm to their child. Obviously, there is no straight answer, and most people who do it (not all), have persuaded themselves, and more often than not, those around them (including their victim/s), that they deserve it.
I do speak to my parents about it, and it does help, but when my dad told me, I could so tell that he was finding it so difficult to expose me to the horrors that happened to someone so close to me. There isn't much my parents can do to make me feel better, because it's so horrible, and I've developed such a deep hatred to people that I've never spoken to, or met.
I need to learn how to separate myself from it. To switch off that part of me when I leave work, but I've become so close to her, and although it happened years and year ago, I can almost guarantee that she still thinks about it. In fact, she spoke to me about it, without knowing I knew about it, a day later.
Anyway, I've said enough for now.
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aww, omg i would cry 2 
