The Downside To Youth Work

Today has been a fucking hard day. I have spent this afternoon with fifteen year old boy explicitly telling me how he was going to kill himself tonight - what he was going to use to do it, what time to do it and his trying to work out how best to hit a vein. He's not a new person to me. I've worked with him for the best part of a year and he's been doing so much better. Something happened though, that I'm not going to go into (that's his business, not mine) and everything's changed again. Today was different to other times he's said he wants to kill himself. It was like he was resigned to his fate. He literally could not see himself still being here tomorrow, and all he could think about was dying. I knew what I had to do as a youth worker. Detatch myself and be practical about it. So instead I sobbed and felt that he was my responsibility. The decision was made for me that we had to ring his mother who then took him home. I can't shake it off though - the look of acceptance in his eyes. Right now I honestly don't know if I will see him again.