Unresponsive

Medical triage; when being trained to respond to disasters and mass casualty situations a system of colored tags is used to mark the victims. For a long time, I thought it was only red, yellow, and green tags. What this means is that there are people I should have marked with black tags long before I knew they existed. Hell, I should have been marked with a black tag long before I knew they existed. If you’re still reading, I don’t intend to point blame I just think that is a bit of information that you already should have known.

Black tags are reserved for the unresponsive; the deceased or those beyond help. In the past three weeks alone, I’ve placed black tags upon many of the bodies I thought I would never say goodbye to. Life is kind of funny like that, one moment we think we would never, and the next, there we are doing it.

No, I do not have the training necessary to perform triage. Yes, sometimes I like borrowing systems to apply to my own life. So, when I am placing black tags upon bodies you can equate that to me slamming the door on someone as I shout “NEVER AGAIN!” with a resolve I won’t back down from. I’m starting to learn how you tell when it’s time to walk away. I jokingly told myself that perhaps I learned just a little bit too late but the truth is, everything comes at the right time.

Building a solid home, the foundation has to go down first. You can’t begrudge the home for not having walls before they have something to stand upon. I can not begrudge myself the inability to walk away in time before I knew how to let go. It is a foundation concept that I’m starting to see the importance of in every area of my life.

If I can’t let go, I have no room for new. I promised myself I wouldn’t become a hoarder. Sure, I meant physically but I’m going to go ahead and extend it to mean emotionally too. I won’t keep holding onto things that are long overdue. I won’t let the already unresponsive continue to take my time and attention when it could be spent on a red tag.

Back to triage; a black tag is deceased, a white tag is a minor injury requiring no care, red requires urgent care, yellow requires observation but are currently stable, and green require care but are low priority. As I inventory my life; a black tag is a relationship undeserving of or beyond repair, a white tag is in good standing and can go unchecked, a red tag need immediate revision on boundaries, a yellow tag will definitely need a few conversations but nothing to run to resolve, and a green tag can handle gentle revisions and expressions of my boundaries as they arise.

I’ve issued a lot of black tags as I’ve been working my way through the crowd. Some of them I’ve placed in the hand of the recipient with a warm farewell and others have been placed with silence. The silence isn’t any less warm, I just don’t always think the unresponsive need a response – need words. Sometimes silence is enough to carry the message.

Now, I find myself working through the red tags. They’re the hardest for me. Anytime I’m at the mercy of my own procrastination, I say “Oh, I work well under pressure. It’s okay”. That’s not the truth, though. I work best when given the freedom to trust myself, to follow my own lead. I promise, though, I’m going to make my way through all of those red tags before I scrap the system and wing it.

Much love, until next time.