I work with the elderly and sometimes I feel ashamed even thinking this, but I can barely stand them. I work in a care home with every kind of challenge you can imagine. Aggression, dementia, schizophrenia, physical health issues, end of life care, nursing needs, bed bound residents, the whole spectrum of human fragility and human cruelty all contained inside four units and more than eighty residents. I went into this job believing in compassion and respect.

I believed that older people were supposed to be gentle and grateful and full of wisdom. I never expected to meet so many rude, entitled, arrogant, racist and hateful people in one place. Out of more than eighty residents maybe eight of them are genuinely kind.

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The ones without dementia can be the worst. They say things with full intention and clarity. They treat young staff like personal servants. They bark orders at us even when they can see we are rushing around trying to help ten people at the same time. They throw insults like it is nothing. They make our work harder on purpose.

One woman who does not have dementia threw her plate of food at me because I put the wrong amount of sugar in her husbands tea. It shocked me to my core how casually cruel some people can be.

The dementia crowd is complicated. Some residents are genuinely sweet and gentle even when they get confused. Others have this deep rooted anger that you can feel before they even open their mouths. People love to say they are not responsible for what they say because of the dementia. I understand that part of it is the illness.

I understand memory loss and fear and confusion can twist a person. But I do not believe that years of racism magically appeared overnight. When someone looks my black colleague in the face and calls them a monkey or a wog or a slur I will not repeat, that is not new. When a resident looks at one of our African sponsorship workers and tells him to get back on his banana boat, that hate has lived inside them for decades. Dementia just removes the filter.

During my pregnancy things were unbearable. I was hit in the stomach with a zimmer frame. I was punched. I was spat on. Someone sprayed a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher at me while I was heavily pregnant.

I was told I should be ashamed of having a mixed race baby. A new resident arrived one day and within four hours he had chased me through the unit saying he wanted to kill me and my unborn child. I still remember how terrified I felt. I have had my hair pulled. I have had people scratch me with filthy nails. I have had human waste thrown at me. The emotional exhaustion mixed with the physical danger almost broke me. I went home every night feeling anxious, hurt and emotionally drained.

It is not just me. One of my younger colleagues was threatened with rape by a resident. She was shaken for days. We keep being told to respect our elders and to treat them like sweet innocent grandparents, but the reality is that many of them are deeply angry and deeply unkind people. Yes there are beautiful souls too and I genuinely love caring for the ones who treat us like human beings. Those residents remind me why I do this work and why I still have compassion left. But the others are so cruel that sometimes I feel like I am drowning in bitterness that is not mine.

And to be fair, I want to say this clearly because people always assume the worst. The residents with schizophrenia who are medicated have been some of the kindest people I have ever cared for. We have a gentleman who is huge and strong and could easily intimidate anyone. Yet he is gentle and protective and always tries to look out for the female staff. Our ladies with schizophrenia have their moments but they are usually sweet, intelligent and aware. It is heartbreaking to see how much stigma they face when many of them are kinder than the so called stable residents.

I guess this is my confession. I am tired. I am hurt. I am struggling. And I wish people understood that working in care is more than feeding and bathing people. It is navigating trauma, abuse, manipulation, racism, mental illness, aging, grief and emotional burnout every single day. Sometimes the job makes me feel like my compassion is being pulled out of me piece by piece and I am terrified of losing the part of myself that still cares. But at least here, in this confession, I can finally be honest about how it feels.

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