Paid to pray, sing, & be called names

Right now I'm working three jobs. Two of my jobs involve me writing words, which is pretty awesome considering that's what I love to do and what I want to do for the rest of my life. The other one is a bit rougher to deal with. I work for an organization (which shall remain unnamed. I don't want to get in trouble somehow) that offers in home care to adults with physical/mental/emotional/psychological problems. It's an interesting enough job though I really don't think we get paid enough for the shit we have to deal with and the dangers we put ourselves in.

Yes, you read that correctly. Dangers. Sometimes the clients can become really aggressive and violent for one reason or another and can try to attack you or throw things at you. Everyone has to go through a training program to prepare them for what may happen. I've experience very little of this so far.

The only real time I have to deal with this stuff is when I'm working with this one client. Because of confidentiality stuff, we'll call her "Stacy." Stacy is in her 50s but has the mental capacity of a 1 or 2 year old. She doesn't talk very well but can make herself understood well enough. Stacy can have these fits sometimes when she doesn't want to do something or something upsets her or for some unknown reason. She she has these fits, she yells, screams incoherently, bites herself, hits her head on walls, hits her wrists on walls, and tries to grab other people. The other day the other staff and I were showering Stacy. Stacy HATES to shower and it's a long and difficult process. Despite not having that big of a vocabulary, Stacy knows a lot of swear words and would call us a stream of profanities that I'm too ladylike to repeat here. I know she doesn't really mean it and if she does, she doesn't fully understand what is going on. I'm not offended by what she says and it doesn't bother me. It just is kind of bewildering to me that I get paid to be called these names.

One thing that can calm Stacy down is music and singing. When we got her in bed after showering, she was still in a really bad mood and would scream and bit herself. I sat down at the edge of the bed and rubbed her back. I started singing to her. I started off with the song "If I Had Words" from the movie Babe. 

It's a really pretty song. I learned to play it on the piano when I was younger and I never forgot the lyrics. It's a pretty short song so I started singing it again. After singing it twice, Stacy got wise and started freaking out again. So I scrambled to think of another song to sing. Nothing was coming. She was starting to get really irritated and aggressive so I just started singing and this is what came out:

Yes, I started singing the theme from Firefly. It was the only thing I could think of. But, hey. It did the trick.

Another client I work with is in her late 20s and has too many problems to list here. She's fully functional physically and can talk just fine. The other night when she was in bed, she asked me to come into her room. I sat on her bed and she held my hand. She wanted to say her evening prayer and asked me to say it. I immediately began to squirm. I don't believe in a god so I definitely don't believe in prayer. I didn't want to have to explain to her that if I said the prayer, it probably wouldn't work. It's like a prayer I would say would be instantly void. So I told her I didn't know how to pray, that I never learned, which is a lie but I didn't care at that point. She then began to pray as I awkwardly sat there holding her hand.

Honestly, I cannot wait to get a real journalism job so I can be paid to write words and not pray, sing, and be called names.

Love you.
Mean it.