The new principal started today.  She is a striking woman, very sharp dresser, very sharp speaker.  I felt soft just being near her.  Soft faded jeans, soft shoes, soft voice, soft heart, soft head.  Sometimes I think I am no closer to knowing who I am now than I was at 20, or at least no closer to being comfortable with my truth.


*

what's up Breakfast

This morning when I opened the refrigerator door to get the milk for my coffee, a rogue Granville Island Maple beer that was hidden somewhere in plain view jumped energetically out at me, taking me by surprise.  I wasn't quick enough to catch it, nor invested enough (not a fan of maple beer), and so it hit the stone tile and smashed everywhere.  The smell of maple beer was a nauseating clean up at 6:30am, though the dogs did not share this opinion and tried to get drunk.

*

It is entirely possible, it turns out, that my student presenting with symptoms of psychosis is actually just faking it.  The psychiatrist spoke with her yesterday and is coming back again in a week to talk to her again.  But at this point, I am advised to give her space to see what happens.  How odd it would be to fake such a thing.  This job is exhausting me, but I am never bored.


*

not while I'm eating

Last night I dreamed that my sister was trying to kill me.  She was blocking my vehicle to stop me from leaving, and attempting to kill me in a way that was totally devoid of passion or anger.  Just a clinical attempt at ending my life by whatever means were available to her, which in this case was a handful of pins that she pushed into my mouth and down my throat.  I was pulled out of sleep by Ophelia's welcome and well-timed request for breakfast, at which point in the dream I was on the phone with police begging for help, spitting out bloody pins while I talked, the violence strangely juxtaposed against Ophelia's loving nudges pulling me awake.



*

pretty good at drinking beer (he makes the sign of the wave)

Charlie Sheen came in for counselling today.  He told me he used to watch Manimal in the 80s and it still haunts him.  Unrelated, he also lifted up his shirt to show me that his right nipple is pierced because I said I didn't believe him.  I flicked it.  Hard, so he wouldn't forget.

Counselling is making me really really tired.  At the end of the day I can barely think, can barely navigate the road home while still listening to J's stories about what happened in Chemistry class.  But not the kind of tired where I do not want to go back for more, because I do.  There are at least two more weeks in this assignment, maybe more, so I'm going back for more.



*

Sometimes when I look behind me before backing up my car, my eyes do not see anything even when something is there.  This must mean I am not really looking, only thinking I am looking.  Yesterday I did not notice a neighbour's car very close to the bottom of my driveway.  I did not hit it, but it scared me when I noticed it.


*

I skipped S's retirement party after work, which is sort of lousy.  But I was in drone mode, post-counselling exhaustion had set in, and I still needed to go to the bank and the grocery store and the Drool Factory (I do not have a proper phrase to explain what that means, so please ignore it).  So although I had said I would take J home and drop her off, then go to the party, I didn't.  Instead, I picked up a bottle of wine and collapsed with it on the couch.  It is possible that exhaustion is just an excuse and I would not have attended the party anyway because I strenuously dislike parties, especially work parties.


*

T sent me a message:

1:15pm

T

hey you!

Why you no say hello?

PS can you send that picture of me holding a beer can?

ok bye

It kind of gives me the icks that he talks to me like this, sort of babytalk-ish.  I think it's because he kind of babytalked when he was being cute when we were a couple, and although it might have seemed cute when I was nineteen, now he's a 42 year old man, not a 22 year boy.  It also grosses me out when he posts pictures of himself clearly taken by him in his own bathroom mirror, along with captions that are supposed to be inspirational about what a renegade individualist he is, travelling the world and refusing to conform.  Again, these things impressed me (somewhat) when I was nineteen, but they seem preposterous coming from a 42 year old.  Who is he talking to?  Who are the people admiring this stuff?  Is he still hanging out with nineteen year olds?

The picture he wants of himself with a beer can is also a relic of those days gone by.  Him in plaid flannel with his hair to his shoulders, still at the tail end of nearly-healed teenage acne, and gesturing proudly at a can of Canadian beer, absolutely the love of my life at nineteen (him, not the beer).  Look, he seems to be saying,  I am old enough to drink legally!  I wonder why on earth he wants this photograph.  I presume, because he is one of the Documenters, he wants it so he can post it and have people admire it.  But perhaps this is cynical.  I do not actually know where the photograph is, nor do I feel like figuring out how to use the scanner, so I might just lie and say I can't find it.  Or maybe I will play along.

But currently it is more important that I concentrate on my wine.



*

solo

I have been in the Counselling office long enough now to be moving from being the Bandaid Counsellor ("What can I do to help you get through today until you can see your real counsellor tomorrow?") to doing my own work.  Referrals to outside agencies, team meetings, course advising, career counselling, depression-anxiety-depression-anxiety-depression-anxiety, and today I had my first experience with a student experiencing what I strongly suspect is a form of psychosis.  She told me she has been hearing voices talking to her, hateful voices accusing her of having no right to live, having no one that cares about her, having no reason to exist.  The voices were intruding while I was trying to talk with her; she was trembling and shaking, tears streaming, unable to hear me in the din.  So so scary.  One of the other counsellors will work with this girl (and undoubtedly refer her to an outside agency) but I will shadow this process so I can learn how it is done.  We have had so many cases of this exact same thing in the last two years -- I had no idea psychosis among teenagers was so prevalent.


*

I am reading Oh Dear Silvia, and I am not especially impressed.  I think this is the first book I have read by Dawn French, although I feel as though I know her name from somewhere.  I probably don't.  The characters are such caricatures that I am feeling bored and as though I can predict everything they each will say and do.  They try too hard to be zany and hilarious, or bighearted and kind, or dry and dull.  (Especially successful in the latter department, unfortunately.)  I find it hard to stay interested and I'm sort of pleased that it's nearly over, although I suspect she's going to kick the bucket soon.  Poor thing, I would too.

*

❅

Counselling this week has been odd.  I have been meeting with a student who has been telling me a horror story about his baby brother swallowing bleach and being hospitalized while in his care.  And I have also spoken with his sister (informally) who tells me none of this happened.

I also met with my lovely girl, S, who brought me a terrible cookie she made which I felt compelled to eat and which contained walnut shells that required me to surreptitiously pick my teeth while she talked.  She told me an absurd story about going to a friend's church as a child, a church at which children earned "Bible Bucks" for memorizing and accurately reciting bible passages.  She told me her friend was saving up for a "BIONICLE", which allegedly cost a zillion Bible Bucks.  When S realised how many bible passages she would have to memorize to earn one of her own, she decided to cash in her five Bible Bucks for a plastic yoyo and stopped going to church.  I used to think I had to keep a straight face when people told me things like this in counselling.  I have learned that with S, it's okay to laugh.  It's good for her, it's good for me.

I did manage not to laugh when a child with the unfortunate name, Eric Chin, told me he was upset that his friends had been calling him "Erection", but it was a challenge, a real challenge.  I also managed not to laugh when I asked Erection about his English essay in which he wrote, "My life is a disaster.  I have nothing," and he explained that this referred to the fact that his parents refused to buy him a Play Station 3.


*


I have made an appointment for two weeks from today to chop my hair off.  I do this from time to time, and then I always end up growing it long again because long is easier to manage.  Wash, brush, pin, go.  Shorter hair requires such things as styling and maintaining, trimming and so forth.  But sometimes I want to pretend I can do these things, even for a short time.  Of course I can't, of course I won't.  Of course I will soon have long hair again.  But in two weeks, it will briefly be short(er).  (I sort of hate that I even wrote that, as though it means anything.)



*

I dreamed, for some reason, that I was living in T's basement, sleeping on an air mattress and wishing for something impossible.  One of those dreams from which you wake, thankful that it was just a dream, and resolving to never never never.


*

LC spoke with me on Friday.  I asked her how she was doing.  I was not sure if she knew that I knew that her husband committed suicide.  But because she asked M to tell the counsellors, I think she might have.  I just asked lightly, not to imply any deeper question, just a how's it going?  I think it has been a month now.  I do not think she took any time off work.  She said, Putting one foot in front of the other, which is the answer I would have given if it had occurred to me when people asked how I was doing right after Colleen died, except that when people asked me that question I couldn't speak.  I was walking, I was going to work, just putting one foot in front of the other.  It keeps you alive.

I asked her about her potential retirement, which has been impending for a couple of years now.  She told me she will probably teach another year because she has nothing to retire to.  That really struck me, nothing to retire to, because I always think I look forward to retirement, but if retirement was just me looking forward to bagels and orange juice and watching television, I probably wouldn't really want it either.  We need to be important to someone, even if it's just colleagues and kids.  Even if it's nothing special, it's better than nothing.


*

Some of my flower bulbs started to grow in the mild weather, sending up tentative green shoots to check out the sun.  And then it got cold, and now the ground is frozen again, and I think my bulbs will regret having been so eager to emerge.  I do not want them to die.


*

✄

RW, it turns out, is just as anxious about the Revised Italy Trip as I am.  This comforts me, at least to some degree.  What I do not want, not in the least, is for him to have any sort of confidence in me.

*

S and I had a counselling session over lunch today.  She ate green beans with chili and sesame seeds, and I picked all the vegetables out of a bowl of tomato beef stew.  (It was, unfortunately, mostly meat.)  S and I agreed that obsessive compulsive behaviours could compound her problem but could also help keep her on track if we could just shift tracks.  We also agreed, for a change, that it's normal to struggle with things.  Not normal to be okay all the time.  (It is good for me to remember this too.)  All afternoon a large fly buzzed around my garbage can, attracted to my discarded lunch.

*

I swallowed the bait and agreed to take the counselling job that has no defined end date.  Maybe two weeks, maybe three.  Maybe forever.  Who knows.  Shawn says that I have magical powers to kill off people whose jobs I want.  I didn't really mean to kill M; I hope she doesn't die.  

*

The school was built in '95, and this year's graduates were all born in '95.  In honour of this special year, the yearbook class is putting together a book that commemorates 1995 in all its glory.  They asked me if I had any pictures of myself in '95 and I promised to look.  I was not especially keen on sharing a picture, to tell the truth.  Not that it's a real problem, but the yearbook should be about them, not about me or any of the staff.

Of course '95 was the world before phone cameras, and the only thing I could find was my actor's headshot.  Me, all in black (very actor-like) wearing an odd expression that I probably supposed would make me look dramatic and versatile.  That picture would get me all kinds of brilliant jobs like an advertisement for the public library and the provincial lottery.  Not to mention Desdemona and an offer to sleep with the photographer.  I neglected to share these memories with the yearbook class.  

*

long ago it must be, i have a photograph

It is an odd turn of events that will require me to travel with RW to Italy in March.  I have never been to Italy and although I am not even 100% certain that I want to go there now, I have officially agreed.  I convinced myself with the standard cliches about not wanting to regret missed opportunities, though I am of the ilk that genuinely feels that a missed opportunity to be alone is also of great weight.  For some reason it makes me more apprehensive than I can reasonably explain, but perhaps that counts as even more reason to go.  Regardless, the weighing does not now matter as I have already signed my name.

*

I have been reading Mark Haddon's The Red House, which so far, compared to his first two, is not all I hoped for.  I do not like the presence of the ghost.  I like ghosts in my reality, but in fiction they frighten me. 


*

The Documenters are odd, which is an ironic thing to write, maybe, as I document my thoughts about documentation.  But somehow there is a difference between my documents, my pieces of thoughts, because it is the act of creating them that has value, not the completed documents.  The Documenters, I think, value the documents themselves.  Or if not the documents, then they must value the reactions the documents evoke in others.  Their purpose, I am certain, is not the same, though I cannot quite define theirs.  I should like this mulling to be judgment-free, but I do not think it is, because there is something about the photographs that bothers me.  I want to judge them.  This what was my hair looked like when I woke up this morning; isn't it funny?  This is my half-grapefruit and slice of toast.  This is how my shirt matched someone else's at work.  Oh, how we laughed and laughed!  I think we both look like Bryan Adams.  This is where we went for lunch.  Here's a close up of our DimSum.  Here's my front door.  Here's my front hall.  Here's my kitchen, my table, my chair, my place settings, my knife, my fork, my plate.  My dinner.  Why?  I understand photographing things that seem significant or interesting or worth remembering but I do not understand the purpose of photographing every instant as though one's memory cannot be trusted to hold onto the important things and let go of what is not.  I'm pretty sure, for example, that half-grapefruit could be let go without leaving much of a hole.  Isn't there lost time spent photographing things that could have been spend experiencing them?  And really, aren't there some things that just aren't really worth documenting?  And maybe this is one of them.

*

For the most part, we live in a quiet neighbourhood that sees very little excitement.  But around this time of year there are always a few break-ins and car thefts, and a couple of years ago even a few incidents of minor arson.  We have a neighbourhood Block Watch that keeps us informed with emails describing the most recent crimes, and a block captain who is very descriptive when letting us know about the people in the community we should watch for.

From her most recent missive describing her suspect:

"he walked with a hip hop style" and "he had an unusually large head"

My favourite of all time, however, was the description of the arsonist, which came about three years ago now:  "a churlish-haired boy".  What she meant by that is anyone's guess.


*

it's nothing to you but it keeps me alive