Why not now?

As I climbed into the van for work that would take me back to the metro station, I shook my umbrella out the door, tried to smooth my beyond-help wet hair, and breathlessly said hello to the driver, “JP.” 

“Is this rain ever going to stop?” I asked, half just to have something to say, and half because I was incredibly grumpy.

“Well if you ask me, “ said JP, “I think it’s a sign.”

I settled in my seat as JP put the van in drive.  “A sign?”

"Yeah,” he continued.  “If you ask me, I say it’s a sign.  I think the Lord telling us it’s the end.”

I laughed.  I mean really, what else do you do?  “You might be right about that,” I said.

“Think about it,” JP said, chuckling, “we had the earthquake.  We had a hurricane.  And now we got flooding and tropical storms, and this is just in 2 weeks.  People got their roof falling in, roads closing down, schools closed, people out of electricity again...”

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” I said.  “Kind of scary.”

“I'm tellin’ people,” said JP, “it’s the end.  Ain’t nothin’ you can do but get good with yo’self.  If the end is here, and this is it, nothin’ else is goin’ to matter.  Everybody get all scared or run around like ‘the end is here, the end is here,’ but not me.  I just tell e’rybody I gonna spend this time gettin’ good with MYself.  That’s what we all should be doin’.  Spendin’ this time gettin’ good with ourselves.”

“I like that, JP,” I said. “That is what matters in the end, isn’t it?”

“Now’s as good a time as any,” he suggested.  “It might be the end.  It might not be.  But it’s as good a time as any to get good with yo’self.  Might as well be now.”

If it was the end of the world…what would you need to do to “get good with yourself,” as JP put it?  What does that mean for you?  What would it take for you to “get good with yourself”?  What’s stopping you from doing it now?

Self-Care, Part 2

I learned something about myself tonight. 

Until tonight, I did not really know what it feels like to allow myself to be angry.  I thought I did.  I know what it feels like, but I didn’t really know what it was like to allow myself to BE angry. I can intellectualize my way around just about everything.  I can come up with fancy words and metaphors and stories, and I can think my way through a whole heck of a lot.  I can come up with neat little word packaged emotions for you that fit the description of what the emotion feels like, and I can come up with about 10 different interventions for working with it, but I learned tonight that sometimes, I’m pretty much just full of crap.  Feel free to call me on it in the future.  I see it now.

I don’t really want to put words on it just yet, because…well…it was kind of intense and my whole body feels kind of raw from the experience.  Raw and wired.  I need to get to bed, but there’s no way that’s going to happen right now.  Words are how I understand things and put them to rest, so I think that’s what I need to do. 

Things have been building for me for a really long time.  A really fantastic friend sent me a care package, which I received this weekend, to remind me to take care of myself…and I tried.  I really tried.  I can honestly say I made a concerted effort this weekend, and actually, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for that.  I was ending this 3-day weekend feeling pretty good, thanks to some really hard work I did because, for me, self-care is hard work.  It’s not something I do naturally or well.

I have some reservations about this week for several reasons, and I know that certain aspects of this week are going to be difficult for me.  I’m not 100% sure how to deal with that yet, but I made sure that I had as many things in place to make myself able to deal with this upcoming potential trigger in as healthy a way as possible.  I’m really trying here, folks.  I really am.

I made a really fabulous dinner (potato and chickpea curry with rice…yum!), and had just finished that, was washing dishes and listening to some of my favorite music when I got a phone call.  The details of the phone call aren’t necessary, but the caller essentially (a) told me how irresponsible and negligent I had been this weekend and (b) told me how I had let them down.  This caller is someone who has a significant impact on my life and, as much as when I was 5 years old, if I feel I have disappointed someone, I will pretty much fall apart.  I did not miss some big essential duty.  I did not mess up anything.  It was merely this person’s viewpoint, without having all the facts (although she should have been able to know, really).

The work I had so carefully done this weekend crumbled like a house of cards.  I turned to a not-so-healthy coping strategy, which helped, but not enough.   When I get upset (angry, sad, really anxious, whatever), my body shakes.  I hate it in a really big way, but I couldn’t stop it from shaking. 

I ranted in my head and attempted to rationalize away my anger and frustration, but couldn’t.  I needed an outlet.  A physical outlet.  And I needed it sooner rather than later.  I grabbed a pillow from my bed and squeezed it, hard.  Didn’t work.  Harder.  Nothing.  And then, I just…I snapped.  Really.  Something inside me just went “POP,” and I started beating the hell out of my mattress with my pillow.  Again.  And again.  And again.  And again.

I am more than certain that I looked like a crazy person.  My hair fell out of its clip and went all over the place as I walloped the mattress harder and harder.  I must have been screaming, because my throat hurts like you wouldn’t believe.  And I wasn’t just angry about the phone call.  I was angry about what’s to come this week, and I was angry about self-care being difficult, and I was angry about things I swore I wasn’t angry about any more.  I was angry about things I didn’t even remember being angry about.  It’s like the anger is stored in my muscles, and when I gave it the chance to surface, the memories and the emotions all bubbled up my bloodstream.

When I couldn’t raise my arms again, I put the pillow back on the bed, and walked back into the living room.  The poor dog was cowering behind a chair, having never seen anything quite like that, and I laid on the floor and cuddled with him, saying, “I’m sorry” over and over and over and over again.  I tried to convince myself I was apologizing to the dog for scaring him, but we both knew it was more than that. 

I am very conscious of my mind tempering everything I’m writing right now.  “Calm, now.  Calm.  Calm.  Calm.  People don’t know you turned into an angry idiot this evening.”

And really, you don’t.  Of course you don’t.  But I need to share it because it’s important, and because I can update my self-care post from yesterday.  Yes, sometimes self-care is about dental floss.  And sometimes—sometimes, it might need to be about beating the crap out of something indestructible and letting some of those bubbles rise to the surface. 

Nobody ever tells you self-care can be a very scary experience.  But it can be.  I know.  My body still doesn’t want to let it go.

Self-Care, Picasso, and Dental Floss

I have the beginnings of about 5 different blog posts, none of them particularly interesting or worthwhile, and all of them very stuck.  I can’t seem to land on a topic and stick to it right now, and when I do find a topic I want to write about, the thoughts stick and can’t pass through the birthing canal from my brain to my fingers to make it onto the page.  It’s painful, I’ve gotta say.  There are lots of reasons, some of which I’ve even identified, none of which I want to go into.  So they’re just going to stay stuck and we’re all going to be happier for it.  Maybe. 

So instead, I’ll write about something easy, fun, important.  I’m going to write about self-care. 

Stop laughing! 

No, really now.  Stop laughing. 

C’mon, that’s not nice.  Just listen.  I might have something to say.

Are you quite finished?  Thank you.

So, self-care is important.  I should do it.  You should do it.  The world would be a happier place if we all just self-cared more often.

Hmmm…this post isn’t working out so well, either.

See, I have a problem with the word “deserve.”  Many people, when they say “take care of yourself,” follow it up with “…you deserve it.”  The concept of being “deserving” indicates to me that there are some people, then, who DON’T “deserve it,” and I just don’t believe that’s true.  If we get into the “deserving” piece, I can always think of people who are more “deserving” or whatever than I am, and can’t really think of anybody who ISN’T deserving.  Maybe it’s because the media always tries to shove down our throats that we “deserve” whatever it is that I am so opposed to the idea. 

For example, think of all the women you know.  Can you think of one woman who doesn’t “deserve” to have shiny, thick hair that smells like Strawberry Breeze?  Me either!  I mean, really, when you get pissed at somebody (since you were older than junior high), do you ever think, “I hope your hair gets thin and smells like swamp scum, because you SURELY don’t deserve to shampoo your hair after THAT behavior.  Noooooo siree, no shampoo for you.  I’m taking my Strawberry Breeze Shining and Thickening shampoo AND the Clean Rain conditioner and GOING HOME.” 

When I was a kid, we had a tape of stories we listened to in the car.  One story’s main character was an elderly woman who lived by the motto, “people get what they deserve.”  I have heard this, particularly over the past year and a half, from various people, in various ways.  “Karma’s a bitch,” some people say.  “What goes around comes around.”  “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”  Basically, I don’t believe it’s true.  People DON’T get what they deserve (good and bad) and, in fact, many people get things they don’t deserve.  That’s just a fact.  I’ve seen it happen.

So, when people tell me “take care of yourself, you deserve it,” I kind of get unnecessarily irritated.  (“So you’re saying there was a time when I didn’t?” or “oh I do, do I?  Well exactly how much self-care do I deserve at this point?  Do I have enough “you deserve it” points saved up to earn a hot bath?  How about candles?  Have I earned candles?).  Maybe I am thinking about it wrong, but it irks me.

It’s different, though, when people say, “you ARE worth it.”  That, to me, is completely different because, yes, there are times when I haven’t felt/don’t feel like I am “worth it”—with “it” being time, or money, or just plain and simple attention.  To say “you’re worth it” is reminding you/me/whoever that it’s okay to take that time.  That your body, your mind, your spirit, is deserving of that love and attention.  It’s taking away the “deserve”—which indicates that you had to do something in order to earn it, and just says “you are worthy of that love, simply because you are.”

Deserve feels like I’m working for something, although I didn’t know the rules of what I was working for.  It’s like I worked, worked, worked, and suddenly, I “deserve” something, although I never know how much I “deserve,” quite how much I earned.  If I’m going to work like that, give me a token economy chart so I can cash in my chips at the end of the day.

Worthiness feels like something more inherent.  It’s present on a more bodily level.  My body brought me through another day.  It put up with the wear and tear, withstood the physical and emotional miles I put on, and for that, I should take care of it.  It is worth taking care of so it will continue carrying me.  My emotional and spiritual self withstood the trials and tribulations of another day.  For that, it is worth caring for, so I can ensure it will continue to help me through the day.  I don’t always believe this or know it to be true, but it’s easier for me to swallow than the whole “deserve” thing.

Or at least, that is the distinction in my mind.  If you have a better way of thinking about this and I’m completely off base, let me know.

Back to self-care.  We all know the drill.  It doesn’t have to be something that costs money.  It doesn’t have to be something big.  It just has to be something that makes you feel good, that replenishes you, yada yada yada.  Right?

The thing I’ve never understood about all that is this: what if you don’t know?  What if you don’t know what’s going to feel good, or what is going to replenish you?  What if you can’t figure out what’s going to work?  Or what if you just can’t bring yourself to take the time?

One of the bigger “a-ha” moments of my life in regards to self-care occurred while I was flossing my teeth.  I’m not kidding…flossing, for me, is generally an act of pretty radical self-care. 

About a year ago, I was making a concerted effort one evening to engage in some basic self-care, so I was flossing my teeth.  As I flossed, I looked in the mirror to see what I was doing, and when I did, my eyes found my eyes in the mirror.  I put the floss down and stood for a few seconds, looking at myself, holding my gaze and looking—really looking—at my face, my clothes, my body, and in particular, my eyes.  As I did this, I started to cry and realized: it had been about 6 months since I had looked at myself in the mirror and really allowed myself to see inside.  Of course, I had looked in the mirror, but I had only seen the pieces I was fixing: my hair, my teeth, my make-up.  In those 6 months, my entire world had changed, and I was unwilling and unable to look myself in the face.  I felt sure I would see someone else entirely looking back at me, but also couldn’t bear the thought of looking the same when everything about me and the way I thought about myself had changed.  When I finally allowed myself to look, it was powerful, and emotional, in a way I can’t find the words to describe.  It was like allowing myself to see myself as whole.  Like seeing myself in a photograph, when I had been picturing myself fractured and abstracted like a painting by Picasso.

Self-care is hard work.  It’s harder than taking care of others.  It’s harder than putting one foot in front of the other and marching steadily forward.  It takes real, conscious effort, and most times, I’m not even 100% sure what it means. 

I have a feeling, though, it might start with some dental floss.

The Question

I’ve always been someone who can write into an answer.  There have been very few times when I have true “writer’s block” in the sense that the words just won’t come.  Not for very long, anyway.  Sure, sometimes the words I WANT won’t come, but I can usually get something on the paper. 

I’m pretty darn stuck right now, though.  Actually, I’ve been stuck for quite some time.  There are just these couple things I really want to write about.  Have to write about.  But I can’t.  I just can’t.  And I don’t know what to do about that.  I think I’ve written around it (and around it, and around it, and around it….) but I still can’t write it.  It just doesn’t want to be written. Or it does, and I just can’t do it. 

Can you sense my confusion?

This stuck point in my writing, though, is also a stuck point in my life, see?  It’s causing problems.  All sorts of problems.  So, if I could just write it, give it an outlet, maybe I could reach some clarity.  Maybe something would be clarified.  But I can’t find the point of what I want to say to say it.  Hence the meaning of the word “stuck.”  Unable to proceed.

How do I give voice to this struggle?  This is the question in my heart.  One of the questions in my heart.

What are you going to do?  How are you going to make a difference?  Where are you going to put your words—your tools and weapons—to make a change?  This is the next part of it.  I want—desperately want—to make a difference.  To make a change.  Not with everything, but about one issue in particular.  I want to make a change in the one area I feel silent about.  I want to speak out about the one thing that shuts my heart down and puts my emotions into hibernation.  I want to feel angry and empowered, and I want my words to fly from my brain to the page, from my heart to the page, and I want to know that someone will read my words and their struggle will be eased.  I want to know that, because I hurt, that one less person will have to hurt.  I want to know that someone, somewhere, will benefit.

But I am silent.  And silenced.  I continue to hold my breath—and my tongue—to protect us.  Them and me, for if I protect myself, I am also protecting them, and this is what I don’t want to do.  There is no one stopping me but me, so I am angry at myself, and the struggle continues. 

Even the people who know this struggle—who know of my struggle—they ask, “how are you?” and they mean it.  And I tell them, “some days are better than others,” because I know they mean it.  They look for more of an answer, and I fall silent, avert my gaze, change the topic.  Some days ARE better than others, but that is not really how I am.  To tell you how I am would be to break that silence, and breaking the silence is hard.  Too hard.  So I don’t.  Not today, or now.  Breaking that silence would let you know things about me that you probably don’t want to know.  Things I keep hidden.  It would reveal how I really am.

We all have struggles we have difficulty voicing.  We all have places where we are silent when we want to speak.  How do you give voice to your struggle?  Have you?  Would you?  Will you?  Is it important to you to break through the silenced places?  How will you do it? 

You wouldn't believe me if I told you (Part 2)

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post, go read that first here: Part 1.  Tuesday was certainly the highlight of the week.  But I guess if you think about it, few things can top an earthquake on the East coast.  So, when Tuesday ended with a…rumble (literally…there was at least one small aftershock I felt), I was seriously grateful.

Enter Wednesday.  Peak of the week, as my college professor used to say.  Still feeling uneasy about taking the metro and going underground, I decided to drive to work.  Sat in traffic, but I made it in with no problem.  Everyone at work was pretty on edge, as if we were waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop—only this shoe was going to shake the ground we stood on.  A ceiling tile fell out of the ceiling again when the door to the locked part of the clinic slammed, but other than that, all was well.  We laughed every time somebody made a phone call and mentioned the earthquake (i.e. “Hi, this is Autodidact calling you from the behavioral psychology clinic.  I am so sorry I had to cancel your appointment yesterday due to the earthquake, but I was wondering if you would like to reschedule?”  or “Hi, this is Autodidact calling from behavioral psychology, how are you?  Oh good.  I’m sorry I didn’t return your call sooner, we had to close the clinic yesterday due to the earthquake, but I got your message and…”).    

Wednesday was stressful only because I was trying to catch up from Tuesday, I had a bunch of scheduled clients, and my supervisor was going to be observing me with my clients.  Then, a little after lunch, I got a phone call on my cell from a number I didn’t recognize.  Answering the phone, it was a recording from my gas and electric company telling me everything they are doing to prepare for the impending hurricane, and letting me know everything I should do to ensure my preparedness.  Make sure I have water, a full tank of gas in my car, canned food items…they are mobilizing extra people and resources for support…if they wanted to incite mass panic, I’m sure they did.  Take a group of people who aren’t even 24 hours away from an earthquake and start leaving phone messages about a “dangerous storm” supposed to hit in 3 days, and you have a recipe for panic.  No worries, though.  It’s all good.  So Wednesday, before I leave, I get a phone call from my 87-year-old grandmother who is in the hospital recovering from hip surgery, telling me to ask my dad to call her about why my uncle ordered a brain scan, and whether or not she has a brain tumor.  This erupted into all sorts of family drama (but to cut a long story short, she’s fine, and there was never a question about whether or not she has a brain tumor.  My uncle wanted a brain scan because of her increasing memory issues, but I didn’t know this at the time).

So I leave work pondering clients, supervision, hurricanes, and brain tumors, and am glad to get in my car rather than take the metro.  I drive about 10 minutes, I’m not even out of the city yet, when I hit trouble.  Or rather, someone else hit trouble.  Or maybe we should just say the hit caused trouble, because a big SUV 3 cars ahead of me hit a pedestrian.  I didn’t really see him get hit, but I definitely saw a person kind of thrown in front of the SUV, and the SUV and both cars in front of me slammed on their brakes.  Several cars on the other side of the freeway stopped, two nurses got out of one car and started attending to the pedestrian, and a woman got out of the SUV, looking scared out of her mind, and already on her cell phone.  About two other cars stopped, and several other pedestrians rushed over.  I couldn’t see what happened beyond that and, honestly, I wasn’t really looking, as I was mainly sitting and praying for the man that got hit, and then attempting to get back into a moving lane of traffic once an ambulance and a policeman arrived.  We can safely say that I was a little shaken up.  (In case you’re keeping count, we’re up to 1 earthquake, 1 impending hurricane, 1 potential brain tumor, and a run-over pedestrian).

There was another aftershock that woke me up at 1:00 AM Thursday morning.

Which brings me to Thursday.  I took the metro on Thursday, deciding that the drive is probably as risky as the metro at this point (or, more accurately, that I can’t win for losing with this commute and might as well do what’s the least painful).  I got into work and prepped for my first client, who decided to no-show.  Beautiful.  I do some paperwork and then sit on hold with a kid’s school for 20 minutes when my pager goes off with a “411” page.  I hang up the phone and call the front desk.  “Hi Autodidact,” says Ms. Sherry* at the front desk, “do you have an appointment with Jeremy* today?”

“Jeremy?” I ask, pulling up my calendar.  There is no Jeremy in my calendar.  I go to the next week.  Jeremy is definitely scheduled for NEXT week at 10.

“Yes ma’am.  Jeremy, his mother, and his 5 siblings are here in the waiting room and they say they have an appointment with you at 10:00 today.  Can you see them?”

“Well…uhhh…” I pause.  Jeremy and his mother and his 5 siblings come from across town on the bus.  Jeremy’s mother works the night shift.  She probably hasn’t been to bed yet.  “Sure,” I said.  “I’ll see them.”

“Okay, I’ll let the family know.”

“Thanks, Ms. Sherry,” I say.

“Oh, and Auto?” she continues.  “Jeremy is having a tantrum out here in the lobby, so you might want to come out soon.”  We hang up.  Super.  I look at my schedule again—this means I will have straight back to back clients from 10-3.  Fantastic.

So I go see Jeremy, and Jeremy tantrums for about 45 minutes of our hour.  His five siblings are bopping around the treatment room like little balls in a pinball machine.  I can’t even hear mom to talk, but we muddle through and get to the end of the session right as my pager goes off, informing me my 11:00 has arrived.

I see Jeremy and his family to the lobby, clean up the treatment room, and set up for my next client, Patrick.*  Patrick is a 5-year-old with communication delays and behavior issues.  Patrick’s family has been homeless on and off for the past couple years, but have finally found housing with a friend.  This week, mom came in with a different set of problems: she suspects her friend’s son is being sexually abused, and is worried that he will start acting out and hurt her children.  She didn’t think anything had happened with her boys yet, but with a toddler and a barely verbal 5 year old, we can’t exactly get a full report. 

So, after hearing the whole story and circling around it a few times to get more information, I tell Patrick’s mom I need to go check-in with a supervisor, as this may be something I have to report.  Both of my supervisors are at a different building for the day, so I try to find the supervisor-on-call from another clinic.  She’s in session and another supervisor is in supervision.  I decide to interrupt her.  I explain the situation and ask whether I need to report.  There are no clear answers, as the whole situation is a little fuzzy.  We circle around the issue, she gives me her opinion on how to handle it, but tells me to interrupt the supervisor-on-duty.  I do, we talk, and I go back into session.  I explain things to mom, we’re wrapping up the session, and I get 3 pages in quick succession.  Page 1: 911.  Page 2: My 12:00 has arrived.  Page 3: 911.  I call back the extension for the first 911 page and there is no answer.  I excuse myself from session again and go back to the supervisor’s office, which is who I suspected paged me, and it was.  She consulted with a third supervisor, who had more recommendations for me.  On my way back, I go to the front desk regarding the second 911 page, and learn that it was because my 12:00 was being aggressive towards other children in the waiting room.  They just wanted me to hustle my butt along in case.  I go back to the treatment room, talk to mom, and spend 10 minutes making sure she understands and is going to follow through with my recommendations.  By the time I get her out the door, it is 12:15. 

I clean up the treatment room, and get ready for my next session as fast as possible.  “Getting ready” for this session involves taking all the furniture out of the treatment room, aside from a chair for mom, and 2 small chairs for me and client, because this client is the sort who will climb, push, and throw anything possible.  Personally, I don’t feel like getting hit with a flying table.  Into the treatment room we go, his behaviors start about 5 minutes later, and soon we’re into time-outs, restraints, screaming, kicking, hitting, and biting.  Once he’s compliant (he had to sit in the chair for 10 seconds…which he did…after a 20 minute tantrum), I pull out 2 toy trains as I try to talk to mom.  As soon as I turn my face away from him, he starts tantruming again…screaming, throwing toys, throwing shoes, and taking off his shirt.  I take the toys and tell him he can have his train back as soon as he sits in the chair.  Mom and I continue to talk, ignoring his behavior, which escalates every time we glance in his direction.  Unable to get the attention he wants, and unwilling to be compliant, he decides to pull out all the stops: he pulls down his pants and underwear and looks directly at mom.  I had seen this coming, and told mom we would ignore it, but mom just couldn’t.  As soon as he made eye contact, she jumped up, exclaiming, “DON’T YOU DARE PEE ON THAT FLOOR!”

With a huge grin on his face, and laughter spilling out of every inch of his little body, my little friend promptly peed ALL over the treatment room.  And I do mean ALL over the treatment room. 

Another 20 minute time-out tantrum (followed by 10 seconds of compliance!), my little friend was finally calm and played nicely with trains.  At about 1:15, my favorite client ever leaves, leaving me with a huge to-be bruise on my knee where he got me with his cute little galoshes, and another under my arm.  I tell my good friend Ms. Sherry at the front desk that treatment room 1 needs to be cleaned, put the necessary “warning” and “out of order” signs on the door, and I get my next client. 

Next client is a little cutie I hadn’t met before with a mother who wouldn’t give me any information.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, as I’m rather used to that, except for the fact that I had not had breakfast or lunch, and I was utterly exhausted from my “sprinkling wonder” client before.  Normally, conversations like this don’t frustrate me, but…well…I was tired.  And hungry.  And increasingly grumpy.

“His behavior is bad,” mom says.

“Okay,” I say.  “Tell me what is bad about his behavior.”

“It’s bad,” she says.  “Real bad.”

“Hmm,” I say.  “Tell me more.  Is he having tantrums, or not listening to you…”

“Oh yeah,” she says.  “He does that.”

“Why don’t you tell me about the last time he had bad behavior.”

“Well…” says mom, “that’s hard to say…”

“Does he have bad behavior every day?”

“Most times.  It’s a lot.”

“Is it multiple times a day?”

“Sometimes it might be.”

“Is there ever a day when he has a good day all day?”

“I can’t really remember.”

“So you said he has tantrums.  What does he do during a tantrum?”

“Oh wow, Ms. Auto, you should see it.  It’s real bad.  He just get to acting bad and is just bad all over.”

“I understand that.  Is he yelling or screaming?”

“Oh yeah.”

“How about kicking, hitting, biting, scratching…”

“Oh yeah.”

“What else happens while he’s having a tantrum?”

“Well…that’s hard to say.”

And so it goes.  Really, not so bad.  Pretty typical conversation, actually.  But I was tired.  And hungry.  And frustrated.  So I finish up with that client at about 2:15, and then see my last kid for the day, whose mother lies to me throughout the session.  I call her out on her lies, she gets angry, but we work through it, all the while trying to stop this little 5 year old girl from eating the lint off of the carpet.  This session also goes late, so it’s about 3:30 when I finally finish up.  I go eat my lunch (or maybe it was breakfast…or dinner…who really knows at that point), return emails and phone calls, and decompress for a few minutes before my final client arrives.

After my final client, I sit down next to Matt in the office.  “Was that your room clear-out I saw?” he asks.

“Yep,” I say, typing my progress note.

“Was that your room with the “out of order” sign on the door?”

“Yep,” I say, starting to laugh.

“Was that your client that screamed through the whole session?” he asked.

“Which of the 3 since 10:00 this morning are you referring to?” I ask, laughing.

“Why are you smiling right now?” he asks, laughing, “More importantly, what are you still doing here?  Go home and have a drink.”

I go home that night and have two terrible dreams.  I question why the heck I feel so stressed out and why I can’t just handle all this better.  I get about 3 hours of sleep that night.

Friday!  Thank heavens.  I ride the train into work with the guy in the dress with the headphones selling perfume out of the bullet holder thing, see a couple clients, finish up some paperwork and come home.  Everybody keeps telling me to go buy water and make sure I have food in the house for the impending hurricane, so I go to the store, which is of course sold out of water, flashlights, and batteries.  I call my sisters, clean up a bit, and decide to decompress for a while.  I take a shower, paint my fingernails, and watch a movie.  I’m feeling myself slow down a bit when I get a phone call.  It’s a sort-of friend calling with some very not good news regarding a mutual friend.  She’s crying, we game plan a little crisis management to enact if the situation arises, and get off the phone.  I turn off the movie, thoroughly grumpy, pour the remainder of my cup of tea down the sink, take 2 Tylenol PMs and go to sleep.  Thank God whatever help-you-sleep magic they put in there prevents me from dreaming—or, at least, from remembering my dreams.

This morning, I woke up early, went to visit my grandmother at the hospital (always  a trip…but that’s a story for another time), and came home.  It’s raining, but not hard yet…but I guess I better go and finish washing my clothes before Hurricane Irene harrives.  A perfect end to the week, no?

Yes, dear readers, as I stated way back at the beginning, all of this is 100% true and, believe it or not, abbreviated.  Sometimes, real life is stranger than fiction.

*All names have been changed

You wouldn't believe me if I told you (Part 1)

Have you ever had the sense that, if you were to tell someone about your life lately, they wouldn’t believe you?  Welcome to my week!  In trying to assess WHY on EARTH I could POSSIBLY be so tired, and why in the WORLD I am having totally wacked out dreams, I realized that maybe…maybe…this week has been a little strange.  I assure you, everything I tell you here is 100% true for no other reason than I could not make this up if I tried.  I’m exhausted and having dreams that are waking and keeping me up.  There’s no energy left in my body for creativity.  This is, as they say, just the facts.

So let me give you a little back story.  In case you haven’t realized yet, my life is a little crazy.  My baseline for “crazy” is likely a little different from other folks.  I mean, just in regards to work, I can go from listening to a little girl sing a song I can’t understand that is supposedly about a carrot that lives in a submarine (and then seeing the little girl have a tantrum because she wants the submarine, and she wants a carrot in it, goddamnit!) to talking to a mother about how her son has never had any medical problems (nope, no medical problems…seriously, nope, no medical problems)…except for the asthma, 2 blood transfusions, 2 months in the NICU, 3 hospitalizations, being born at 33 weeks gestation, and the 2 outpatient surgeries.  After that, maybe I’ll see the mother who tells me she doesn’t know anything about her kids development because she was incarcerated for 3 years and her kid’s only 4, and then I’ll round out the day coming up with a treatment plan for a little dude who masturbates 4+ hours per day.  Yeah.  This, my friends, is my normal, and that didn’t touch on life outside of work.

Monday was a normal day.  Or at least, I don’t remember it.  Monday actually could have been very memorable, but Tuesday wiped out all memory of Monday, so let’s just start there.

Tuesday.  It started out as a normal Tuesday.  Took the metro into work.  Did not meet any crazy people on the train.  I have to be to work early on Tuesdays because we have our weekly two hours of torture fascinating lectures.  I arrived on-time, listened to a boring-as-hell riveting lecture on movement disorders, and then went up to my desk.  On Tuesday, two of my colleagues and I have to take a shuttle to another building downtown, and we frequently stop at Starbucks and talk for a bit before we go in for our meeting.  This Tuesday, we did just that: caught the shuttle to our other building, went in Starbucks for a caffeine fix after the snoozer of a lecture lecture that managed to hold my rapt attention for two hours, and then we sat outside on a bench, enjoying the fact that we were outside while there was still daylight.  Went to the meeting for two hours, hopped back on the shuttle, and made it back to the original building with 20 minutes to spare before my first client of the day. 

Let me take a break for a moment and tell you about this client.  I’ve only seen this client once, but I was warned by her prior therapist.  This little girl and her cousin live with their elderly grandparents.  Grandma brings them to session, and it wasn’t the little girl I was warned out.  It’s grandma.  Grandma has significant health problems and, in the words of the prior clinician, “I was worried every single session that granny was going to die on the couch.”  When I told my supervisor who I was seeing this week, his comment was, “Oh THAT kid…is grandma still alive?”  Seriously.  She apparently had pneumonia for 6 weeks and didn’t realize it.  When I saw her the first time, she didn’t look bad: she had been in the hospital, gotten the pneumonia cleared up, and she was back, better than ever I suppose.  I was supposed to have a second session with them two weeks ago, but got a phone call from grandpa that they had to cancel because grandma was in the hospital due to a heart attack.  Yikes.  I didn’t expect Granny to come in on Tuesday, kinda figured they might no-show me…but they arrived 15 minutes early and were ready to go.  About 10 minutes before their appointment, I walked past them in the lobby to grab some papers and told them I would be with them soon.  Granny looked bad.  I now understand why the previous therapist was worried.  It just couldn’t be good.

So I go back to my desk, and frantically trying to pull together all my progress notes and make sure they’re all signed, dated, and copied.  Progress notes are due at 2, and it’s now about 1:50.  I’m standing at my desk, signing the last progress note, when suddenly, there is a noise.  A loud noise, and it feels like the room shakes.  Wow, I think, somebody must have a really aggressive, big kid in the lobby that just banged the hell out of the door.  But the shaking continued.  And continued.  I look at my officemates, who stare back at me with the same open mouthed expression.

“Oh my God,” one of them says.  “Are we having an earthquake?”  We stand, frozen, staring at each other as things start to fall off of the desks, file drawers start to slide open, and the shaking intensifies. 

“Everybody get in the doorways,” shouts “Helen,” the supervisor-on-duty from the other side of the hall.  We all move to the doorway, and as I’m walking, I realize I’m moving sideways and not forward, and I have to lean on a file cabinet for a split second to get my legs back under me so I don’t fall.  For the first time in my life, one thought only is going through my head: This is real.  People die in earthquakes. This could be it.  One of my other colleagues, “Anna,” is still sitting at her desk with the phone in her hand, open-mouthed, staring at us.  I grab her hand as I walk by and she stands and follows me.

There are five of us in the doorway, trying to squeeze together as much as possible, squeezing each other’s hands, touching each others’ shoulders, just to connect.  We barely know each other, but we need that connection.  Another colleague, “Matt,” opens the heavy door to the staff only part of the clinic and, as he does, a ceiling tile smashes down in front of him.  “Holy shit!” he exclaims, and jumps into the doorway nearest him.

“GET IN THE DOORWAYS,” yells Helen, trying not to sound panicked.

“It’s alright,” he says.  “We are.”

Boxes of files fall off of the top of the cabinet near us, stacks of papers and coloring pages fall to the floor, and prize boxes fall off the tops of shelves and crash onto the ground, and the intense shaking subsides.

We are silent for a moment.  “Are we still moving?” Anna asks.

“Stay where you are,” says Helen.  “Nobody move.  Just stay put.”  She sounds considerably calmer.  Almost like she’s breathing again.  We don’t move.

“We are still moving, aren’t we?” Anna asks again.

“I think so,” I say, still feeling the slight tremors under my feet.  It’s like that feeling when you’re on a swing that you let just slow to a stop, when you’re just barely moving. 

“Holy shit,” Matt says from the other doorway again.

“Is everybody okay?” Helen asks.  “Who’s out there?”  We tell her. 

“We’re fine,” we say, still not moving. 

One of the administrative staff, “John” pokes his head in, frantic.  “Is everybody okay?” he asks.  He walks around, sees where we are, observes the damage, and tells us not to move.  John and Helen go out into the clinic.  A minute later they return. 

“Everybody out,” they say.  “We’re evacuating.  Go down to the playground.”  We turn and go down the four flights of steps, starting to talk and breathe and laugh to diffuse the anxiety of it all.  Outside, we start looking for our clients.  Mine is nowhere to be seen.  I keep looking.  And looking.  And looking.  I can’t find them.

I wait as I see a few more people come out of the building.  Not them.  I wait.  And I wait. 

“I don’t see my client,” I say nervously to Matt.  “Grandma had a heart attack two weeks ago, she can’t walk well, she’s got a cane…I don’t know if she could make it down the steps.”

“Holy shit,” he says again, the rest of his vocabulary apparently gone.

I wait what feels like 3 more hours, and then go to approach the supervisor, ask her what the hell I should do.  As I walk up to her, I see Client, Cousin, John, and Grandma come out of the building.  Grandma looks completely done in, and John looks like he had to carry all 250 lbs of her down 4 flights of steps.  My client and her cousin stand close to grandma, wide-eyed and silent.

Resisting the urge to hug them or John, I approach them, calmly and professionally.  “Are you guys okay?” I ask, looking at grandma first.

“I can’t do steps,” she wheezes.  “I gots to sit down.”

I look around.  The closest place to sit is in a cement covered walkway.  Probably not the best idea, but granny looks like she is seriously going to collapse.  “Let’s get you a seat over here,” I say.  “We might need to move in a moment, but let’s get up here so you can sit down first.”

We take slow, painstaking steps to the bench.  Grandma sits down and I let her catch her breath.  She looks up at me, confused.  “Felt like an earthquake,” she says.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it was,” I say.  I look to my little client, still wide-eyed and clutching her grandmother’s purse.  “That was pretty scary, wasn’t it?” I say to her.  She nods, chin quivering.  “But feel right now?  Nothing is shaking.”  I stomp my feet on the ground.  “It’s okay,” I tell her, taking her hand and looking in her big brown eyes.  Cousin sidles in to be part of the conversation.  I take her hand with my other one.  “Earthquakes happen when big things like rocks move waaaay down deep underground.  It makes things shake like we just felt.”  They nod again.  My client has a significant cognitive disability and language disorder, so I’m pretty sure she’s not understanding.  We take a deep breath together, and their little shoulders drop a bit.  “Look,” I say pointing, “Granny is okay, Cousin is okay, Client is okay, and Autodidact is okay.”  She nods again.  I ask grandma if she is okay to move.  It’s quite a walk to the picnic benches.

“I don’t know if I can make it,” she tells me.  “But I’ll try.”  We inch our way across the parking lot until we get to the picnic bench.  I tell the girls to stay with granny and go back to find out what’s going on. 

Somebody does an inspection of the building: apparently our floor, the 4^th floor, was hit the hardest.  There are several ceiling tiles out, and 2 light fixtures fell, one of which hit another client in the head.  We’re told it is safe to go back into the building.  We look to Helen.  “What do we do about our clients?” we ask.  We’re all talking at once, telling her how many clients we have left for the day, how many of us have clients here now, what time our clients are expected to come.  She stops us.

“Are you guys okay?” she asks for what feels like the hundredth time.

We start telling her again, asking what to do about the clients who are here now, if we should see them, should we bill for half an hour, can we bill at all, can we get a hold of our other families…

“No,” she says stopping us.  “Everybody stop and listen to me.”  She looks at Anna.  “You start.  I am asking you: are you okay to see clients?  Are you emotionally okay to see clients right now.”  Anna stops, quiet for a moment. 

“I…well…I have a client coming at 3,” she says.

“Okay,” Helen says, giving up on us.  “Let me go try to call some other supervisors, see what they say, and go look upstairs and see what’s happening.  Just tell your clients to wait out here.”  About 10 minutes later, Helen comes back to tell us we’re closing and to tell our clients to go home.  I go talk to grandma, make sure she has transportation to get home, help her get into a cab, and go upstairs.

The fourth floor looks…well…it looks like an earthquake happened.  There is debris everywhere.  The office is a mess with papers and files and open drawers.  We’re told to call our clients and cancel the rest of our appointments, but we can’t dial out.  We try, document that we tried, and Helen tells us to leave.  We congregate in the hallways, trying to figure out where everyone is going.  The shuttle that takes my colleagues home isn’t running, and public transportation has stopped.  There is no way I was getting on the metro anyway…I mean seriously, a shooting silver bullet underground not even an hour after a freakin’ earthquake just doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.  This also means that I have no way of going home.

Everyone else lives close enough that we can walk, although we have to walk down a relatively sketchy street, in a pretty sketchy area.  We decide that we will walk everyone home, have them check out their houses and be sure they’re okay, and that I will go to “Corinne’s” house while I figure out what to do.  A group of 6 of us leave the office and start walking.  Everywhere, people are out on the streets talking, surveying the damage.  There are bricks lying on the sidewalk, a collapsed chimney, pieces of gutters in our path.  People look at us as we pass.  “Are you okay?” we ask, as they stare at us from their front stoop.

“Things just got shook up,” one lady with a naked baby says.

“We all right, praise the Lord,” says an older woman sitting with 5 children around her.

We make our way over to Ann Street.  A group of men to our right is yelling about one guy owing somebody else money and we keep walking.  Somebody jumps into a car to our left and pulls out into the road and, suddenly, there is a loud, horrific noise, followed by silence, and then by strings of expletives.  Apparently, the man who jumped into the car didn’t look before pulling out, and a car that was plowing down Ann Street far too fast hit the front left corner of his car and pulled off half the bumper.  They immediately start yelling at each other, and Matt, as the only guy in the group, says, “holy shit,” and then tells us all not to stop, not to look, and to keep walking.  All of us in our dress shoes and work clothes speed-walk down Ann Street as fast as possible, rubbing new blisters into our toes with every step, but not daring to stop and fix the shoe.    

“A f***ing car accident?  An earthquake AND a f***ing CAR ACCIDENT right in front of us?!” we exclaim, in turn, as it sinks in what just happened. 

We drop everyone off, one by one, at their apartments.  They run in and come back out to tell us: “everything’s fine.  A couple pictures are crooked, something fell off the shelf, but it’s all fine.”  We’re amazed, and we keep walking. 

When only Matt, Corinne and I are left, we go to Corinne’s apartment, where I finally get a hold of my father, who is fine, and then my mother, who is also fine, and had been at the hospital in Baltimore down the street visiting my grandmother.  I ask if she can come pick me up when she’s finished and drive me to the metro station to get my car.  A policeman we asked on the walk home said he wasn’t sure when the metro would be opening again, but that it would definitely be down for a few more hours at least.  At Corinne’s apartment we turn on the television and learn that it was a 5.9 earthquake that shook us.

“Holy shit,” says Matt.

A while later, my mom comes to pick me up, and it takes us 2 hours to get home and out of the grid-locked city.  Aside from a small aftershock that woke me up that night, Tuesday is over.

…To Be Continued…

Crocheting the Bridge

With all the writing I do about stories, I feel like a Sally One Note.  I apologize.  If you don’t feel like reading my writing about writing again, please proceed to the nearest exit.  There will be something not about writing at some point.  I encourage you to keep coming back and checking in.

Anybody left?  Oh, good.  Ah, all…2 of you.  Fantastic.  Now, before we proceed any further, watch this video.  It provides some context for what I’m going to say…or maybe it just kind of sparked it, I don’t know.  But you should watch it anyway.

All 1 of you back?  Great.  Thanks for reading, friend.

Dorothy Allison says, “I wanted to break the heart of the world and heal it.”  This line gives me chills.  The way she spoke in general had me mesmerized, left me with goosebumps.  That lady is intense.  Before hearing this and relying on Google to tell me who she was, I had never heard of her.  She’s the author of Bastard Out of Carolina, which I haven’t read, but have heard about in that it’s intense.  Even before I knew this, though, I could tell: this woman gets it.  She is a woman with a story.  The way she talks.  The way she says things.  The way I can feel my heart tugging in my chest—she means every single word she’s saying.  She is a powerful woman.  A woman with a story.

I am not Dorothy Allison, though, and as much as that line resonates with me, and as much as I understand that sentiment with every fiber of my being, and as much as it resounds in my cells and makes my body shiver, that it not how I would word it.  The heart of the world is already broken.  I want to expose the fault lines so we can move towards wholeness.  I want to name the cracked places, take people to the edge, have them look down into the abyss of the center.  I can’t heal the heart of the world.  I can’t heal the broken places.  I merely want to take people to the cracks and show them they can paint murals on the rubble.  I want to take the people who believe their square of the world is the only one that’s cracked to the other side, another square, another crack.  I want them to take photos of the places where the crack looks just the same and the demons exposed in the cracks in that other person’s square are also their demons.  Where the noxious smell coming from the cracks is the same as the smell from their crack.  I want to take them where the bleeding, broken places look and feel just the same, and I will not say anything but let them hear the story of the breaking.  Perhaps they will cry in the knowledge that others are breaking.  That others have broken.  Perhaps they will laugh for ever believing they were alone in the brokenness.  Perhaps they will get busy loving the broken heart of the world, or inventing zippers for broken souls, or sewing quilts to patch up the broken parts.  Or maybe they will continue living their lives as if nothing has changed, or maybe they will rip open the broken pieces with every inch of muscle.  I cannot heal the heart of the world.  I can only drag people to the broken parts and make them see those cracked and empty places so they can crochet bridges no one can walk across in hopes of building firmer structures.  I will stand with them as they throw those crocheted bridges to the other side of the breaking in a gesture of solidarity.   

We all have fault lines and cracks in our lives, and therefore in our stories.  Dorothy Allison also says, “I wanted more out of story—I wanted something large out of story.”  We reach that “something large” through walking to the broken parts and peering in.  Through taking others to our broken places.  The broken places in us are the broken places of the world: my breaking splits open the corresponding crack in the Earth.  When we story our lives—our hills and valleys and earthquakes and deserts—we undoubtedly make something large.  There is no way we cannot.  By storying, we are choosing to throw a shovelful of dirt over the crack.  When we story our lives, we are healing the world.  There is no way that cannot be large.  It’s huge, and it’s necessary.

“But mostly,” Dorothy Allison says, “I want to be a story that reaches people.  The way you do.  The way you do.”

I want to be a story because stories matter.  They reach people.  They crawl into your heart, or soak into your skin, or infiltrate your bloodstream and circulate your body and stay there.  I want my story to touch people so they can stand a little straighter.  Love a little deeper.  Connect a little more easily.  I want the story of my life to make people go to the edge of the depth, look inside, and do whatever it is they do with more intensity, more love, more passion.  Maybe they dance.  Maybe they love their children.  Maybe they advocate in big cities to high ranking people for something that makes them feel alive, or maybe they advocate about something that makes them die inside again and again and again.  I have no plans of doing big things.  I just want to live life quietly, out loud, in a voice that makes skeptics shiver and take cover.  I want to be a story that matters in a way you can’t explain that still leaves you feeling full, tired, and changed.  Uncomfortable, perhaps.  I want to be the story that matters so much, you retell it to your friends and family.  Perhaps it touches your story, and so you write it, and the torch is passed. 

I want to take you to and be taken to the cracks in the heart of the world, and I want us to love them.  I want to paint murals in the debris and make stone soup with the leftovers.  I want to be a story that matters and I want to hold your story and love it in its broken intensity and wholeness.  Just like you do.  Just the way you do.

If you need me, you’ll find me crocheting a bridge no one can walk across, hoping one day it’s long enough to throw across the cracks, in an action of solidarity.