I met my mentee after work today at Starbucks. She’s had a really dramatic last week, which included her mentor (through a program where people formerly in foster care mentor foster care children) x-ing her out of her life, accusing her of breaking and entering, and having her granddaughter threaten my mentee over text; a good (now former friend) getting admitted into the hospital for a pill overdose/suicide attempt, who is now ignoring my mentee and saying she only causes more problems and doesn’t genuinely care about her; this former friend’s boyfriend threatening my mentee. It was an earful for the hour we spent together.

I was exhausted. I was already tired from the work week, which felt way too long after the week away we had in Portugal. My morning workouts, full-days of work, plus going out or having to work the first three days of this week really were catching up to me in the form of a regular splitting afternoon headache every single day after Monday this week. This conversation didn’t help. I want to be there to her, to give her suggestions and offer guidance. She does take a lot of my suggestions, but I always think it won’t really help in the long run. She needs to break herself out of all this mess that she is inclined to be a part of, and that’s going to take the power and strength within herself to get that done.

I told Chris about this before we met our friends for dinner tonight. “You attract dysfunction, and she given her life circumstances is going to keep attracting dysfunction,” he said.

Well, I can’t really do anything about that, can I?