Ahh the time has come.
Internship.
Placement.
Whatever else you wanna call it.
Finally had time to settle down after exams for some self-care (i.e. karaoke and pigging out) and today's Sunday, a day that I had specially left plan-less to physically and mentally prepare for the start of internship tomorrow.
Since this internship does not require me to write daily journals (alhamdulillahirabbil 'alamin, arrahmanirrahim.. sumpah boleh sujud syukur kat sini jugak, i remember how dreadful it was in poly to do up daily journals throughout 2/3 months), i have decided that i'll record down my progress and thoughts here instead. I'm a very forgetful person, i rarely remember small details (i only remember 5 people's phone numbers and maybe less than 10 people's exact birthdates?) so i thought that by typing it down here it'll allow for a better reflection of my internship.
And god knows how conflicted I feel about this internship.
Lemme tell you a story.
So, the reason I specifically chose Dementia Day Care is.. because I wanted to challenge myself. I love interacting with the Elderly, and i sort of think that I'm good at it. But ever since my nenek passed on about a year plus ago, even though i can still interact and work with them.. personally I felt like the shittiest person on Earth because i haven't, to this day, forgiven myself about how I treated my nenek.
On a normal basis, I guess I treated her okay, there were good and bad days. But the months leading up to her death, after she suffered a minor stroke, I was the most horrible person ever. I won't recount what happened but I can remember those moments as clear as day, the hurt in her eyes.. the disappointment.. the frustration.. the love.. the resignation.. and it's something that up till this day I have yet to forgive myself about.
I was scared. It was something so foreign. Her being so weak, unable to do things on her own.. The weird behaviours.. I've always looked up to her as someone who was always there for me. No matter how bratty I was being, no matter how much I had misbehaved, she would always be there for me. But at that time she wasn't. I couldn't understand that she was dealing with it too. How difficult it must have been for her. How painful it must have been for her to see me react to her like that. How confused she herself must have been over the changes. I was so selfish about my own needs, I had wanted my grandmother, my old nenek so badly that I rejected the person she was turning into due to the after-effects of the stroke she had, the dementia she was developing. She wasn't the nenek that I knew.
I failed. As a granddaughter, I had failed in showing her the love and care that she rightfully deserved from me. I am a failure of a granddaughter. I even failed as a Social Work Associate, failed to accept a person the way he/she is.
And.. I can't turn back time. It's too late for me to make it up to her. I couldn't tell her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me, how much i appreciated her existence. It's too late. She can never hear all that now. She was the one person that I cared most about in the world, simply because she made me feel accepted despite the brat that I was in my childhood. She accepted me the way I am. I was scolded a lot as a kid bcos i tend to have a mind of my own, not listening to parents for things i stand firm for, going about things my own way. I was always the odd one out in the family, I always felt left out, I always felt misunderstood. I wasn't close to neither my siblings nor my parents. I had no one to turn to during difficult times. Except for my nenek. The person that I loved most in the world, she who had accepted me for who I was.. I failed her. How pathetic right.
Moving on, I knew that there was nothing I could do about it. So i began thinking about what i COULD do. I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be useful person. Someone who could express her thoughts and feelings well. Someone who could show her appreciation for the people that she loves. For her. In memory of her.
So pushing aside all those negative feelings, I wanted to challenge myself. To do something that I couldn't do then. To practise patience with those with dementia. To accept them for who they are. To recognize the worth. To understand their frustrations. To journey together with them into the unfamiliar thing that is of their own deteriorating condition.
To be honest, I don't know if i can do that. I don't know if i can separate my own feelings from theirs. Counter-transference is a huge issue that i foresee happening during this internship and frankly i ain't got no clue about how to deal with it. But i really want to challenge myself to be able to do it.
And this feeling of determination (and fear, lots of it) actually supersedes my usual fear and anxiety of change. Yknow how I usually go through this excruciating phase of anxiety whenever I move on to a new and unfamiliar setting, yeah I barely feel it now. Idk if that's good or bad haha.
But yeah, that's the story about how and why i chose this sector to intern in. There are also a few other things that i want to achieve, like maybe learning bits and pieces of mandarin for my potential Chinese clients lol i strongly predict a communication barrier there so I wanna try yknow learn enough to be able to communicate about basic stuff.
So yeap. This will be the place where I will let it all out. I'll be sharing more about what I did during the day, any learning points, reflections etc, a daily journal if you must (lol padahal that was the one thing that i hated doing, but well, it helps with personal growth).
Hope you guys don't get annoyed haha.
So let's do this!!
#prayforazlin
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