Sugarless

Yesterday CW sent us a therapy manual she wrote for her work with narcissistic personality disorder. On the cover of the manual she lied about her credentials, and I took a couple of deep steadying breaths designed to calm the brief moment of emotional chaos. Stifled laughter but also something darker that I prefer not to acknowledge yet.

A. continues to send me small notes which I refuse to answer. I will not be forced into this conversation; I just won’t. These thoughts about these people are connected by the DSM thread. But let’s not forget that the DSM is just a construct, and a colonial one at that. 

Shawn is going away for a week and I feel a little adrift in anticipation. We have been together a lot since I left the old job and started working from home. We share a staff room. Codependence might creep up on me. 

Nothing.

I don’t really say things here anymore. I wonder what changed, exactly.  Many things, maybe. 

Everything is different now. I am about halfway through the doctorate. I am really doing it, resplendent with imposter syndrome. In some spaces I feel like the smartest, in some spaces I cannot speak. Mutism is my theme.

I have taken over an important portfolio at the university where I work now. My manifest destiny persists. 

Shawn is going away for a week with his work. I was meant to be with D-dog but this has not worked out this way; our D-dog died. We don’t have dogs anymore. And that is a strange thing; we were a house full of canine madness for so long. I will be alone for a week and I will not mind that, I think. The quiet is okay. I am choosing differently now. But I miss being buried in the pile of sweet pups who just want my warmth, and nothing more. 

I live more in my head these days, less in my heart, and this is a challenge because I trust my heart more. 

Inhale. Outhale. 

Best in breed

 Last night I dreamed that I had entered a dog show… as a dog. I do not mean that I was occupying a dog body, but that I was rehearsing my dog tricks in my human body.  Sit. Shake. Roll over. And so forth. My human partner was one of the women in my doctoral program, and she was a very cooperative and hardworking teammate.  I was thinking I was a pretty decent contender for best in breed as the only human in the competition - but I woke up before I could find out our scores. 

In flagrante delicto

 C has announced she is leaving (moving to a different role within the same organization), and this brings to mind two immediate thoughts, selfishly, about how this impacts me. The first thought is that I am glad I have become more capable of being pleasant when I am irritated, because I have often felt irritated with C, and as her new position holds some clout, it is a good thing we will part on good terms without my having shouted, will you please make some space for my existence here? The second thought is that her departure leaves space for my existence here and that means having more responsibility than just showing up and nodding along while C does all the talking. This is, of course, one of those double-edged swords; floating along without much responsibility has left me feeling somewhat bored and useless… and at the same time it has freed me up to work sort of slapdash, peck, peck, poke. With time in between these brief moments to do my own coursework, go for walks, and so forth. A quiet kind of a life.  I am looking ahead now at re-engaging with work again, and my feelings about this are ambivalent. But if it was my call whether to have C stay or go… I would choose go.  And she’s going. 

A big pot

 Today I went back to my old workplace, just for the day, just for the moment. It is an interesting phenomenon how much better I am when I am there only for a moment, how every moment of that moment I am on, totally on, and so every word is completely attuned, filled with energy and responsiveness, the way I would like to be all day, with everyone, every day, throughout the year. And of course I am nothing like this on the 178th day when I say get your books out, read page 12-17, and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Don’t bug me. I’m trying to answer 158 emails before the end of the day. That’s just reality intruding the way it does. It feels excellent to be excellent for a moment before I vanish, leaving behind the impression that I always look this good, which we both know I do not. In my counselling office I want to believe I am as aware of the 360 degrees of worldviews around me, but I get so fucking tired of being asked to change people’s classes. (Why why why is that tied to this job?)

In today’s immersive experience I actually forgot, though briefly, about my being a student myself, and being a student has been at the forefront of everything for the last year. I forgot about logging in to the student portal and participating in the student thing for the day. And that’s okay. I choose to let today go by without that responsibility pulling at me.  Just for today. 

On Tuesday I was offered a new job, a counsellor job at an elementary school. It tells me something sad that I was offered a job for which I did not apply and without an interview. I had to turn it down as it was more FTE than I have time to be. But it made me think about the future of my career, whether it leads me back to where I came from or whether it continues down this post-secondary pathway. Presumably I will need to learn to speak up more if I want my current route to lead anywhere else. My mouth-shut strategy can only take me so far. 

Thank you goodbye

 Today I received an email inviting me to a 0.4 counsellijg contract at an elementary school. I find it strange that it was not an invitation to a job interview, but rather an invitation to a job, with an offer to work around my schedule if I didn’t like the two days that were being offered.  This is, of course, a sign of the times and a sign of how few mental health counsellors there are available right now, compounded by the fact that the public school system is becoming more nightmarish every year. I have no experience with elementary school children and I think I would rather keep it that way. And 0.4 is more of my freedom than I would care to lose. Tomorrow I will thank this principal graciously for contacting me and turn down the offer. I have enough on my plate, and having never been particularly good at recognizing that, I am trying to start. It’s funny, when I quit my full time job in March I was disappointed that they didn’t have a small contract to keep me slightly connected. But now that it has been almost a year (how did that happen?) I can’t say I miss it anymore or that I would accept a contract like that at this point. My new life is so much calmer.

In the end

Yesterday afternoon I met J for a drink at a nearby pub. It seems like such a civilized thing to do as an adult person, to drink beer while the sun is still in the sky. They encourage this behaviour, you know, by selling $4 pints, which was okay by me. We each had two pints and I was still home by 5:30. J is getting married next summer and I have threatened to wrestle with his mother for the right to walk him down the aisle. I mean, this isn’t a joke. I am going to start weight training. J is one of my favourite people in the world, so much so that I am willing to fight his mother, who I also happen to think pretty highly of, apart from her insistence on being involved in her son’s wedding instead of me. 

J told me about his father-in-law (to be) dying from brain cancer. He chose to end his life using MAID and J talked about going to be there with him at the end of his life, supporting his partner through this. This story was particularly significant because J and I normally laugh together, only laugh together, because J is one of the funniest people in the whole world. And most of the time when we get together we just make each other laugh. But yesterday was different. He told me that they are talking about adoption, which is incredibly expensive if you go through a private agency. And he told me about being sent out to buy potato chips because that was what his future father-in-law wanted to eat for his final meal, and wandering around the grocery store trying to decide which chips, because no one had specified. And wanting so much to get it right that he bought every kind, bags and bags and bags, so as not to disappoint.  And for some reason this was the part of the story that made me spill over. And that’s not something we have done together before either. And when we hugged goodbye in the parking lot we said I love you, and that was also new for us. I think we are both growing up.